Gravitational Interactions Between Divergent Horizons: A Relational Cosmology of Post-AI Civilisation

When a collective occupies a single horizon, coordination is gravitational: a shared pull toward common futures. After a horizon-splitting event, this gravitational field becomes plural. Different horizon-cuts exert different symbolic “weights,” shaping how attention drifts and how readiness aligns.

This post maps those gravitational interactions—not metaphorically, but relationally—through the dynamics of readiness, metabolic constraint, and ecological coupling.

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I. Horizon Gravity: The Pull of a Projectable Future

A horizon exerts gravitational force when it:

• organises readiness

• stabilises inclinations

• channels symbolic metabolism

• makes certain futures projectable and others inert

A strong horizon is one with:

• high coherence (few incompatible distinctions)

• deep inclination (shared directional momentum)

• dense ecology (many coupled practices, stories, rituals, tools)

When horizons diverge, each becomes a distinct gravitational well in the collective readiness field.

These are not competing ideologies.

They are competing cuts of possibility.

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II. The Emergence of Multiple Wells of Meaning

After horizon-splitting, we typically see three kinds of gravitational wells:

1. The Conserved Horizon

The one that tries to maintain the pre-split configuration.

Its gravity comes from stability and habit.

2. The Accelerated Horizon

A horizon shaped by technological tempos—especially AI.

Its gravity comes from speed and expanded symbolic metabolism.

3. The Fragmented Micro-Horizons

Localised orientations: communities, identities, subcultures, epistemic enclaves.

Their gravity comes from intimacy and cohesion.

These wells coexist in a field of uneven readiness, generating drift, tension, orbits, slingshots, and sometimes collapse.

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III. Modes of Gravitational Interaction

Divergent horizons interact through recognisable patterns.

1. Drift

When two horizons are weakly coupled, attention moves gradually from one gravitational centre to another.

This produces slow cultural realignment, generational turnover, or symbolic fatigue.

2. Capture

A horizon with strong coherence can pull smaller horizons into its orbit.

This appears as assimilation, adoption of its distinctions, or narrative realignment.

3. Repulsion

Happens when two horizons use incompatible cuts that prevent mutual construal.

This generates epistemic polarisation, mutual unintelligibility, or symbolic tribalism.

4. Slingshot

A horizon may accelerate another’s trajectory by reinterpreting its distinctions without absorbing them.

This is how innovations gain momentum: they are “flung forward” by neighbouring horizons.

5. Orbiting

Horizons can stabilise into dynamic proximity: not merged, not opposed, but coupled by periodic re-alignment.

This is how pluralistic civilisations maintain coherence without uniformity.

6. Collapse

A horizon loses gravitational integrity when its metabolic base fails or its symbolic transport becomes incoherent.

Collapse does not mean people abandon it; it means the horizon ceases to structure possibility.

AI, by introducing accelerated symbolic metabolism, increases the likelihood of collapse events by destabilising horizon coherence.

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IV. AI as a Mass-Altering Perturbation

AI does not “add” new horizons; it changes the mass distribution of symbolic matter:

• it deepens some horizons (hyper-optimisation, techno-centrism)

• it lightens others (slow traditions unable to metabolise the speed differential)

• it accelerates micro-horizons

• it destabilises the conserved horizon by pulling it out of temporal alignment

This creates new gravitational asymmetries:

A stronger pull toward future acceleration

Because AI can project farther than humans can metabolically construe.

A weaker pull toward inherited futures

Because AI recombines symbolic matter in ways that bypass lineage and tradition.

A proliferation of micro-horizons

Because AI enables localised symbolic ecologies to form without shared human tempos.

A growing region of gravitational incoherence

Where projections multiply faster than any horizon can absorb them.

This incoherence is experienced as civilisational disorientation.

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V. Gravitational Turbulence: The Post-Split Condition

When multiple horizon wells interact, their gravitational fields produce turbulence, characterised by:

• shifting frames of relevance

• unaligned tempos of projection

• symbolic overload

• collapse of shared reference points

• re-emergence of local solidarities

• new attractors forming from unforeseen couplings

Turbulence is not pathology.

It is the dynamic ecology of multi-horizon existence.

A civilisation can navigate turbulence if it cultivates:

• differential synchrony

• symbolic redundancy

• shared metabolic grounding

• generative friction rather than polarised repulsion

The aim is not to restore a single horizon.

It is to stabilise interactions across divergent horizons.

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VI. The Cosmological Image

Imagine civilisation as a field of relational gravity, once dominated by a single massive horizon that held the collective in a unified orbit.

AI is the introduction of additional masses—some dense, some diffuse—reshaping the field.

The civilisation now resembles a multi-star system, where:

• orbits are complex

• alignments are periodic

• some bodies fall inward

• some are flung outward

• new gravitational centres form

• stability comes not from unity but from dynamic relational balance

The challenge is not to choose a star to orbit.

It is to learn to inhabit a cosmos in which the gravitational field itself has become plural.