If gravity cannot be a force, then mass cannot be the thing a force acts upon.
This is not a redefinition added for convenience. It follows directly from the relational reconstrual already in place: mass is not intrinsic substance, but resistance to reconstrual — the stability of a configuration across perspectival cuts.
The task of this post is to take that definition seriously and follow it where it must lead.
From local resistance to relational consequence
To say that a configuration has high mass is to say that it is difficult to re-cut without loss of coherence. Its potential space is narrow; alternative actualisations are tightly constrained.
Crucially, this resistance cannot remain local.
Cuts do not occur in isolation. Every instantiation is coordinated with neighbouring possibilities — other cuts that must remain mutually compatible if persistence across perspective is to be maintained. A configuration that strongly resists reconstrual therefore reshapes the space of possible cuts around it.
Mass, once understood relationally, must have consequences beyond the configuration itself.
Thickening the space of possible cuts
The effect of high resistance to reconstrual is not attraction or influence. It is thickening.
By thickening we mean:
an increase in constraint density,
a reduction in the availability of alternative cuts,
a tightening of dependency relations,
and a sharpening of incompatibility boundaries.
The relational architecture surrounding a high-mass configuration becomes denser, less permissive, more structured. Certain sequences of cuts remain viable; others quietly disappear.
Nothing moves. Nothing pulls. Possibilities close unevenly.
Why thickening is unavoidable
Once mass is defined as resistance to reconstrual, thickening is not optional.
If high-mass configurations did not reshape neighbouring relational possibilities, then:
persistence across perspectives would fracture,
dependency orderings would fail to coordinate,
and the configuration would not, in fact, be stable.
Relational persistence demands that resistance propagate architecturally, not causally.
This is why gravity does not need to be added to the ontology. It is what resistance looks like when viewed from outside the resisting configuration.
The appearance of attraction
From within the thickened architecture, sequences of cuts tend to align toward the high-resistance configuration. This alignment is not caused; it is permitted.
The phenomenology of attraction arises because:
fewer viable cuts remain that diverge from the high-mass ordering,
dependency chains preferentially resolve toward the most stable configuration,
incompatibilities accumulate more rapidly elsewhere.
What appears as “falling toward” is the experiential trace of constrained persistence.
Preparing the next step
At this stage, we have:
eliminated force as an explanation,
reconceived mass as resistance to reconstrual,
and shown why such resistance must thicken relational constraint.
What we have not yet done is invoke geometry.
In the next post, we will show how curvature emerges without spacetime — how thickening manifests as asymmetry in dependency–incompatibility orderings, without invoking manifolds, metrics, or background containers.
For now, the claim stands:
Mass does not attract. It thickens the relational architecture in which persistence remains possible.
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