System trust cannot supply the mutuality that personal trust provides

Evidence

In the early development of the human individual, basic trust in stable circumstances of self-identity and the surrounding environment—ontological security—does not in the first instance rest upon a sense of the continuity of things or events. Rather, as we have noted, it derives from personal trust and establishes a need for trust in others which no doubt endures, in some form or another, throughout life. Trust in persons, as Erikson emphasises, is built upon mutuality of response and involvement: faith in the integrity of another is a prime source of a feeling of integrity and authenticity of the self. Trust in abstract systems provides for the security of day-to-day reliability, but by its very nature cannot supply either the mutuality or intimacy which personal trust relations offer. In this respect traditional religions are plainly different from modern abstract systems, because their personalised figures allow for a direct transfer of individual trust, with large elements of mutuality. In the case of abstract systems, by contrast, trust presumes faith in impersonal principles, which “answer back” only in a statistical way when they do not deliver the outcomes which the individual seeks. This is one of the main reasons why individuals at access points normally go to great pains to show themselves to be trustworthy: they provide the link between personal and system trust. — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 272

Categorization

• XREF: Perfectly explains Stevens: his ‘dignity’ is a form of being an access point at Darlington Hall, providing the link between personal and system trust while never receiving mutuality. Also speaks to his father’s death scene where he shows himself trustworthy as butler rather than as son. — connects to: Modern society needs non-personal trust beyond what individuals provide; Institutionalized money trust replaces countless individual acts of personal trust; System trust survives individual disappointments that would destroy personal trust (+10 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The observation that impersonal systems ‘answer back’ only statistically, and that trust in persons requires mutuality, is the strongest theoretical anchor for why institutional deference produces ethical and emotional vacuity.

Related

• System trust survives individual disappointments that would destroy personal trust (similarity 0.93)
• System trust underwrites ontological security but yields no psychological reward (similarity 0.90)
• Modern society needs non-personal trust beyond what individuals provide (similarity 0.90)
• Personal intermediaries are the default route to new trust (similarity 0.87)
• Personal trust becomes system trust under civilized conditions (similarity 0.86)
• Modern trust is vested in abstract capacities, not individuals (similarity 0.86)
• System trust produces a compulsion to trust a system one cannot correct (similarity 0.86)
• Reflexive personal trust enables actions impossible by simple trust (similarity 0.86)
• System trust rests on expectations that most won’t test the system (similarity 0.84)
• Trust in experts is trust in impersonal systems, not in individuals (similarity 0.84)
• Trust in abstract systems is tacit routine, not conscious choice. (similarity 0.84)
• System trust stays latent and beyond open discussion (similarity 0.83)
• Openly negotiated interdependence undermines trust that existing systems breed silently (similarity 0.83)
• Trust in persons and things sustains ontological security. (similarity 0.83)
• Giddens describes how trust in abstract systems develops as ‘faceless commitments,’ yet notes relations of trust are always ambivalent because confidence is needed amid fundamental ignorance of… (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• System trust underwrites ontological security but yields no psychological reward #corroborates (0.85) — Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 271
• Growing complexity forces trust to shift from interpersonal to performance-based system trust #complicates (0.70) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 143