Withholding trust feeds a self-reinforcing spiral of lost rational capacity.

Evidence

And again, if this is true, we are likely to enter sooner or later into the vicious circle of not risking trust, losing possibilities of rational action, losing confidence in the system, and so on being that much less prepared to risk trust at all. — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1452

Categorization

• XREF: Describes exactly the Hobbesian devolution the reader maps in Saramago when sight vanishes and mutual monitoring collapses — trust withheld breeds more distrust and lost rational opportunity.