The Mythos of Possibility: 4 When Worlds Begin to Repeat Themselves

Having established the cut and the first-order phenomenon, we now approach the problem of stability: the way patterns emerge, persist, and begin to be mistaken for inevitability.

A world is not born in a moment. It is not a singular event. It arises as a rhythm, as repetition, as the settling of certain possibilities into regularity, while others recede into the background.

Repetition as Structure

The same phenomena appear again, not because a law dictates them, nor because a cause compels them, but because holding one possibility in a particular way tends to produce similar outcomes across different orientations. This is not determinism, and it is not chaos. It is the formation of habit at the level of possibility.

Habit is neither moral nor functional here; it is structural. It emerges from the relational field itself, from the constraints and affordances that shape what is salient and what remains hidden.

Repetition stabilises the cut. It makes certain phenomena reliably available. In doing so, it allows multiple perspectives to coordinate, to align, and eventually to communicate. Yet with alignment comes the risk of closure: the very openness that allowed these repetitions to form can be forgotten.

The Illusion of Necessity

From the perspective of a world already settled into habit, these repetitions appear necessary. Laws are inferred. Regularities are explained. Explanations, in turn, reinforce the perception that the world could not have been otherwise.

But necessity is a myth arising from hindsight. Each repetition is contingent, conditioned by how possibility is held and cut. What seems stable from inside the world is fragile from the perspective of potential.

This is the first time we see worlds begin to congeal: phenomena repeating, cuts accumulating, patterns forming. And yet, if we remember the lessons of the previous posts, we see that none of this was predetermined. Stability is not inevitability; it is an emergent property of repeated holding.

Coordination Without Control

Worlds emerge not because a central authority enforces order, but because repetitions allow coordination. Phenomena that appear reliably across perspectives can be taken up collectively. Actions, expectations, and perceptions begin to align.

This is the structural basis of culture, science, and social organisation—but without yet invoking value, normativity, or symbolic systems. Repetition is simply the condition under which coordination is possible. It does not guarantee it, nor does it prescribe its form.

Habits as Invisible Cuts

Each repetition can be seen as a cut that has been stabilised. Cuts that were once perspectival and provisional now appear to be features of the world itself. The distinction between cut and world blurs, even though, from the meta-perspective, it remains crucial.

To attend to these invisible cuts is to maintain awareness that worlds are always contingent constructions of possibility. They are not inevitable, eternal, or necessary. They are stabilised perspectives that have achieved relative endurance.

The Challenge of Openness

As repetitions accumulate and worlds congeal, the challenge becomes preserving openness within stability. Habit allows coordination, but it also invites closure. Patterns make experience intelligible, but they can also blind us to uncharted possibilities.

The next post will examine this closure directly: the forgetting of possibility, and the ways that philosophy, science, and myth consolidate cuts into seemingly necessary structures.

For now, it is enough to observe the first emergence of the world not as an event but as a pattern of repeated perspectives: a world in motion, yet not yet fixed, a world that could always have been held otherwise.