The English poet John Donne wrote in the 17th century the immortal line, “No man is an island entire of itself.” This memorable declaration of our need for one another is now replaced by insularity, a psychological state shaped by fears and crises. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer finds that seventy percent of our 33,938 respondents across 28 nations now are hesitant or unwilling to trust someone who has different values, information sources, approaches to societal problems, or backgrounds than them. This majority holds across income levels, gender, age groups, developing and developed markets.
We are choosing a closed ecosystem of trust that mandates a limited worldview, a narrowing of opinion, intellectual stasis, and cultural rigidity. Distrust is the default instinct; only one-third of respondents tell us that most people can be trusted. Insular respondents say they would have profoundly lower trust in institutions if led by anyone different from them (-28 pts or more, compared to people with open trust mindsets). We are withdrawing from dialogue and compromise. We opt for the safety of the familiar over the perceived risk of innovation. We prefer nationalism to global connection. We choose individual benefit over common advancement, the Me over the We.
How did we get here? In its quarter century, the Trust Barometer has captured an inexorable erosion of belief in institutions and their leaders. Trust is now local in My Employer, my CEO and my social circle. We find a 15-point trust gap between high and low earners worldwide, with the U.S. leading the pack with a 29-point mass-class divide. Concerns about downward economic mobility and job losses due to globalization have increased political polarization. Covid-19 bred doubt about government edicts and skepticism about science, provoking an existential battle for truth. Geopolitical tensions have led to nationalism, hostility to global agreements, and a reorientation of trade flows. Last year, the Edelman Trust Barometer documented a descent into grievance, with 6 in 10 of our respondents telling us that they feel business and government actions harmed them, served the interests of only some, and that the system unfairly favors the rich. Today, our mindset has pulled back from alarm and anger into the hard shell of insularity.
Now we are confronted by its consequences. The first is resistance to change. Our November flash poll, Trust and Artificial Intelligence at a Crossroads, found that by over a two-to-one margin, the U.S., UK and Germany reject the growing use of AI. Seventy percent in the U.S. believe that CEOs are not telling them the truth about job losses due to AI. Second, we see pervasive nationalism, with deep preference for domestic over multinational brands (31 points in Canada and 29 points in Germany). Third, societies are losing the capacity to act, with climate action stalled in favor of short-term economic interest and urgent local projects such as affordable housing blocked. Fourth, and most troubling, is a global loss of optimism. On average, only 15% of people in developed markets believe that the next generation will be better off, while the APAC powerhouses of Singapore, Thailand, India, and China all show double-digit declines in this optimism since last year.
There is a way to counter insularity, through a novel concept called Trust Brokering. A Trust Broker helps to create a path for progress and cooperation despite insularity by surfacing common interests and translating realities. The primary Trust Broker must be My Employer — proximate and reliable. While each institution is expected to broker trust, the employer is the only one seen as doing it well by a majority, at 58 percent. The office is now considered the safest space for discussion of difficult topics because there are rules for behavior. It is My Employer that translates macro challenges such as AI, globalization and affordability into practical applications. And crucially, you can see tangible change in your day-to-day life when leaders commit to new decisions.
Why should My Employer do this? Insularity is a bottom-line issue, undermining productivity, causing churn, and threatening the basic ability to lead. There must be frank discussions in the workplace led by the CEO or other leaders. Visible members of the community such as doctors or pastors should be trusted partners in furthering dialogue. Countering insularity will require companies to become poly-national as well as multi-national, giving subsidiaries more freedom of action.
John Donne was right to conclude his poem with an admonition: “Therefore send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” We are becoming inflexible, intolerant, and incoherent in our cocoons. The risks to society from manic swings in popular sentiment and rejection of innovation are real. Self-righteous certainty must give way to belief in the future, guided by My Employer as the leading trust broker.
Richard Edelman is CEO.
A version of this essay originally appeared on TIME.