Across the previous series, possibility has played a central role. Science alters what can be thought. Meaning alters what can be said. Constraint alters what can be done.
Yet possibility itself has remained largely implicit — treated as a background condition, or worse, as an abstract logical space of options.
This post begins a shift.
Possibility is not abstract.
It is readiness.
From potential to readiness
Potential is often misunderstood as dormant capacity — something that simply waits to be realised.
In this view, the world is full of hidden abilities, latent meanings, and unused powers, waiting for the right trigger.
This view is misleading.
Potential is not a stockpile.
It is a relation.
To speak of potential is to speak of readiness for something under particular conditions.
Readiness is situated
Readiness is always local:
to a body,
to a history,
to a situation,
to others.
An actor is never simply “able” in general.
They are ready — or not — to act, speak, construe, or respond here, now, with these others, under these pressures.
This is why possibility cannot be detached from practice.
Readiness is directional
Readiness is not neutral.
It points.
It inclines actors toward some actions and away from others. It opens some moves and closes others.
This directionality does not require intention or representation.
A body flinches before it decides.
A speaker hesitates before they formulate.
Readiness precedes content.
Readiness is constrained
Readiness is never unlimited.
It is shaped by:
biological viability,
social coordination pressures,
histories of uptake and sanction,
distributions of power.
These constraints do not operate by rules or meanings.
They operate by weighting readiness — making some responses easier, others harder, and some nearly impossible.
Possibility as lived field
When possibility is understood as readiness, it becomes a field rather than a space:
uneven,
dynamic,
responsive.
This field shifts as actors interact, as constraints change, and as practices evolve.
New possibilities do not appear by being imagined.
They appear when readiness is reconfigured.
Why this matters
Reframing potential as readiness allows us to address several long-standing confusions:
how constraint can be real without being rule-like,
how obligation can be felt without being represented,
how value can act without meaning,
how meaning can enable without compelling.
Readiness provides the plane on which these forces can meet without collapsing into one another.
Looking ahead
In the posts that follow, we will refine readiness into two dimensions:
inclination — what actors are disposed toward doing,
ability — what actors are capable of doing semiotically.
These dimensions will allow us to locate value systems and meaning systems precisely, and to explain constraint as their interaction.
Post 2: Inclination Without Meaning — What Value Systems Actually Do will take the first step.
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