Advanced societies need specialized symbolic media beyond language to secure acceptance of selections.

Evidence

Therefore, in every society there are devices additional to language which guarantee the transmission of selections to the appropriate degree. The need for these devices increases and their form changes with the evolution of the societal system. In simple societies these functions are mainly fulfilled by ‘reality constructions’ founded on shared, lifeworld experiences, which underlie the communication processes and are taken for granted. To a great extent language serves to confirm such assumptions, and its potential for negation and information does not become exhausted. Only more advanced societies develop the need for a functional differentiation between the language-code in general and special, symbolically generalized communication media, such as power or truth, which condition and regulate in particular the motivation for accepting offered selections. By means of this differentiation, potentials for conflict and consensus in society can be mutually extended. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 589

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels Giddens’s ‘disembedding’ logic — as societies move from face-to-face lifeworld relations to abstract systems, trust/power media substitute for shared background assumptions. Reader’s core Luhmann-Giddens bridge.
• SEED: Could anchor an essay on how Stevens’s devotion to the butler role functions as a ‘symbolically generalized medium’ compensating for the loss of shared lifeworld grounding at Darlington Hall.