One cannot trust chaos. If nothing connects with anything else or everything with everything else, it becomes impossible to build generalizations. In other words, a single system cannot, by itself, generate higher generalization or trust. Their accomplishment presupposes an environment which already possesses structure, though not the same degree of order, and the same limitations on what is possible, as the system itself. But what structures the environment is none other than the existence of other systems in the environment.

XREF: Connects to the author's broader argument about meaning and mind emerging through relationships between systems, not within isolated ones. Builds on: "Social structure substitutes for incomplete information about others"

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 184