Why we can't live without risk.
At first glance, trust appears warm and soft. Something between closeness, intuition and human connection. But Niklas Luhmann shows a much more edgy truth in his book. For him, trust is not a feeling, but a decision. An attitude towards the future. A conscious response to uncertainty.
We act before we know everything. We make decisions even though we might know it's going wrong. Luhmann calls trust a risky advance payment. (Luhmann, p. 47) Anyone who trusts is risking something and actively reduces the endless openness of the future in order to be able to act.
Familiarity comes when the world comes naturally. When the past seems stable enough to rely on it. Trust, on the other hand, is an additional requirement. Exceeding what would be safe. Luhmann speaks of excessive information. We pretend that the future is less open than it actually is. Only this kind of thinking makes cooperation, planning and living together possible.
Interpersonal contact creates trust where we experience the other person as reliable. Luhmann writes:
“Trustworthy is anyone who sticks to what they have consciously or unconsciously shared about themselves.” (Luhmann, p. 46)
Every interaction therefore contains a double meaning. It says something about the content, but also something about the person who acts. Every gesture, every phrase, every little irritation becomes a possible clue as to whether someone will act as they appear to be.
At the same time, any form of visibility is risky. Being visible means being understandable. Just being in the eyes of the other person requires courage. Luhmann puts it this way:
“Even publication at all therefore requires a minimum of trust.” (Luhmann, p. 47)
However, those who trust also expand their scope of action. If you want to be understood, you can speak more directly, address difficult topics or act more humorously. Trust creates the conditions to show more people than would be necessary in a purely functional exchange.
Trust rarely develops suddenly, but develops in a series of small, unspectacular moments. A minimal risky advance payment. A moment when something could have been exploited. The other one refrains from doing so.
Luhmann states:
“that learning processes only take place when the person who is to be trusted is given opportunities to break trust and does not use them.” (Luhmann, p. 52)
It is only through these small omitted opportunities that the feeling that someone could also be reliable in bigger things. Trust grows because risk is not taken. Step by step.
In organizations, teams and professional relationships, trust is not a luxury, but a requirement. Modern working environments are too complex to be able to control every detail. Roles, processes, and expectations replace direct certainty. This is precisely why cooperation is based on trust that all parties comply with certain rules and use their own freedom in the interests of a common goal.
The same applies in private life. Whether in friendships or partnerships, wherever relationships go beyond mere expediency, the future is always created through risky advances, through showing vulnerability, through the expectation that the other person will use their potential to act responsibly.
Trust is more than just a feeling. It is an attitude to the world.
Trust means making decisions even though you might know that things could be different. Trust means not avoiding uncertainty, but transforming it. Trust means reading the future not as a threat, but as a space of opportunity that we can only enter if we take risks.
Trust is the silent hand that holds the future before we touch it.
sources
Luhmann, Niklas (2014). trust. A mechanism for reducing social complexity. 5th edition. Constance and Munich: UVK/UTB.
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