With this year’s conference starting on Monday and no invitation in the mail, I’m beginning to think that once again I have not been invited to the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The AP reports, “More than 60 heads of state and government and hundreds of business leaders are coming to Switzerland to discuss the biggest global challenges during the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering next week, ranging from Israeli President Isaac Herzog to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The likes of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Chinese Premier Li Qiang, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, French President Emmanuel Macron, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and many others will descend on the Alpine ski resort town of Davos on Jan. 15-19.”
It’s not just that I would have enjoyed the Alps and the cocktail parties with such interesting folks, it is that the theme of this year’s conference really interests me. The theme is “Rebuilding Trust,” and the WEF says the meeting will “provide a crucial space to focus on the fundamental principles driving trust, including transparency, consistency and accountability.”
Trust. The loss of trust and the need to rebuild or restore trust is a concern of many. I wrote about it over a month ago, and if that is where Bill Gates and crew got the idea for this year’s theme at Davos, they are welcome to it.
Earlier in this week I came across an Atlantic column on the same theme of trust, the author, a law professor at Duke, says “We’ve Been Thinking About America’s Trust Collapse All Wrong.” Professor Jedediah Britton-Purdy says too many of us blame the erosion of trust on all those untrustworthy people who disagree with us. Instead of blame, he says we need to work hard at civic virtue and building a world where people trust each other. Trust is trustworthy, he argues, especially when you trust in the things he trusts.
The WEF leadership says we need to trust the future, or more accurately, trust the vision of the future espoused by the technocrats, bureaucrats, and oligarchs who fly their private jets to the Swiss Alps for a once-a-year conference with lots of cocktail parties.
I wonder if the Duke Law professor and the WEF organizers have been thinking about the collapse of trust all wrong. It seems as if they believe that if everyone trusted the bureaucrats, technocrats, and oligarchs with our future, if we would just trust trust itself, all would be well.
The collapse of trust is nothing new. The writers of the Psalms knew all about it. And they knew that humanity’s problem is not a lack of trust, but a lack of trust in God. In Psalm 20, David writes, “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”
If you follow the word trust through the Psalms, you will see that not only do we put our trust in chariots and horses rather than in the Lord, we put our trust in princes and worthless idols, in swords and in proud people, in wealth and abundant riches, in extortion and greed. We put our trust in technology and public policy, in partisan politics and sectarian practices. In the end, they are not trustworthy. But those who trust in the Lord shall not be put to shame, says, the psalmist. Of those who trust in the Lord, he writes, “They are not afraid of bad news, their hearts are firm, trusting in the LORD.” (112:7)
So, I am not going to the Alps next week. I’ll miss the good conversation and the cocktail parties, but as for rebuilding trust, as for getting the collapse of trust right, I’d do better to read the Psalms.