Trust becomes possible when internal complexity-reduction resources back environmental ones

Evidence

From the functional point of view, self-assurance as a foundation for trust is to be traced back to the availability of internal mechanisms for the reduction of complexity. Trust can come about if these internal reduction mechanisms are stabilized in such a way that they complement the environmental reduction and thus are in a position to reinforce it at critical points. In other words, bestowing trust is made possible and easy by the fact that the trusting system has inner resources available which are not structurally tied up, and which, in the case of a disappointment of trust, can be put into action and take over the burden of the reduction of complexity and the solving of problems. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 285

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core Luhmann mechanism: self-assurance = available inner resources that absorb the blow when trust is disappointed. Directly relevant to why Stevens can keep deferring — his self-assurance resources buffer every betrayal.
• SEED: Angle: Stevens’s absolute self-assurance as head butler is exactly Luhmann’s ‘inner resource not structurally tied up’ — the competence that makes total deference possible because it never needs deploying.