That they matter

The population no longer trusts institutions. There is no faith in governments, in traditional religion, in science or in any expertise in general. We are firmly in the age of mistrust and misguided opinion and will be hard placed to leave it. 

The French government is on the verge of collapse, the US is soon ushering in a rabidly anti-science administration full of nutjobs and Palestenian children are having limbs amputated daily without anesthesia. This is a mere sampling of our new normal. 

The erosion began decades ago and has been accelerating with the proliferation of social media. People aren't connecting face to face but instead attacking each other behind a wall of anonymity; either that or lauding the most insidious forms of saccharin pablum. As we have abandoned social structures which fed trust in each other, the suspicious conspiracy minds grew in turn. Suddenly daily happenings in the world were given meanings by people connecting dots to other things with half-baked conjecture. 

Do the masses operate predominantly with intelligence? No, they do not. I've learned that all too well over my life. It is why so many can be led to jump off escarpments without too much effort.

Finding our way back will be laborious but I think it starts with people feeling hope again through reducing of economic hardship. They need to feel that they will be prosperous by feeding into a community spirit which will in turn see their own self-worth increase. 

People need to feel that they matter.