Fixed, stable selves earn trust only in unchanging environments.

Evidence

It may be that in extreme cases there are people, or social systems, who earn trust simply by remaining fixedly and immovably what they are. Such an ontification of the substance of trust, together with an appropriate theoretical representation by means of the idea of trustworthy qualities or virtues, presupposes an environment which is immoveable and neither dangerous nor very complex (or else a compensating ‘hereafter’ which heals hurts and explains the inexplicable). In a changeable environment, the complexity of which becomes conscious, especially in its social aspects, this attitude implies dangers for the existence of the system and hence for the continuance of trust, too. Systems which are able to experience the trust they have in their environment as a problem, and are able to deal with it, are more elastic, more complex, and more durable. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 238

Categorization

• XREF: Directly relevant to Stevens’s fixed, immutable self-presentation as head butler in The Remains of the Day — his trustworthiness is an ‘ontification’ that fails when his environment (Lord Darlington’s politics) changes.
• ADDENDUM: Could support ‘Grafting & Growth’ framing of root/deep selves versus adaptive selves — though the connection is looser; the sacrifice angle (self-presentation as sacrifice of spontaneity) is the tighter tie.