Society results from improbable contingent events, not natural human action

Evidence

Society is not seen as a natural outcome of human action, but as an improbable result of contingent events. Luhmann is here particularly interested in how these improbabilities are transformed into systems of meaning-generating communications. These are the generalized media of communication, of which trust and power are but two examples. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 15

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines understanding social systems as generalized media of communication, with trust and power being two such media.
• XREF: Directly anchors the reader’s own thesis: trust as a complexity-reducing medium maps onto Giddens’s faceless commitments and Stevens’s deference. — connects to: Taken-for-granted belief patterns are politically invented human products, not natural or inevitable — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 587; Historical events result from contingent decisions that could have gone otherwise — Andrew L. Whitehead, American Idolatry, 116