patrick.net

In the Western imagination, civic trust is something both natural and infinite — the product of a virtuous feedback loop, with acts in service of the common good creating bonds of cooperation and interdependence that produce additional acts in kind. Minnesota is so trusting that there are no turnstiles to enter the Twin Cities light rail, which now has prominently posted codes of conduct that gently remind riders that it is illegal to poop on the trains or in the stations. Somalis — like the vast majority of people on earth, who do not live in prosperous or stable democracies — tend to have the hard-earned attitude that trust is a limited commodity, something to be jealously guarded and reserved only for the tiny sliver of the human race with whom they share some organic, non-externally constructed bond. Compared to the clan, or Somali culture, or Islam, the state is something meaningless or temporary, or at best instrumentally useful.