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  3. (1)Whom can you trust these days? It is a question posed by David Halpern of

(1)Whom can you trust these days? It is a question posed by David Halpern of

游客2023-12-03  28
问题     (1)Whom can you trust these days? It is a question posed by David Halpern of Cambridge University, and the researchers at the Downing Street Strategy Unit who take an interest in "social capital". At intervals they go around asking people in assorted nations the question: "Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted?"
    (2)The results are fascinating. The conclusion that leaps from the figures and into sensational headlines is that social dislocation, religious decline, public scandals, family fragmentation and the fear of crime have made us less trusting. Comparative surveys over 40 years suggest that British trustfulness has halved: in the 1950s 60 percent of us answered "yes, most people can be trusted", in the 1980s 44 percent, today only 29 percent. Trust levels also continue to fall in Ireland and the US—meanwhile, the Norwegians, Swedes, Danes and Dutch express tremendous confidence in one another’s probity: levels are actually rising. And the Palme d’Or for paranoid mutual suspicion goes to the Brazilians—with less than 3 percent replying "yes"—and the Turks with 6.5 percent. The French, apparently, never trusted one another and still don’t. So we become less Scandinavian and more French(or Turkish)every year.
    (3)Regarding Britain, the obvious conclusions are being drawn. Mr. Halpern and others cite reasons why we appear less trustful: the demise of the job-for-life culture, rising divorce, physical mobility, higher immigration, an aggressive commercial ethic and the new isolation of mass media.
    (4)This is useful research, but there are a few caveats. The trouble is that you may not get a very thoughtful answer if you merely ask—as they did last year—whether "generally speaking, most people can be trusted". For the British like to think of themselves as canny, savvy, nobody’s fools, we have a powerful culture of satire and a hypercritical media which gleefully splash news of every private and public betrayal, however trivial. In our fantasy life we court paranoia, lapping up crime thrillers and spy novels. We are fascinated by rogues, from Chaucer’s Pardoner to Del Boy. We are bad at risk-assessment, and repeated surveys show that we fear crime far more than is justified.
    (5)So we are conditioned to claim that we don’t trust people much. A Scandinavian or Dutchman is proud to express trust and affection for his fellow-man. Our national preference is to purse the lips, shake the head and affect an air of judicious canniness.
    (6)But if you look at the actual daily workings of British society there is an astonishing degree of unquestioning trust of strangers, simply because we are a technological society. These respondents who tell the researchers that "generally speaking, people cannot be trusted" are in fact blithely trusting distant strangers all day long. For example, every time you get on a train or plane you put your life into the hands of unseen engineers and designers, drivers, pilots and traffic controllers. The list of our trustful ways goes on and on. Twenty minutes’ contemplation of the simple scams uncovered by the BBC Watchdog should suggest that rather than living in a state of constant suspicion, in many areas of life we are relaxed to the point of gullibility.
    (7)But ask the bald question, and we think immediately about those who publicly let us down: politicians who broke election promises, pension funds that jeopardized our future while their directors swanned off with bonuses, stars who turned sleazy. This is not entirely healthy. What we say will, in the end, become what we think. US evidence is denser than ours, but broadly speaking it is clear mat trust is linked to "social capital" —networks, alliances, local societies, anything that takes people out into common places.
    (8)Mr. Halpern’s book will come to more informed conclusions than I can; but my own instinct, from the research and from observation, is to draw only two. Firstly, we’re not quite as cynical as we say we are, and nothing like as cynical as our media. Secondly, the worst crisis of trust is not actually between citizens, but between citizens and their government and institutions. The remedy for that is in the hands of politicians, who ought to police their own ambition and greed and that of their corporate friends. Interference from the top is a lousy idea. Example from the top would be much better. [br] How does the author think the British tend to be in many areas of life?
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答案 They tend to be credulous,according to the author．
解析 第6段末句表明，英国人没有一直生活在怀疑中，其实在生活的很多方面，都松懈到了轻信的地步，因此答案可表述为They tend to be credulous，according to the author。
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