Reza Ziai: We Are Literally Living in Different Epistemologi

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According to the 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer (data from over 37,000 people across 28 countries), we are no longer just divided by opinions — we are increasingly living in different epistemological realities. Trust is now determined less by facts and more by who is speaking those facts and whether they’re perceived (rightly or wrongly) as part of the “in-group.”

We are no longer living in a world of ideological disagreement...we are living in a world of shared reality collapse.

In this short video, I reflect on the data alongside my own lived experience as a Persian-American psychology professor (from 2011 to the present), musician, and public thinker — and what it feels like to exist outside stable trust boundaries in an era of collapsing shared reality.

This isn’t about grievance or ideology. It’s about what happens when we can’t even agree on who is allowed to be right - even about the most basic fundamental things. This is about epistemic violence and epistemic combat.

If you ever felt like you had to prove your reality to someone or justify your existence to a group of people, this video is for you! Sometimes it looks like some people are "over-explaining" when in reality, they are responding to epistemic violence and systemic erasure.

Early 2010s: grievance discourse
Mid-2010s: post-truth
Now: epistemic fortresses

In 2016, "post-truth" was the word of the year, and we were still disagreeing openly and having conversations (albeit heated ones).
Now, we've crumbled into insularity.

History suggests that shared-reality collapse rarely resolves peacefully.