Here's a quick survey question:

Who's out to get you? Who's out to trick you, cheat you, take advantage of you, lie to you, raise your taxes, benefit at your expense? If your immediate response is, "What?? No one!"...you're definitely in the minority these days.

Paranoia is the new normal. It seems that almost everyone sees malice in the simplest interactions and assumes that anyone with any decision-making ability has the worst of intentions. It's as though Fox Mulder's mantra from The X-Files has been made the new national motto: "Trust No One."

Peruse local social media for a few minutes and you'll find sinister motivations (if not outright lawbreaking) attributed to town boards, the town manager, the School Committee, National Grid, the teacher's unions, local store owners, and just about anyone else. People who wear face masks excoriate those who don't. People who don't wear face masks rant about how COVID "is all a hoax" and "practically no one dies from it."

But you already know all this, because you're seeing it yourself.

The truth is, our society operates from a basis of trust, and this trust is justified. In the Middle Ages, everyone walked around armed. There was an elaborate system of manners you went through when you met a stranger in the streets, all designed to avoid getting killed. That was daily life. Law enforcement existed, but it was privatized or run by the Church. You really couldn't trust people very far.

We live in a much safer world now. Just in the last fifty years, violent crime of all kinds has been reduced to unprecedented levels. Our day-to-day lives are based on trust. Without ever thinking about it, we assume that other people are acting in good faith, and 99 percent of the time, we're right.

So where is all this intense paranoia and suspicion coming from? Part of it comes from feedback loops, created by social media and sensationalist news. People live in their own "echo chambers" now, ignoring and denying things that don't fit their fearful pre-conceptions. Try to explain to someone on social media that their facts are incorrect and you'll just get blocked.

But it's also a natural response to vast and uncontrollable change in our society and in the world. No one can control a pandemic, any more than we can control a hurricane or floods or an ice storm. All we can do is ride it out and deal with the aftermath.

This isn't easy to do. We want to blame someone for what's going on, because if someone is responsible, that means someone--even if they're malevolent--is in control of the situation.

But no one is, and we only hurt ourselves and other people by flailing around seeing the worst everywhere and attacking relentlessly in what we think is self-defense, but is really just tilting at windmills.

Without trust, society and civilization will fall apart. Without compassion, we judge people far too harshly. After all, you don't walk around each day thinking about how you can cheat or take advantage of everyone you deal with, do you? Well, surprise...neither do your neighbors and kindred citizens. These are tough times, and the future is uncertain and unclear. But remember the saying, "we're not all in the same boat, but we're all in the same storm."

Inanna Arthen