Organizations require actors to retain a modicum of the opposite stance

Evidence

Characteristically, the organization in which trust and distrust are the object of expectations with regard to aspects of a work task does not completely remove the choice between these two possibilities from the actor. Even the truster must retain a modicum of distrust – he must, for instance, intervene if his colleague gives an opinion which is obviously false. And neither can the distruster, as in the case of supervision, take his justified distrust to extremes without becoming a liability to the organization. What in ethics is expected from the nature of things is performed by means of the organization and specification of the system, that is, clear directions in a particular case as to whether trust or distrust is appropriate and rational. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 323

Categorization

• XREF: This is the crux for the Stevens reading: the butler’s complete elimination of distrust in his lord is precisely what the functioning organization theoretically should NOT permit — his total trust violates the system rationality that underwrites it.
• QUESTION: Is Stevens’s failure to retain ‘a modicum of distrust’ toward Darlington precisely the deviation that makes his devotion pathological rather than system-rational?