Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust

Evidence

From this general analysis, it appears that, as far as the particular problem of trust is concerned, a change of mode will occur on the way to greater and more consciously articulated complexity. In anticipation of the following chapter, what follows from this suggestion may now be outlined. On the basis of familiarity with the everyday world, trust is principally interpersonal trust (and is therefore limited). It serves to overcome an element of uncertainty in the behaviour of other people which is experienced as the unpredictability of change in an object. In so far as the need for complexity grows, and in so far as the other person enters the picture both as alter ego and as fellow-author of this complexity and of its reduction, trust has to be extended, and the original unquestionable familiarity of the world pushed back, although it cannot be eliminated completely. It becomes as a result a new form of system trust, which implies renouncing as a conscious risk some possible further information and implies as well a wary indifference to and a continuous control of results. System trust is not only applicable to social systems but also to other people as personal systems. This change, if one looks closely at the assumptions which lie within the mode of trusting, corresponds to a change from bases of trust which are defined in primarily emotional terms, to those which are primarily performance based. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines system trust precisely: renouncing possible information as a conscious risk, with wary indifference and continuous control of results — the key anchor for reading Stevens’s deferential trust in Darlington Hall’s institution.
• XREF: This is Luhmann’s version of exactly the interpersonal-to-faceless shift Giddens calls moving from facework to faceless commitments; maps Stevens’s devotion to Darlington Hall as system trust in a personal system. — connects to: Social complexity forces the shift from personal to impersonal, system-governed trust.; Modern trust takes the form of trust in specialized information processing; Trust in experts is trust in impersonal systems, not in individuals (+17 more)
• QUESTION: The phrase ‘renouncing as a conscious risk some possible further information’ suggests Stevens’s refusal to question Darlington’s Nazi appeasement is partly a structural feature of system trust, not mere naivety — worth probing in the essay.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143

Broader Connections

• Trust reduces complexity by substituting inner certainty for external certainty #qualifies (0.55) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 154