Trust rests on inner functional ordering, not external guarantees

Evidence

In quite the reverse way, the certainty of trust may depend on a more strongly differentiated internal system, with the consequence that the failure of the object of trust can inflict only partial and isolated damage and the object of trust can be replaced by functional equivalents. In both cases the primary support of trust comes from the functions it plays in the ordering of information-processing internal to the system, rather than directly from guarantees originating in the environment. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 154

Categorization

• XREF: The two opposite routes to inner certainty map onto Stevens: his trust in Darlington’s household is so structurally central (first route) that its failure would collapse his self-assurance — hence total ethical abdication rather than adaptation.
• DEEPTHINKING: Luhmann’s move of locating trust’s foundation in internal information-processing rather than external guarantees is genuinely paradigm-shifting for how one reads deference and ethical collapse.