System trust conditions people to accept that everything could be otherwise

Evidence

In system trust one is continually conscious that everything that is accomplished is being produced, that each action has been decided on after comparison with other possibilities. System trust counts on explicit processes for the reduction of complexity, i.e. on people, not nature. The great civilizing processes of transition to system trust give people a stable attitude towards what is contingent in a complex world, make it possible to live with the realization that everything could be otherwise. These processes make people able to be aware of the social contingency of the world. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 236

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the distinction between system trust (explicit, contingent-produced, complexity-reducing) and naive familiarity with the everyday world — this is the theoretical hinge for why Stevens, unlike a merely habit-bound servant, is making conscious choices to defer.
• XREF: Connects to Ishiguro’s Stevens: his dignity is precisely this ‘stable attitude toward the contingent,’ lived as professional stance — and to Luhmann’s own earlier distinction between familiarity and trust.