Complex social systems cannot rest on individual feeling-based trust alone

Evidence

A mobile, highly differentiated social system nevertheless cannot content itself with this foundation of trust alone. On the one hand it (the social system) individualizes feelings concerning subject and object and in doing so raises awareness of its own uniqueness and is hence a matter for self-indulgent reflection – which cannot be taken for granted. On the other hand, it prepares individuals for action and, therefore, favours more universally applicable, basic orientations, whose adaptation is not associated with such high costs. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 290

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Widespread mutual trust alone makes large-scale non-domination freedom possible — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 1300; Widespread civility and flourishing civil society reduce to shared personal trust; Even global markets rest on personal trust networks in crises — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial…, 29