It needs no more than a cursory inspection to show that the theme of trust involves a problematic relationship with time. To show trust is to anticipate the future. It is to behave as though the future were certain. One might say that through trust time is superseded or at least differences in time are. This is perhaps the reason why ethics, out of concealed antipathy towards time, recommends trust as an attitude which seeks to make itself independent of the passage of time and so come close to eternity. But both the proposition itself and the underlying conception of time are inadequate. Time cannot be thought of as a flow, as motion, nor even as a measure of movement. The idea of movement in fact tacitly presupposes the idea of time.
There is even less help to be found in the distinction which is commonly made in sociology between structure and process. Even apart from the distinction’s notorious failure to grasp either the changeable nature of structures or the structured nature of processes, it makes use of the reified notions of something fixed and of something flowing, the mutual opposition of which conceals the nature of time. We would be reluctant to identify trust in terms of either structure or process, which illustrates the inadequacy of this distinction as well as the inadequacy of current sociological theory when it comes to the theme of trust. It also shows the proximity of this theme to an idea of time which has yet to be fully understood.
A theory of trust presupposes a theory of time, and so leads us into territory so difficult and obscure that we cannot map it out here. Nevertheless, recent discussions in systems theory provide some clues. They have to do with the relationship between temporality and the differentiation of system and environment.
As soon as systems differentiate from their environment by formulating boundaries, problems about time occur. In the first place through the dislocation of processes which maintain the differentiation by making them sequential, for not all relationships between system and environment can be instantaneous one-to-one correlations. Rather the maintenance of the difference, in more complex systems at least, necessitates detours, and these take time. This occurs partly because of the absence of any reaction to environmental events, partly because of late reactions, and partly because of anticipatory reactions. Immediate responses need occur only to a very small extent. Talcott Parsons’ well-known four problem matrix for dealing with system problems is based on this, with the juxtaposition of the difference between system and environment and the difference between present and future fulfilment.1 Parsons makes use of this idea only for a theory of system differentiation. It does, however, contain far-reaching implications for the constitution of temporality itself and for follow-up problems of structural generalization internal to systems.
If this inference is accepted, then the experience of time produces out of differentiation both change and non-change conjointly. This situation is to be found also in meaningful systems of human experience and action, and here too it determines the conditions of structural generalization.2
According to the latest findings, all human experience of time lies in the reflection achievable from an experience of duration in spite of change. These findings, whatever they may be,3 lend themselves to interpretations from two opposite viewpoints; these are duration and change. From these findings, ‘objective time’ is formed, by a process of intersubjective construction as a continuum of chronological points in time, is the same for all human beings and, although it may contain that which is constant and that which changes, remains itself neutral towards this distinction. The paradox of this distinction, therefore, is, so to speak, suffused by the notion of time, but is sustained as the contrast between two mutually exclusive ways of identifying time.
Either, that is to say, something can be identified as an event, which is a fixed point in time, independent of every present experience which progresses on the scale of time constantly transferring point to point the future into the past. The event obtains its temporal identity independent of any qualification of future, present or past and the meaning of its identity is just this invariant quality in contrast to the changing qualities of time. An event, however, requires this change in order to become reality in the present, in order to occur.
Or, something can be identified as a constancy, which carries on regardless of changes of points in time. Duration in this sense is nothing more than the continuously actual present, with the future always in prospect and the past flowing away. Constancies, therefore, can be identified only to the extent that they exist in the present. In the future or in the past they can perhaps be understood as series of events, made into a constancy through the altered form of continuously present expectations or recollections.4
In Antiquity, therefore, there were good grounds for thinking of everlastingness only as the present, while the contemporary conception, which is based on the identity of points in time, and which consequently has to think of the present as continually on the move, comes closer to an understanding of eternity, just as the general event of the world can perhaps be seen as a continuous creation, and thus leads to an understanding of time as the history of events.
These two perspectives are mutually exclusive, since the identity principle, by which one is defined as constant, is precisely what has to be treated as varying in defining the other. They cannot therefore be employed simultaneously. But precisely because of this mutual exclusiveness, both forms of identification reinforce each other as complementary negatives. In other words, variation, as such, is inconceivable, if one cannot assume identities with respect to which something is changing. Both forms of identification negate (and thus make it possible to understand) what varies in the other. In this way each elucidates the meaning of time for the other kind of identity. The identity of events constitutes the aspect of time problematical for constancies, namely, the advance of the present as a moment of actuality which cannot simply carry its own constancies along, but which must always take care to preserve the past and absorb the new. The identity of constancies constitutes an aspect of time problematical for events, namely, the unstable flow of events out of the future into the past and their mere fortuitous, chance, combination with constancies.
The contradiction between these forms of identity allows no conclusion to be drawn concerning the alleged ‘unreality’ of time.5 If such a conclusion were to involve a notion of reality which ignored temporality it would be particularly unproductive and misleading. Trust does not pose any problem of unreal propositions. Rather, the nature of time consists in that twofold possibility of negation, having reality as possibility as well as negation, having in other words actual, demonstrable, effective capacities.6 This twofold negation in which each varies in terms of the other initially yields a complete model of time which actually eludes being captured as a complete schema. Neither the ancient notion of time, focusing on the present, nor the modern notion of time, focusing on points of time, is adequate. The perspective associated with these notions of time present only a scheme to question constancies and events, but one which would have to be corrected by a counter perspective in considering time.
These brief reflections will have been enough at least to show that trust cannot simply be regarded as ‘superseding time’. Moreover, neither time perspective, in so far as it predominates in the processing of experience, precludes the development of trust. It would be highly questionable to maintain that time as experienced in Antiquity in fact afforded greater opportunities for the formation of trust than our experience of time, because it could grasp constancies as the continuously immediate present and not simply as succession of events. There is nevertheless one crucially important inference which can be made from our analysis, namely, that the security of a constancy – and that means security per se – is only possible in the present and therefore can only be achieved in the present.7 The same is true of trust as a form of security. Trust can only be secured and maintained in the present. Neither the uncertain future nor even the past can arouse trust, since what has been does not eliminate the possibility of the future discovery of another past. This present-relatedness and its implications for trust cannot be understood and elaborated if the present is conceived in terms of an event fixed to a point in time, as a moment, as the instant at which the event occurs. Rather, the basis of all trust is the present as an enduring continuum of changing events, as the totality of constancies where events can occur.
The problem of trust therefore consists in the fact that the future contains far more possibilities than could ever be realized in the present and thus be transferred into the past. The uncertainty about what will happen is simply a consequence of the very elementary fact that not all futures can become the present and hence become the past. The future places an excessive burden on a person’s ability to represent things to himself. People have to live in the present along with this everlastingly over-complex future. They must, therefore, prune the future so as to measure up with the present, that is, to reduce complexity.
This problem can be grasped more clearly if we distinguish between the future present and the present future.8 Every present has its own future, as the open horizon of future possibilities. It envisages a future from which only one selection can become the present future. In progressing towards the future, these possibilities make way for the selection of new presents and thereby new future prospects for the present. In so far as the present and future presents remain identical in the present it brings about constancy; in so far as it generates discontinuities it gives rise to events. In so far as experience brings awareness of this difference between its present future and its future present, it creates, where the present future appears hazardous, the opportunity of a conscious selection in the light of both uncertainty and a need to secure connections between current and future presents.
These demands cannot be postponed. They involve, as a permanent requirement, corresponding performances by people in the continuous present. Trust is one of the ways of bringing this about. The formation and consolidation of trust is therefore concerned with the future horizon of the actual present. It is an attempt to envisage the future but not to bring about future presents. Every kind of planning and advance calculation of future presents, all indirect, long-lasting and circuitously conceived orientations, remain problematical from the point of view of trust. They have to be referred back to the present, in which they have to be anchored. The growing complexity of such plans calls for satisfaction and decision-making to be increasingly deferred and thus cause their forward planning and fixed deadlines to lose their certainty. So with increased complexity there is a corresponding growth in the need for assurances about the present, for example, trust. An instance of this is provided by research into small groups and the distinction between instrumental and expressive variables which has in recent years assumed such increased significance in sociological systems theory.9
In this distinction, the bases for which are still unclear,10 the problem of time is inherent.11 Whereas instrumental orientations have reference to goals, to effects anticipated for the future, the expressive content of experiences serves to stabilize the present in the security of its constancies rather than as a flickering presence of momentary events, but a present that constitutes itself – through its own particular horizon of the future and the past – as the enduring basis of changing events.12
The forward thrust of instrumental orientations at the expense of the present is a condition for an increase in performance through rationality. But this leads (and this may be seen in industrial sociology studies generally) to the present being emptied of meaning and thus increasing the pressure of a need for expressive variables. The conception dominant in theory and praxis treats such pressure as a problem, which calls for planning, for increased instrumentation, and for the organizational provision of suitable expressive conditions.13 What is involved is a forceful attempt to break out of the unavoidable contemporaneity of common human existence and to project the presentness of other human beings into the future, thereby gaining time to plan this presentness and exert influence by selective manipulation of representations. But all people live and grow old together in a common and ever-present constancy.14 Whoever wishes to manipulate the present of others must be able to escape from it into another time. The impossibility of this means that all manipulation runs the risk, evident also within its own present, of itself becoming open to expression and thereby betraying its goal. This can, of course, be obviated to a very large extent through social differentiation, role separation, barriers to communication and control of information – in short, by social organization. But the effect of this will simply be to arouse universal suspicion of manipulation, regardless of whether individual cases provide confirmation or not. Trust, therefore, can be maintained only if it finds a form which allows it to live with such suspicion and become immune to it.15
This dilemma between the instrumental and the expressive, as developed by Parsons and others (Note 9, above), between control of events with reference to the future and present security of things in so far as they are constancies (a dilemma which grows more acute with the increasing complexity of circumstances), can be more clearly discerned if we link it to the theme of the previous chapter, the problem of complexity. To this end the next task is to extend our analysis of time with some further considerations.
The constitution of objective time, the interpretation of the subjectively experienced opposition between duration and change through the objective opposition between identical constancies and identical events, serves to open up an area of variance. From the perspective of events, constancies are moved on as the present moves on. From the perspective of constancies, events are moved on as the future and the past move on. Both perspectives are thus opened up to alternative possibilities. The variability incorporates everything that is, without exception.16 The duality of the mutually exclusive perspectives guarantees this completeness and saves people from the unimaginable idea that everything could vary simultaneously with everything else. In other words, time is constituted as unlimited yet reducible complexity. The temporal dimension is therefore, like the social dimension, an interpretation of the world in terms of extreme complexity. It points to the fact that everything could become something other than what it is. But the foundation of this model of the world, which enables time itself, which enables the world itself and even extreme complexity to become a constancy, is the actual enduring presentness of immediate experience. The complexity of all other possibilities is reduced through this presentness to a level that can actually be experienced, and the world itself is, for instance, reduced so that it can witness the ‘horizon’ of experiences. The constancies which form part of the actual present are the means by which this extreme complexity can be grasped and reduced, by which the undefinable can be defined or – in the traditional, time-excluding language of metaphysics – matter can be given form. By interpreting, structuring and thereby simplifying the world, they allow events to adopt an informative value and blend with human action in a process of selective choice. In functioning as an aid to reduction in this way, the constancies of experience create assurance about the present.
Thus, time may also be understood as reduction of complexity – whether the present is regarded as the standpoint, continually advancing into the future, from which experience is subjectively selected, or whether it is seen as a stationary filter built into the ‘river of time’, transforming the possible into the actual. We now know that both images of motion are inadequate metaphors for that process of mediation between the complexity of the world and the actuality of experience to which we give the name reduction.
This discussion has helped to throw the function of trust into sharper relief. It strengthens the capacity of the present for understanding and reducing complexity: it strengthens constancies as opposed to events and thus makes it possible to live and to act with greater complexity in relation to events. In terms of a well-known psychological theory, trust increases the ‘tolerance of ambiguity’.17 This effect is not to be confused with instrumental mastery over events. Where such mastery can be assured (i.e. ‘actualized’), trust is not necessary. But trust is required for the reduction of a future characterized by more or less indeterminate complexity.
Making a distinction between mastery over events and trust is not only necessary for conceptual clarity, but is also necessary in order to gain certain insights into how the two are related. The indeterminate complexity of possible events is, in other words, not simply a consequence of deficient forward planning, but is in other senses a consequence of the extent of instrumental planning.18 Future possibilities in fact do not contract but rather expand with planning projections, which incorporate long and complicated chains of cause and effect involving many parameters and the many actions by different people. Moreover, as far as the individual is concerned, it is precisely this planned complexity which gives rise to a new form of insecurity. Furthermore, such planning contains a high proportion of technically significant indeterminacy. It makes sense to postpone decisions until more events have occurred in the course of time and there has been further reduction of complexity. Money, power and truth (to which we shall be returning in detail) are social mechanisms which permit decisions to be postponed and yet guarantee assurance in the face of a future of greater uncertainty and complexity of events. The stabilization of these and other mechanisms in the present presupposes trust. Mastery over events and trust are thus not merely functional equivalents, mutually exchangeable mechanisms of complexity reduction. Given an increase in the complexity of possible events both mastery and trust find themselves, separately and jointly, the objects of increasing claims.
So it is not to be expected that scientific and technological development of civilization will bring events under control, substituting mastery over things for trust as a social mechanism and thus making it unnecessary. Instead, one should expect trust to be increasingly in demand as a means of enduring the complexity of the future which technology will generate. Talcott Parsons was right in regarding the expressive solidarity of the small group as the basis of political trust precisely in relation to the unavoidable indeterminacy of complex political processes.19 The same circumstance points to the fact that subsystems of society such as the political, and perhaps the economic system, which are not adequate for present-day requirements, remain dependent on other fields of action where the orientation to the present, required for the formation of trust, has been preserved.