Trust and distrust cannot function as universal attitudes toward all of reality

Evidence

These considerations also indicate the limits on the extent to which trust and distrust can be generalized into general attitudes towards the environment. Certainly, in personal systems, just as in social systems, there are learned general dispositions for preferring to resolve problematic situations in cases of doubt through trust, or through distrust. They simplify decisions between contrary mechanisms. On the other hand, a generalized invocation of trust or of distrust with reference to all possible meaning is unfeasible. No one can expect only good or only bad from everyone, and in every respect. … Neither trust nor distrust are feasible as a universal attitude. That would be either too risky or too great a burden. Both positions (of trust and distrust) presuppose that one is conscious of the possible behaviour of others as a specific problem. One trusts if one assumes that this behaviour will fit in meaningfully with one’s own pattern of life; one distrusts if one reckons that this will not be the case. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 266

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines trust and distrust as situation-specific stances presupposing conscious awareness of others’ behavior, not blanket dispositions.
• XREF: Connects to Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — Stevens’s trust in the institution of butlering is precisely a bracketed, specific trust, not a universal one; the boundedness of trust is what makes ethical abdication possible.