Routinized trust shades into continuity expectations that guide everyday conduct.

Evidence

This is not to assume, on the other hand, that risk and the grounds for trust will be weighed up rationally before doing anything. Trust can also be shown to be thoughtless, careless and routinized, and thus to require no unnecessary expenditure of consciousness especially if expectation approaches certainty. One who goes unarmed among his fellow human beings puts trust in them, and does not nowadays seriously weigh up the alternative of carrying a sword or pistol. Trust merges gradually into expectations of continuity, which are formed like firm guidelines by which to conduct our everyday lives. But not all expectations of this nature involve trust; only those concerning conduct do so, and among the latter only those in the light of which one commits one’s own actions and which if unrealized will lead one to regret one’s behaviour. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 146

Categorization

• XREF: Stevens’s butlering is precisely this thoughtless, routinized trust — expectations of continuity so entrenched no conscious bet is ever weighed. Directly supports the reader’s claim that institutional deference led to total ethical abdication.
• QUESTION: If trust merges into continuity expectations without conscious weighing, at what point does routine deference become culpable abdication rather than trust? This boundary seems to be where Ishiguro’s critique sits.