Trust, fatalism, and the fragility of Australia’s social fabric
Social cohesion is formed from micro-habits of interaction.
It is built on repeated, everyday encounters with others who are not the same as us. It endures through small inconveniences and subtle acts of restraint. It is reinforced when public spaces stay open to spontaneous gatherings rather than being closed off by rules or fear.
First published in The Mandarin
The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare provides an insight into what many people see and experience. Social cohesion in Australia is declining.
The AIHW, in its usual thorough manner, reports that since 2021, Australians have become more pessimistic about their own future and that of Australia. Trust in others has decreased, community connections have weakened, and feelings of national identity and financial satisfaction are at historic lows.
However, the AIHW also notes that, despite declines in neighbourhood cohesion and connections, Australians still report high levels of happiness and community participation, remaining actively engaged despite these challenges.
Other signs of waning social unity include declining volunteer rates, which have accelerated since the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently, Brenton Prosser provided insights into ANU’s recent research, highlighting the clear contrast between the high levels of public trust in the Australian Public Service and the declining confidence in politicians and political institutions. The research also reveals that Australians are increasingly becoming more fatalistic.
We found that between 20% and 40% of respondents were fatalistic, and that fatalism about home ownership was higher in Australia, while fatalism about economic downturns was stronger in the UK. Interestingly, in our results, fatalism on both these issues was higher than climate fatalism.
Eroding trust in government, along with a less hopeful view of the future, will make efforts to strengthen social cohesion more difficult.
Cohesion in a plural society
Australia is irreducibly a plural society.
Migration, economic change, and generational differences ensure that belief will never converge neatly. So, if we naively assume cohesion depends on agreement, it will remain out of reach.
Social cohesion is the degree to which people in a community feel connected, trust one another and their institutions, and are willing to collaborate despite differences. It relies on social factors such as belonging, trust, participation, and tolerance.
It does not mean everyone agrees. A cohesive society can disagree strongly. What matters is whether that disagreement stays within a shared framework of trust, cooperation, and tolerance.
The shared framework is strengthened by:
Living in a society where diverse groups are openly present in shared public spaces, and where these differences are acknowledged and recognised instead of being hidden or erased (Hannah Arendt).
Exercising habits of restraint and self-control that prevent the experience of living closely with others from turning into constant conflict (Norbert Elias).
Living among people who are different from us in ways that teach us to handle differences (Richard Sennett).
Social media intensifies our divisions and differences. Its harmfulness stems from no longer being embedded in shared experiences. It acts as a corrosive force, deepening divisions left by our habit of spending less time in common physical spaces, reducing opportunities to learn how to avoid hurting one another.
Conflict in the commons
Recently, our public spaces have shown clear signs of tension, with protests and counter-protests occurring in city streets. Politicians and the media also seem to be working to fan the flames of division and difference.
Additionally, daily disputes over issues such as parking, development, noise, or behaviour seem to flare up quickly. These micro-conflicts feel increasingly combustible.
Today, many disagreements seem to incubate in digital spaces stripped of social cues and habits of restraint. When they spill into physical space, attitudes and grievances arrive sharpened to a fine edge, all too ready for conflict. But conflict itself is not evidence of social decay. Rather, it is a sign of decreasing restraint and tolerance.
Restraint in our relationships is the learned judgment of knowing how far to go and when to pause or temporarily draw back. In the past, familiarity helped ease disagreements because people shared spaces such as queues, markets, and streets. While we still have these experiences, these spaces can feel vast and impersonal.
Without the stabilising effect of daily in-person interactions, the commons becomes fragile. The sociologist Erving Goffman once described the ‘civil inattention’ of urban life: the way strangers acknowledge one another without intruding. Cities rely on this silent street-level choreography. It is neither intimacy nor indifference. It is disciplined tolerance and understanding.
Such micro-adjustments are the infrastructure of cohesion. They habituate us to difference, remind us that others share the world with us.
Manners as emotional restraint
We tend to think of manners as surface behaviour, saying please, waiting your turn, and not interrupting. But manners are not simply etiquette. They are a form of emotional restraint. As Ralph Waldo Emerson observed, ‘Good manners are made up of petty sacrifices.’
Thoughtfulness arises from the small, daily, and occasionally inconvenient actions we all take that prioritise respect for others. These ‘petty sacrifices’ are the day-to-day choices we make that foster social cohesion.
Manners are the learned habit of withholding an immediate reaction in the presence of others. In public spaces, manners serve as a social stabilising technology. They prevent irritation from escalating, absorb friction, and create an air gap between feeling and expression.
When someone bumps into us on a crowded footpath, we do not typically interpret it as a moral affront. We accept the inconvenience. When a driver hesitates at an intersection, we do not immediately erupt into fury. We tolerate minor inefficiencies.
Yet there is a growing sense that this restraint is thinning. Driver inconvenience quickly escalates into road rage. Pedestrians confront one another over minor slights. Minor inconveniences are interpreted as deliberate provocations. Public disagreements quickly escalate into ‘Karen’ events.
Social media is often blamed for this shift. Online, outrage is rewarded, while restraint is invisible. But when we spend less time negotiating physical space with strangers, we lose practice in restraint. Emotional self-control weakens not because we are morally worse, but because we have fewer opportunities to practice it.
Social restraint is cultivated through repeated exposure to others in environments where we must adjust rather than dominate. When there are fewer opportunities for low-risk social encounters, the skills and habits of restraint wither.
From streets to streams
Australian cities and towns have evolved to reduce shared public exposure. We are a car-based society that grudgingly accepts public transport and has displaced walking as the primary mode of everyday travel.
We shop from home, often live some distance from our jobs, and in a hybrid work setup, we might only be at the workplace 2-3 days a week. Our routines involving public spaces are built into our lives, and these spaces are becoming more distant, infrequent, regulated, and monitored.
We move through public spaces to reach a destination. We travel from private space to private space, insulated by glass and air-conditioning, and encounter other people as obstacles or abstractions.
As our in-person interactions diminish, disagreements migrate to other platforms. Online, interaction is stripped of the moderating influence of presence. There is no shared inconvenience, no waiting together at a crossing, no sense of mutual vulnerability.
The issue is not simply that we disagree more loudly. It is that we disagree without shared context, and without the habits of restraint that shared context once taught us.
The street between us
Social cohesion is formed from micro-habits of interaction.
It is built on repeated, everyday encounters with others who are not the same as us. It endures through small inconveniences and subtle acts of restraint. It is reinforced when public spaces stay open to spontaneous gatherings rather than being closed off by rules or fear.
The street between us matters.
When we navigate shared spaces at a human pace: walking, waiting, and sitting, we practice coexistence. As movement speeds up and spaces become destinations to be reached, we slowly lose the moderating habits of restraint.
Social cohesion involves micro-acts of restraint as people encounter one another while navigating public spaces at human speed. It requires thoughtfulness, and we improve through practice. It is evident in small acts of kindness.
