In so far as the world becomes more complex and, at the same time, more capable of being determined by contingent processes, so that conscious acceptance of this change increases its effectiveness, the old unity of nature as a source of norms disintegrates, or is forced back to extremely formal decision-making premises. The jump from general and common assumptions of belief to personal trust can no longer bridge the ever-growing gap and the increasing length of the chains of selective processes. Trusting other people no longer readily includes accepting their view of the world as authoritative. One has to learn to put up with different interpretations of the world, linking one's own behaviour nevertheless to the selections of others. Trust then becomes, so to say, privatized, psychologized and thereby individual-tolerant; or else its function is narrowed down to certain types of communication in which the other person is demonstrably competent.

XREF: Connects to Luhmann's systems theory and sociological accounts of modernity's shift from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft, plus Giddens' work on disembedding and expert systems.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 208