Traditional societies reduce complexity through religious norms rather than impersonal trust

Evidence

In simple social systems a secure mode of living which went beyond trust in specific other people was established – in so far as it was at all – by means of religiously based assumptions about true being, nature and the supernatural, by means of myth, language and natural law. This meant that the right ordering of things was taken as normative and assumed to be trustworthy. In this sense the world was removed from human disposition and its complexity assumed to be already reduced. No impersonal forms of trust were required. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 206

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallel to Giddens’s distinction between pre-modern trust in tradition/sacred nature versus modern trust in abstract systems — a key contrast for the reader’s comparative argument. — connects to: Traditional religions counteracted paranoia through collective structure; Modernization shifts understanding from inherited tradition to risky rational agreement — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 390; Institute members grounded society in religion and culture rather than law or labor organization — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1137 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes the baseline: pre-modern complexity reduction happens via religious/mythic assumptions, with no need for impersonal trust forms.