The Art of Trust & The Myth of Control

Trust — is an original painting on board of the Japanese artist Yu Sugawara.

Welcome to The Fourth.

We call it trust, but isn’t it just the absence of better options?

We’ve built entire systems—governments, economies, even relationships—on the assumption that trust is a virtue. But what if it’s not? What if trust is just the price we pay to avoid the chaos of uncertainty?

Do you trust because you’ve decided to, or because you don’t have another choice?
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And if trust wasn’t forced on you—if it wasn’t the glue holding your world together—what would it actually look like?

What parts of yourself do you silence to keep the illusion of trust alive?

The Myth of Trust

Trust is the glue that holds everything together—or so we’re told. It is the foundation of markets, governments, relationships, and entire civilizations. We trust that our money has value, that contracts will be honored, that laws will be enforced. We trust people, institutions, and systems to function in ways that let us navigate the world without descending into chaos.

But here’s the truth: trust is not a virtue—it is leverage.

We don’t trust because we believe. We trust because we don’t have a better alternative.

We like to think of trust as something noble, something earned or given freely. In reality, trust is often coerced. It is the byproduct of necessity, of limited choices, of an inability to verify everything for ourselves. It is not an act of conviction—it is an act of survival.

If trust were a choice, how often would we actually choose it?

Trust Before Civilization: A Biological Mechanism for Survival

Before trust became the foundation of societies, economies, and institutions, it was something far simpler: a survival instinct.

In early human history, trust wasn’t philosophical—it was biological. It was a reflex baked into the nervous system, a necessary function for cooperative survival. Humans are social creatures not by choice, but by necessity. Unlike solitary predators, humans evolved in groups, relying on each other to hunt, defend against threats, and share resources. But with cooperation came vulnerability. To rely on another meant risking betrayal.

Neuroscientific research suggests that trust is one of the brain’s earliest and most fundamental risk calculations. Long before humans had language, laws, or contracts, they had to decide: Is this person safe? Can I afford to turn my back on them?

This is where oxytocin—the so-called “trust hormone”—plays a role. Studies show that when oxytocin is released, people are more likely to trust strangers, take social risks, and overlook red flags. This chemical process wasn’t designed for institutions or abstract systems—it was designed for survival. It allowed small human groups to function without collapsing under the weight of paranoia. (1)

But here’s the catch: Trust evolved to be conditional.

Early humans didn’t blindly trust everyone. Trust was built in circles—kinship groups, close allies, those who had proven themselves over time. Betrayal wasn’t an inconvenience; it was a death sentence. If someone in a group betrayed another, the punishment wasn’t just exile—it was often execution. The stakes were too high to allow a betrayer to live among them.

So trust, in its earliest form, wasn’t about virtue. It was about threat assessment. It wasn’t freely given—it was extracted, negotiated, and enforced.

The Shift to Societal Trust: When Strangers Had to Believe Each Other

For most of human history, trust remained personal—something exchanged between individuals. But around 10,000 years ago, as agriculture took hold and humans transitioned from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled communities, trust had to scale beyond small, familiar groups.

The problem? Human brains didn’t evolve for large-scale trust.

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar’s research suggests that the average human can maintain stable social relationships with about 150 people (the Dunbar’s Number hypothesis). Beyond that, our cognitive ability to assess trustworthiness collapses. And yet, as cities grew, humans had to start trusting strangers—a concept that, from a biological perspective, is completely unnatural. (2)
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So how did we overcome our evolutionary distrust?

We invented external mechanisms of trust.
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• Religious Systems: Gods became the first abstract enforcers of trust. Religious codes—from the Hammurabi Code to the Ten Commandments—promised punishment for betrayal, even if no human was watching. This turned trust from a personal gamble into a moral obligation.
  
  
• Legal Systems: Written contracts, punishments for fraud, and recorded agreements allowed trust to extend beyond face-to-face interactions. It was no longer about knowing someone—it was about believing in a system that enforced consequences.
  
  
• Currency: The first money (ancient Mesopotamian silver and grain receipts) solved the issue of trade between strangers. Instead of trusting an individual, people only had to trust the value of the currency itself.
  
  

The emergence of these external trust systems allowed civilization to expand. Humans didn’t become inherently more trustworthy--they just created systems that reduced the cost of betrayal.

But here’s the problem: Once trust became institutional, it also became weaponized.

The First Exploitations of Trust: How It Became a Tool of Power

The moment trust became externalized—tied to laws, religion, and money—it also became something that could be controlled.

The earliest ruling elites quickly realized that trust wasn’t just a social necessity—it was a tool of dominance.

• Religious Trust as a Means of Control: If trust in deities could be leveraged, rulers could dictate morality. Pharaohs claimed divine authority. Kings ruled by “divine right.” Disobedience wasn’t just a crime—it was a betrayal of cosmic trust.
  
  
• Legal Trust as a Tool of Inequality: Early legal codes protected trust—but only for the powerful. The Hammurabi Code, for example, prescribed different punishments for breaking contracts based on class. If a poor man cheated a rich man, the punishment was severe. If a rich man exploited a poor one? The system was structured to protect him. Trust became a luxury of the elite.
  
  
• Economic Trust as a Rigged Game: Ancient economies were built on the illusion that money and trade were fair. But the first banking systems—developed in Mesopotamia around 2000 BCE—immediately created interest-bearing loans, debt slavery, and economic control by the wealthy. The entire structure of economic trust was designed to benefit those who controlled the money. (3)
  
  

By the time Rome rose to power, trust was no longer about interpersonal survival. It was about institutional obedience. Citizens were expected to trust the empire, the currency, the courts, the gods--even when those institutions failed them.

And once trust was institutionalized, it became more difficult to question.

The Psychological Trap of Institutional Trust

Once external systems took control of trust, something strange happened: People stopped questioning it. 

We trust not because we have evidence, but because distrust is exhausting.

This is because the human brain, when faced with an overwhelmingly complex system, defaults to cognitive shortcuts. What happens when this biological shortcut is hijacked?Instead of verifying every transaction, every law, every claim of authority, people began trusting symbols instead of reality.

• A crown wasn’t just jewelry—it was legitimacy.
• A religious text wasn’t just writing—it was truth.
• A coin wasn’t just metal—it was value.
  
  

Once trust was symbolized, it became automatic—and that’s when it became most dangerous. When the mechanisms designed to foster human connection are repurposed to manufacture trust in brands, leaders, and institutions that do not deserve it?

Because when people trust symbols instead of systems, they stop asking: Who controls what I believe? 

And once trust is automatic, it can be exploited indefinitely.

The Moment Trust Became Global

For most of history, trust systems remained regional. But with the rise of colonial empires, industrial capitalism, and globalization, trust had to scale beyond borders.

This led to the creation of the first globally enforced trust systems:
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• Standardized Money: By the 1800s, European powers began enforcing currency-backed economies worldwide. Indigenous barter systems were erased. Trust in local exchange was forcibly replaced with trust in Western financial institutions.
  
  
• Corporate Trust: The rise of multinational corporations (like the British East India Company) introduced brand trust. Instead of trusting individuals, consumers were conditioned to trust companies—even when they had never interacted with them before.
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• Media as a Trust Regulator: The expansion of global news networks solidified trust in information sources rather than direct personal experience. By the 20th century, mass media became the primary mediator of reality. The rise of newspapers, radio, and television created a single narrative pipeline, where public trust could be shaped, manipulated, or controlled. 

The Commodification of Trust

By the 21st century, trust itself had become a product. No longer an inherent social bond, trust was now something that could be engineered, bought, and sold.

1. The Trust Economy: Tech companies discovered that trust could be monetized. Platforms like Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon built entire business models around algorithmic trust scores, replacing traditional reputation with machine-driven credibility assessments. (4)
   
   
2. Social Proof and Digital Influence: Social media further commodified trust by tying it to followers, likes, and engagement metrics. The influencer economy transformed authenticity into a currency, where perceived trustworthiness determined visibility, sponsorships, and economic success. 
   
   
3. Surveillance Capitalism: With the rise of big data, corporations stopped asking for trust—they simply extracted it. Personalized advertising, algorithmic profiling, and predictive analytics erased the need for voluntary trust by tracking, analyzing, and anticipating human behavior before individuals were even aware of their own choices. (5)

The Decline of Trust: A Fractured World

Despite the scaling, monetization, and globalization of trust, we are now witnessing its decline.

• Institutional Trust is Crumbling: Faith in governments, media, and financial institutions is at historic lows. People no longer trust that systems serve their interests—instead, they suspect manipulation, corruption, and hidden agendas. (6)
  
  
• Polarization and Algorithmic Echo Chambers: Trust has become fragmented, shaped by digital environments that reinforce biases rather than challenge them. The same mechanisms that once centralized trust are now splintering it, creating parallel realities where individuals inhabit entirely different belief systems. (7)
  
  
• Deepfakes and Post-Truth Reality: The rise of AI-generated content has further eroded epistemic trust—the ability to discern truth from fabrication. In a world where videos, images, and voices can be convincingly faked, the concept of verification itself is under attack. (8) 

Trust Was Never About Virtue—It Was About Control
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From the beginning, trust wasn’t freely given—it was extracted. It was never about morality or shared belief; it was about threat assessment and survival. Early humans trusted because mistrust meant isolation, and isolation meant death.

Fast forward a few millennia, and the stakes haven’t changed—only the mechanisms. We still trust not because we want to, but because distrust is expensive, exhausting, and often impossible.

• You “trust” your employer to pay you—not because you believe in their goodwill, but because you need to eat.
  
  
• You “trust” the police to protect you—not because their record suggests they will, but because there’s no alternative if they don’t.
  
  
• You “trust” the economy—because opting out is financial suicide.
  
  

Trust, in most cases, is coerced compliance.

The illusion of choice is manufactured.

The Decline of Trust: What Happens When People Wake Up?

Here’s the irony: The systems designed to enforce trust have eroded it beyond repair.
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• Governments lie.
• Banks exploit.
• Media fabricates.
• Institutions crumble.
  
  

People aren’t “losing faith” in systems—they are realizing that faith was never theirs to begin with.

This isn’t a “trust crisis.”

This is a reckoning.

A reckoning with the fact that trust was never built to serve you—it was built to contain you.

The Other Side of Trust: It's obviously more complicated than this right?

It would completely contrarian of me to negate trust's worth, as it has existed in countless formats, and to several degrees. And so if trust is often engineered, coerced, or commodified, does that mean it’s always a cage? Not necessarily. While many systems of trust exist to control, some forms of trust emerge from something deeper--shared experience, reciprocity, and the human need for connection. The difference is choice.

Trust that is freely given, rather than forced by necessity, creates relationships that don’t rely on obligation or manipulation. It allows communities to function outside of rigid institutions, fostering collaboration that isn’t dictated by power dynamics. When trust is earned—not demanded—it becomes more than a system of control; it becomes a foundation for genuine connection.

Reclaiming Trust: Choice or Compulsion?

​So where does that leave us? If much of the trust we participate in is dictated rather than chosen, does that mean trust is always an illusion? Or is it something that, under the right conditions, can be reclaimed? Perhaps the real challenge is learning to differentiate between the trust we surrender by default and the trust we actively choose to cultivate. Instead of asking who we should trust, maybe the better question is where trust should belong. Because if trust is only meaningful when it is voluntary, then reclaiming trust isn’t about abandoning it altogether—it’s about deciding, for the first time, what’s actually worthy of it.

What Comes After Trust?

If trust is failing—what replaces it?

1. Radical Transparency: Some advocate for a new era of forced transparency, where blockchain, decentralized verification, and open-source truth mechanisms replace traditional trust-based systems. But does transparency guarantee fairness, or just new forms of surveillance? (9)
   
   
2. Post-Trust Societies: Others argue that we are moving beyond trust entirely, into a world where skepticism, verification loops, and continuous uncertainty become the default state. But can a society function when trust is permanently absent? (10)
   
   
3. The Power Struggle for Narrative Control: With trust in flux, who gets to define reality? Governments? Corporations? AI systems? Or will power shift toward decentralized, peer-to-peer networks where collective verification replaces institutional credibility? (11)
   
   

Trust as a Stopgap for Uncertainty

Trust exists where certainty does not. The moment we possess absolute proof, trust becomes irrelevant. You don’t “trust” that gravity will hold you to the ground; you know it will. You don’t “trust” that fire burns; you have experienced it. Trust, then, is not about certainty—it’s about the absence of it.

This is why trust is often mistaken for control. We believe we trust institutions, leaders, and systems, but what we really trust is that they will behave predictably. A predictable government, even if corrupt, is more “trustworthy” than an unpredictable one. A flawed economic system is more trustworthy than a volatile one.

So when people say, “I trust the system,” what they often mean is, “I trust that the system will operate in a way I understand.” It has nothing to do with fairness, ethics, or merit. It is a gamble on predictability.

Which leads us to the question: Is trust a virtue—or just a way to avoid dealing with chaos?

The Architecture of Trust: What We Are Forced to Believe

Trust is not always given—it is engineered. As we have considered, for example, the financial system. Money has no inherent value; it is an abstraction, a belief we all agree to participate in. The moment enough people lose trust in a currency, it collapses—not because of a flaw in its design, but because trust itself is the only thing propping it up.

But we are not asked whether we trust money. We are born into a system that makes opting out impossible. We trust because not trusting comes at too great a cost.

The same applies to institutions. The judicial system tells you to trust that justice is blind, despite overwhelming evidence that wealth and privilege bend its scales. Democracy asks you to trust that your vote matters, even in systems where lobbying, gerrymandering, and corporate influence dictate outcomes long before ballots are cast.

We don’t trust because we believe—we trust because we are given no alternative.
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Trust as a Commodity: The Business of Belief

If trust is a resource, it can be traded, sold, and manipulated. Entire industries exist to manufacture trust where none should exist.

Social media influencers, despite their curated authenticity, are not your friends—they are trust brokers. Their appeal lies in their illusion of relatability—the idea that they are just like you. Their trustworthiness is a product.

Politicians do the same. They cultivate personas that resonate with the public’s fears and aspirations, creating the illusion of shared values. Their speeches, their handshakes, their moments of “realness” are not organic—they are calculated trust-building exercises.

And yet, when trust is broken—when a CEO lies, when a politician is exposed, when a company betrays its consumers—people react not with disillusionment, but with shock.
Why? Because we mistake trust for truth. We assume that if something feels trustworthy, it must be true.

But trust is not truth. Trust is a performance.

The Cost of Trust: What Do We Sacrifice?

So, if trust is a social lubricant, a mental shortcut, and an economic product, what is the cost?

What parts of ourselves do we silence to keep the illusion of trust alive?

Do we ignore red flags in relationships because questioning them is inconvenient?

Do we suppress doubts about leadership because acknowledging them would force us to act?

Do we accept flawed systems because the alternative is uncertainty?

At what point does trust become complicity?

What Happens When Trust is No Longer Forced?

Imagine a world where trust was truly voluntary—where it was not imposed through necessity, habit, or psychological conditioning.

What would that look like?

Would we still trust governments if we had real alternatives?

Would we still trust media if we weren’t constantly conditioned to see certain sources as credible?
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Would we still trust financial systems if we could opt out of them without consequence?

If trust were never forced upon you, what would you actually choose to believe?

The Reckoning: Is Trust a Virtue or a Cage?

​We glorify trust as a pillar of society, a fundamental good. But what if it isn’t? What if trust is just a trade-off—a tax we pay to avoid dealing with uncertainty? If trust is an illusion, then perhaps it was never the glue holding the world together.

If that’s true, then trust isn’t a virtue at all. It’s a cage we mistake for stability, a mechanism of control, a shortcut for complexity, a substitute for certainty. It was never about truth—it was about obedience.

So the real question isn’t who do you trust?

It’s why do you have to?

Because if trust was never truly ours to begin with—then the real act of defiance isn’t deciding who to believe.
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It’s deciding whether to believe at all.

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Resources:
1 - https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03701
2- ​https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191001-dunbars-number-why-we-can-only-maintain-150-relationships
​3 - https://www.cadtm.org/The-Long-Tradition-of-Debt
4 - https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-trust-economy
5 - https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674237139
6 - https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2022/10/understanding-and-responding-to-global-democratic-backsliding?lang=en
7 - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04096-5
8 - https://www.weforum.org/stories/2023/10/news-media-literacy-trust-ai/
9 - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0222-7
10 - https://books.google.ca/books?id=C0JbdCpKxN4C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
11 - https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/10.1287/orsc.2022.1584