Beyond the Demise of Social Trust

World Future 2013 – Session Proposal – Paul Rux, Ph.D.

Beyond the Demise of Social Trust

SESSION DESCRIPTION

This session explores the causes, effects, and likely responses to the coming demise of social trust, sometimes called “institutional failure.”  What are the symptoms of dying social trust?  How have people responded to “institutional failure” before in recent history?  What does this historical model suggest about likely responses today in the USA?  The session blends thirty minutes of Power Point with thirty minutes of follow-up group discussion.  Attendees receive handouts on key Power Point insights.

HIGHLIGHTS

Session will apply insights about “institutional failure” from experts like military analyst Ralph Peters;  historian Barbara Tuchman; economist Robert Heilbroner, and H.R. Knickerbocker, who in 1932 published his first-hand, depth field observations and analyses of the responses of the German people to “institutional failure”  at the height of the Great Depression – his 256-page The German Crisis. The session also includes first-hand insights about this demise of social trust in Germany from Dalton Camp, the former media director of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, from a personal interview.