Trust anchors future uncertainty back into the present

Evidence

Trust is one of the ways of bringing this about. The formation and consolidation of trust is therefore concerned with the future horizon of the actual present. It is an attempt to envisage the future but not to bring about future presents. Every kind of planning and advance calculation of future presents, all indirect, long-lasting and circuitously conceived orientations, remain problematical from the point of view of trust. They have to be referred back to the present, in which they have to be anchored. The growing complexity of such plans calls for satisfaction and decision-making to be increasingly deferred and thus cause their forward planning and fixed deadlines to lose their certainty. So with increased complexity there is a corresponding growth in the need for assurances about the present, for example, trust. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 122

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports the reader’s thesis: Luhmann’s claim that trust anchors the future in the present is exactly how Stevens delegates his entire future to the Darlington institution — the expert system absorbs his present. — connects to: A freely-made promise transforms uncertainty into fact by willing a future into being — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1035
• DEFINE: Core mechanism: trust is not planning or calculation but a present-moment assurance that reduces complexity from future-oriented ambitions.
• SEED: Could develop an article angle: how Ishiguro’s Stevens outsources both future and present to the institution, making his ‘faceless commitment’ a form of present-anchoring rather than mere deference.