Although system trust is shown to be more or less absorbed, more or less latent, it is fundamentally different from the 'naive' experience of familiarity with the everyday world. In system trust one is continually conscious that everything that is accomplished is being produced, that each action has been decided on after comparison with other possibilities. System trust counts on explicit processes for the reduction of complexity, i.e. on people, not nature. The great civilizing processes of transition to system trust give people a stable attitude towards what is contingent in a complex world, make it possible to live with the realization that everything could be otherwise.

DEFINE: Contrasts system trust with naive everyday familiarity: system trust involves ongoing consciousness that outcomes are produced by human decisions and processes.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 236