Inspired by Yuval Noah Harari’s AI and the Paradox of Trust, this post explores how global division and distrust reflect a collective physiological state of threat, not just ideological or psychological divides.

When bodies lock into chronic patterns of protection, our tolerance for differences narrows. We become hypervigilant. Hypersensitive. Hyperattuned to what’s uncertain, unpredictable, and unfamiliar.

The “other” becomes unsafe.

In this way, the personal becomes political. The adaptive, survival-based autonomic states we inherited from our reptilian ancestors begin to shape global narratives of fear, distrust, and disconnection. And the stories we make up to make sense of our feelings, or numbness, are driven by threat, not necessarily by truth.

Trust is not a belief or decision. It’s a physiological state—arising from the shared experience and expression of safety and connection between bodies occurring far below cognition.

As Yuval Harari states: “Every minute we breathe in and out, in and out. Every breath we take is a small gesture of trust in what is outside us. We take air from the outside into our lungs, into our body, and later give it back to the universe. This trusting in and out movement is the rhythm of life.”

Trust doesn’t come from intention alone. It’s a felt experience that emerges from the rhythms Yuval describes. Through the reciprocal, patterned exchanges of breath,........

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