The Mythos of Possibility: 5 The Forgetting of Possibility

As worlds congeal through repetition, a subtle but profound transformation occurs. What was once a perspectival cut, an open holding of possibility, becomes sedimented. The very patterns that allow coordination begin to be treated as necessary. What could have been otherwise is forgotten.

This is the forgetting of possibility.

Sedimentation of Cuts

Every repetition accumulates weight. Each stabilised phenomenon, each habitual orientation, reinforces the expectation that things must appear in a certain way. Cuts that were once perspectival and provisional begin to appear as features of the world itself. The relational field that allowed them to emerge recedes from view.

The world appears solid, inevitable, constrained—but the solidity is a mirage, a memory of stability, not a mandate of necessity.

Explanation as Closure

Philosophy, science, and myth all contribute to this forgetting. Each system, in its own way, takes perspectival differentiations and interprets them as inevitable, generalisable, or universal.

• Philosophy abstracts, naming the structures and principles of thought, often treating them as necessary features of reason.

• Science observes regularities and codifies them as laws, as if the world could not have behaved otherwise.

• Myth tells stories that anchor meaning, presenting events as preordained and moralised, closing off alternate readings.

All three close possibility not by imposing it from outside, but by forgetting the perspectival character of the cut, treating contingencies as necessities, and stabilisations as eternal truths.

The Risk of Closure

When the forgetting of possibility takes hold, orientation becomes rigid. Worlds that were once open to variation are read as fixed. Differences are interpreted as deviations or errors. Novelty is either assimilated or suppressed. The field of potential recedes, leaving a landscape in which meaning, coordination, and habit appear given rather than enacted.

This is not merely an intellectual mistake. It is a structural effect of the way repetition stabilises perception and construal. It is a systemic closure of the space in which new cuts, new perspectives, and new phenomena might emerge.

Remembering Possibility

To reopen possibility, one must first recognise the forgetting. One must attend to the relational field that underlies apparent necessity, and to the provisional character of cuts that appear eternal.

This requires humility and vigilance: the capacity to distinguish between the world as it appears from a stabilised perspective and the world as a contingent enactment of held possibilities. It requires seeing habitual patterns not as fate, but as repeated choices, crystallised through attention and action.

Openness Amid Stability

The forgetting of possibility is not an irreparable loss. Stability, habit, and repetition are necessary for worlds to exist at all. They allow coordination, learning, and shared experience. But they must be held lightly. They must be recognised as patterns of perspective, not as mandates of necessity.

In the next post, we will explore how these forgotten possibilities can resurface: fracture, play, and the creative return of openness within worlds that have become habituated and seemingly fixed. The long shadow of forgetting need not be permanent; it can be attended, and it can be opened again.