By Tim Wilson

Sobering news sluices from the latest Acumen Edelman Trust Barometer. In 2025, we’ve gone from being a country of rising distrust to one dominated by grievance. The annual survey, which quizzed 1,150 Kiwis, sets the results in a global context. Get this: 67% of us express a grievance with business, government, media, NGOs, and the wealthy. This unfortunate statistic also—unfortunately—outdoes the world average of 61%.

So we’re world-beaters in misery and self-pity. Want more bad news? Business is usually trusted more than government or media. Not anymore. This year, for the first time, no institutions are trusted at all.

The fact that distrust has coagulated into grievance is, well, poisonous. As Acumen Edelman report, this sentiment is characterised by the belief (or—more accurately—misbelief) that business, government, media, and other influential forces are actively working against ordinary people. The mentality is one of victimisation: of one group by an institution or “the system.” As trust recedes and a sense of agency erodes, what’s left is malice and rancour.

Hope duly departs. Indeed, another finding from the survey shows that optimism for the next generation is alarmingly low; less than one in five of us believe the next generation will be better off—not as bad as France, where it’s less than one in ten, but way off Kenya, where more than half are positive about the next generation’s prospects.

So let’s press in on distrust for a moment. No question—it’s toxic when deployed reactively and cynically. But when correctly framed, distrust can be useful. Take social media. New Zealanders view it with deep suspicion—only 20% of us trust it, according to Acumen Edelman, down 8% from last year. Wise. Anyone familiar with platforms like X, TikTok, Facebook, or Instagram would agree: this isn’t just rational; it’s often necessary.

The same holds true when it comes to democracy. As Maxim Institute’s Dr Stephanie Worboys noted in her paper on trust in New Zealand: while democracy depends on trust, “strangely, democracy also depends on distrust. Democracy is a form of government that has its genesis in distrust. It proceeds from the view that it is a mistake to completely trust political elites to serve the common person’s interests.”

This calls to mind American political theorist Samuel Huntington. Huntington believed the US endured cycles of cynicism, complacency, then hypocrisy, before paroxysms of what he called “creedal passion.” Such bouts included the 1770s, the time of the American Revolution and the revolt against “the crown,” and the 1900s, when Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressives led a revolt against “the interests and the system”.

One defining feature of such times, Huntington wrote, was widespread discontent. “Authority, hierarchy, specialisation and expertise were widely questioned or rejected”.

Sound familiar? America may be different—but could renewal be coming for New Zealand too?

So go ahead—distrust the headlines, distrust your social media feed. Hell, distrust grievance—and distrust me, if you like. But do it thoughtfully, and with humility.

The premise of trust is truth. Will you seek it?

Originally published on Maxim Institute.