People live from day to day in this intermediate zone without specific problems of trust or distrust. Intersubjective constitution is the prerequisite for trust and distrust, but people do not see them as having this basis, nor do they perceive it as a problem unless they are in the position of having to turn this familiarity with the objective world into trust in the process of its intersubjective constitution. They dwell in the cave of shadows described by Plato and have to be content with forms already reduced for them, unless they put themselves into a position in which the full complexity of the world can be encountered with more effective ways of reducing it. It is not a question, therefore, of their withstanding the evidence of ideas which are more illuminating than the power of their vision, but more a question of creating stable systems out of processes of intersubjective communication – systems which better encompass and reduce the complexity of the world – and of putting their trust in the functioning of these systems.

XREF: Parallels Luhmann's systems theory and Plato's cave allegory, both invoked in the passage.

Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, loc. 142