Readiness and the Shape of Relation: 3 Horizons, Readiness, and Relational Capacity

Measuring relational room and diagnosing systemic brittleness

Horizons as Structured Potential

Every system exists within a horizon — a structured landscape of relational possibilities. Horizons are not empty space; they are patterned, constrained, and directional: they guide what can be actualised, how cuts propagate, and where differentiability can be preserved.

A horizon defines:

• Scope: Which potentials are relevant.

• Structure: How potentials relate or constrain each other.

• Capacity: How many cuts or actualisations the system can meaningfully accommodate.

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Readiness as Horizon-Sensitive Potential

Readiness is the second-order property that captures the remaining relational room within a horizon. It combines:

• Inclination: Which potentials the system is predisposed to actualise.

• Ability: Whether the system can actualise these potentials without collapsing the horizon.

Readiness is not merely a descriptive notion; it is diagnostic:

• High readiness → system can accommodate further construals without over-closure.

• Low readiness → horizon is near exhaustion; cuts risk collapse, singularity, or brittleness.

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Horizon Exhaustion and Over-Closure

When a horizon is fully or near-fully actualised:

• Differentiability is lost.

• Cuts become destructive rather than generative.

• The system exhibits over-closure, appearing rigid, singular, or divergent.

This formalises familiar phenomena across domains:

• Physics: gravitational or wavefunction singularities.

• Mathematics: infinite solutions arising from collapsed assumptions.

• Social systems: rigid hierarchies or dogmatic institutions.

• Language and cognition: semantic collapse or interpretive dead-ends.

Horizon exhaustion signals epistemic boundaries, not metaphysical failure.

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Relational Capacity as a Measure

We can think of relational capacity as the quantitative or qualitative measure of remaining readiness:

• Degrees of freedom in physics or complex systems.

• Interpretive room in semiotics or language.

• Adaptive potential in social or ecological systems.

When relational capacity is monitored, we can anticipate brittleness, identify emergent constraints, and decide when further cuts are epistemically responsible.

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Diagnosing Systemic Brittleness

A system becomes brittle when:

1. Inclination persists but ability fails.
   Tendencies encoded in the system continue, but the horizon cannot accommodate them.

2. Construals over-close the horizon.
   New cuts eliminate relational room instead of preserving it.

3. Feedback loops reinforce closure.
   Over-closure compounds, leading to divergence, collapse, or systemic failure.

Brittleness is thus readiness failure made visible.

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Implications

1. Horizon awareness guides modelling.
   Models should track remaining relational room, not just simulate dynamics blindly.

2. Failure is informative.
   Divergence, collapse, or rigidity are signals that the horizon has been exhausted.

3. Adaptive strategies require readiness stewardship.
   Maintaining relational capacity becomes the primary goal of responsible practice — in science, governance, semiotics, or design.

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Forward Gesture

Having formalised horizons, readiness, and relational capacity, the next post will explore how these concepts play out across domains, illustrating systemic patterns of over-closure, brittleness, and adaptive potential in physics, mathematics, language, and complex systems.