Trust, Mistrust, and Wellbeing

The paper emphasizes the importance of relational aspects of the trust and of the wellbeing. It develops a reflection on the dialectic of interpersonal and systemic trust and mistrust, and it analyzes different semantic nuances of the notion of trust. A society characterized by well-being evidences strong type agency, a society with low levels of wellbeing evidences weak type agency. Trust is a social resource indispensable for sustaining agency, society’s self- transformation and well-being. While trust is traditionally thought to contribute to social cohesion, mistrusting the rulers can also be considered a positive countervailing force in contemporary democracies. At the same time, the distrust sedimented in time creates, on the one hand, a saving expectation and on the other, paternalization as a search for a substitute trust.