Trust, the world over, is in decline. We’re sceptical of the media. We distrust politicians. We’re disillusioned by the state of the world and we don’t know what to do with all of this anger and despair.

Sometimes it leaks out in traffic, with raised fingers, or hands thumped against car horns. More often than not, it seeps out online, with rage-filled comment threads on Facebook, typically laden with expletives and lacking time for punctuation.

Other times we turn this anger to action, taking it to the streets.

In France, we have the gilets jaunes — or the yellow vests — with their guerrilla blockades of roundabouts to demand economic justice. In India, we have 5m people lining up across a state demanding an end to violence against women seeking entry to a Hindu temple. In Ireland, we had tens of thousands of people marching for reproductive rights, housing equality, and an increase in nurses’ wages.

This correlation between distrust, anger, and protest is not anecdotal. The Edelman Trust Barometer for 2019 shows that the world, not just Ireland, is in a precarious place.

From an Irish perspective, just 38% of us trust government and only 35% said we trusted the media. In contrast, 69% of Irish people said they worry about false information and fake news being weaponised.

But, despite our lack of trust in the media, our engagement with the news as a way to cope with the state of the world has shot up. There has been a 17-point increase in news engagement on 2018 among the general population, with 65% of Irish people engaged with current affairs on a daily or weekly basis.

Globally, we are not alone. The world has returned to a record-high trust inequality. What does this mean? According to the barometer, there is now a 16-point gap in trust between the more-trusting informed public and the far more sceptical mass population. The gap between these two groups is in double digits in 18 countries.

This shows a world divided into extremes; a world where some use intimidating guerrilla tactics to voice their dissent and one where people either plod merrily along or else assemble lawfully to act on their anger.

Stephen Kehoe, global chair of reputation for Edelman, said the gap between the sceptical mass population and the informed one, pointed to a “rot”.

“Divergent levels of confidence between the mass population and informed public about the future signal a continued underlying rot in the structure of society,” Mr Kehoe said.

He believes that the data points to protest.

“While not everyone is taking to the streets, the data shows why protests like the gilet jaunes in France, the women’s marches in India and walkouts by employees at some major tech companies could become more mainstream,” he said.

While freedom of assembly is a constitutional right here and is also contained in the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the word “peaceful” is used in both documents.

Our anger may well be justified both here and abroad, and our right to protest guaranteed, but it’s how we get our point across that matters.

There is a fine line between scepticism and cynicism. Scepticism is seen as healthy. The sceptic wants evidence before they believe you. They are open-minded and will accept a fact when it’s proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Cynicism, on the other hand, is about believing immediately in the worst, a belief that a person or an institution is working purely out of self- interest. The cynic’s mind is closed, they’re not interested in your evidence.

Considering these times of distrust and despair that we are currently living in, it’s easy for scepticism to harden into cynicism. And it’s tempting to let our protest be led by the latter.

When Enda Kenny resigned as leader of Fine Gael and therefore as taoiseach in June 2017, he made one point that took up residence in my head and has stayed there ever since.

“Cynicism is always an easy cop-out,” he said. I thought about what he meant, what he wanted the Irish public to hear, and why he made that point, of all points, on his big day of departure.

“I really believe that politics is work worth doing, a noble profession,” he added.

Cynicism would lead you to believe that every single person who enters political life is a corrupt shark out solely for their own gain. Scepticism, on the other hand, would lead you to hold these people to account.

And when they fall short, as they will and inevitably do, scepticism will leave you angry.

What do we then do with that justifiable anger? Do we degrade each other online? Do we intimidate our publicly elected officials? Do we turn to physical violence?

The answer depends on what you want to get out of it. Do you want to be right or do you want to bring about change?

Martin Luther King Jr’s son, Martin Luther King III, was addressing an audience of Black Lives Matters activists in Virginia just before the US midterms last November. The crowd was hurt and angry. Many had been marched on by hundreds of white men brandishing torches only a year before. They wanted to know what to do with this anger.

“I was 10 years old when my father was gunned down,” he said. “I was 11 years old when my uncle mysteriously drowned. I was 15 years old when my grandmother was killed in the church while praying the Lord’s Prayer. My father was killed by a white man.

“It would have been easy to embrace hatred.”

The crowd ended up offering advice to itself, with the chant “don’t boo, vote”, reverberating around the theatre.

In May 2019, we will have our own chance to vote, with seats in Europe and in our local councils up for grabs. Often those who sit on councils end up in Leinster House one day.

Why use your anger to be right, when you could use it to bring about change?