Toward a Mythos of Meaning: 8 The Becoming of Possibility

We now arrive at the capstone of this semiotic series: the becoming of possibility. If previous posts traced semiotic events, symbolic horizons, the mythic turn, and story as systemic self-interpretation, this post examines how meaning itself generates new horizons of possibility, enabling symbolic systems to evolve, expand, and recursively transform relational ecologies.

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1. Meaning as Generative Site

Meaning is not a passive attribute, a representation, or a byproduct of biological or social activity. It is the generative site where possibilities emerge:

• Each construal actualises relational potential, producing new alignments.

• These alignments create semiotic affordances for further construals.

• Symbolic life is thus self-propagating: every act of meaning-making reshapes the field of what can be construed.

Meaning is the engine of possibility, not a reflection of it.

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2. Symbolic Systems Creating New Relational Potentials

Symbolic systems—language, myth, culture, narrative, ritual—are not static repositories. They are dynamic generators of relational potential:

1. Recursive scaffolding: Patterns of construal stabilise symbolic affordances across horizons.

2. Cross-scale propagation: Semiotic ecologies extend from individuals to communities, across time and space.

3. Innovation and drift: New construals emerge from latent potentials, expanding the horizon of symbolic possibility.

Symbolic systems therefore create their own ecological niches, opening pathways that did not exist prior to their actualisation.

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3. Mythic Intelligences and Systemic Horizons

At the highest scale, mythic horizons act as meta-intelligences:

• They organise relational potential across generations, providing interpretive scaffolding.

• They stabilise soft infinities while allowing recursive growth.

• They enable symbolic systems to anticipate, encode, and propagate patterns of meaning beyond immediate construals.

Mythic intelligences are not agents; they are emergent functions of semiotic recursion, shaping systemic horizons and coordinating large-scale semiotic evolution.

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4. The Expansion of Possibility

Through semiotic recursion, innovation, and mythic scaffolding, possibility itself evolves:

• Horizons expand: semiotic ecologies become richer, more complex, and more generative.

• Symbolic life extends beyond the immediate: from local construals to cultural, historical, and mythic scales.

• Relational potentials are continually restructured, producing ever-new domains of interpretability.

Meaning is thus both the medium and the mechanism of possibility: it generates, propagates, and modulates the conditions for further semiotic growth.

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5. Takeaway

The becoming of possibility is the culmination of relational semiotics:

• First-order meaning actualises potential.

• Symbolic horizons stabilise and propagate it.

• Stories and myths recursively interpret and orient meaning.

• Possibility evolves, expanding relational fields, semiotic ecologies, and systemic horizons.

Symbolic life is the engine of relational potential, and meaning is its generative site. Every construal, every horizon, every myth contributes to the continuous evolution of possibility itself.

Semiotic life is self-extending relationality, the becoming of possibility in action.