The Becoming of Human Possibility: A Life-Scale Perspective 1 — Possibility in the Individual

Reality is not fixed; it is a field of relational potential. For a human, possibility is the thread along which life unfolds, never fully determined, never fully random. Each person is a perspectival cut in the ongoing field of potential: a locus where relational actualisation occurs. What emerges as “the individual” is inseparable from the web of relations — social, cultural, environmental, and symbolic — that both constrain and enable the actualisation of potential.

To study human possibility at the scale of a single life is to confront the interplay of emergence and constraint. Some potentials are never actualised; others crystallise into patterns that shape further possibilities. Lived experience is thus not merely a sequence of events but a process of becoming, where each moment negotiates the tension between what is possible and what is actual.

This post sets the groundwork for the series: we will explore how individual possibility is shaped by symbolic cosmoi, historical and cultural structures, reflexive awareness, and contemporary forces. By tracing the becoming of human possibility across a lifetime, we can see how relational processes generate the unique microcosm of a single life — a life that is both singular and embedded within broader worlds.