Trust is Going Going...Gong?

Trust is disappearing. Can you feel it?

Not in a vague “feels like it” way, but in a measurable, democracy-eroding, foundations-of-society kind of way. It’s chilling. Visceral. One of the shakier frontiers of my own hope. I feel afraid of what this means for us modern people.

Of course we will get through this. The question is how much damage we will sustain along the way. The costs are high, and the pace of erosion is accelerating. Global democracy has fallen from 8 percent in 2022 to just 6.5 percent today.

So where do we turn when trust collapses? When elections are filled with noise and we cannot tell truth from falsehood? When deepfakes blur the line between real and fabricated? When search engines and AI only serve up what we already want to be true?

We return to the most honest relationship we have: our bodies.

Our bodies are the first and most fundamental unit of trust. Before politics, before institutions, before the internet, we had this unmediated, living source of feedback. The body tells the truth. It shakes when we are unsafe. It warms when we are loved. It digests badly when we betray it.

Hope, too, is not an intellectual exercise. It is embodied. Yet we are living in a time when reality is increasingly abstracted through social media, crypto, AI, digital twins, algorithms. And with that abstraction comes disconnection. Disconnection erodes trust in each other, in our institutions, even in our own internal sense-making.

Relearning how to inhabit our bodies may be the most radical act of resistance we have left. It brings us back to human scale. It anchors us in what is real, relational, trustworthy.

But trust does not only live in bodies. It also lives in the spaces between.

Some indigenous worldviews make these threads visible. In Brazil, the hummingbird is called Flower Kisser. The relationship is in the name. Relationality is not an afterthought, it is baked into the language and the way of being. Isn’t it gorgeous?

This is what our modernity-brain struggles with: holding the whole picture at once. Nora Bateson asks: the frog, the tree, the water, the monkey… where is the jungle? The life is in the flowing between them. That flowing knowing is a form of intelligence we urgently need in this abstracted, siloed world.

That flow – that in-between – is also where trust is built. When we abstract too far, we break those relationships. Our digital realm accelerates this breakage. (Biometric security –  fingerprints and faceID –  is an ironic attempt to reintroduce the body as proof of truth).

Disconnection breeds distrust. And distrust hollows democracy, delivering us to a trustapocalypse.

So how do we return to our bodies, and to connection?

For me, this has been more intellectual than embodied. Yes, I do yoga and meditation. I spend time in nature. I talk to animals like a lunatic. But I’ve yearned for something deeper, more exquisite. Psychedelics may offer it, but they aren’t particularly family-friendly… or legal.

Last weekend, I tried something different: a Gong Bath. People playing gongs while you lie down and listen with your whole body. It woke up something beyond my overthinking mind. That kind of embodied intelligence might be exactly the antidote we need in a world where handshakes and pheromones are vanishing from business life.

Because trust is the foundation of every interaction. If we want to preserve it, we will have to start by getting back into our bodies.

My special friend Joey’s work is a masterclass in this, and she explores techniques of trusting the body in her Her TEDx talk. And we talked about it this week, when she interviewed me on her podcast, which I look forward to sharing with you soon.

I know there are amazing people subscribed to the Hope Dispatch. I would love to hear from you - What embodied experiences do you have that awaken your flowing knowing? Is it when the clay spins on the wheel and there is no distinction between you and the clay? When your gaze merges with a baby and the edges of self dissolve? When birdsong enters your early morning waking and, for a moment, you are both forest and bed?

Can you connect those moments to your sense of self trust?

I am genuinely curious. My goal is to become more interconnected, whatever that means. I have plenty of intellectual ideas, but I want to take this into my body and integrate it into daily life. Share with me, and perhaps I will create a little resource to gather all our insights and practices to support us to rebuild our trust.

x Megan

P.S: That alarming democracy data if you are interested.

P.P.S: I’ve been working on a cool tool with the Parker Politics crew to help us get out of our limiting silos/bubbles. It helps us explore what we think “the other side thinks”.
I thought you Hope-Holders might be interested to give it a go, perhaps it will help build trust with ’the other side’ . Think of this as me handing you a pin. POP your bubble! Play the game…challenge your assumptions… and then pass the pin - share with others! https://bit.ly/theperceptiongap

#sensemaking #hope #hopeholders #HopeDispatch #Trust #trustapocalypse