The Loudest Voice in the Village

Yeah, that and also really fascinating because it's also distorting the picture of reality, no? I mean, the volume and the confidence of some people are making us...

I don't know how to describe it.

So I have the feeling that it's sort of the...

the volume and the confidence are not the same as the wisdom and sort of the diversity that we actually have in our society, no? Yeah.

And actually sort of healthy communities and democracy, they all depend on this.

I mean, we can use the notion that is being used perhaps too often, but the freedom of speech, no? Where it's...

When it's not only a very small amount of people that actually are using it, but sort of the wider society.

And again, we come back to the question of trust.

And how to sort of...

What you speak about is this vacuum of sort of like...

If you don't have a good structure, if you don't have good structures that we try to create in mediation, when you almost build like...

When you build a structure where everyone sort of feels like they can stand on their two feet and then they can actually speak up.

If you don't have that, then...

You have the power filling the vacuum, in my opinion.

So it's like pure power is sort of getting through it.

And the problem of that is that we then have this vision of reality, that this is our reality now.

It's not.

It's not just people being very loud.

But then we are not allowing... very wise voices to to speak up yeah

exactly exactly exactly it's not because you're loud or uh powerful or you look loud and and powerful that you are first that you're acting for the greater good and second that you are that you are wise right it's um yeah it's uh it's It's really interesting to see that, you know, also, I mean, given how complex the times are and, you know, far-right policymakers on all sides of the pond trying to project us in this kind of 1984 reality where trust is something that doesn't really be fathomable anymore, when they are actually like little people infrastructures bit by bit that you can that you can put together right and you know something that i've um i got completely obsessed with in my in my career is that um this notion of trust because for for many people and many organizations trusted like yeah we need we need more trust in the energy sector we need people to trust us but they never put any kind of thought you proper thoughts behind what it is.

And there is another I really, really like whose name is Rachel Botsman.

She's been inspiring me a lot.

And for instance, she shows that one of her theories is that when you have this kind of... we all know this kind of psychological experience when a kid is being given a marshmallow and the kid is being told that if he or she can wait 15 minutes, he will get another marshmallow, right? And she explains that basically the kid who will eat immediately the marshmallow, it's not because he or she is impatient, it's because the kid doesn't believe that a second marshmallow will come.

So it's a question of trust.

Does the kid actually trust that an adult or a figure of authority will be helping or will be providing what he or she cared for to start with? I find this kind of way of reading things super interesting because there are, of course, trade-offs and there are, of course, externalities, so impact and so on.