Trust formation requires gradual step-by-step temporal adaptation

Evidence

The question of the formation and consolidation of personal trust enables us to transfer our abstractly formulated problem of the reduction of complexity to the dimension of time, and to show that the problem of forming trust relationships must be solved gradually, step by step. The ‘principle of small steps’ replaces simpler forms of adaptation to the environment when the environment also operates in a contingent fashion or is too complex for adaptation at one stroke. For these, systems need time. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 190

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘principle of small steps’ — trust builds incrementally in time, which connects to how Stevens’s lifelong incremental devotion entrenches his system-trust rather than ever being tested.
• XREF: connects to: Faster-than-lifetime social change erodes stable identity forms into situational ones — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration: A New Theory of…, 32