Series: Construal and the Collective – Part 31
Introduction: Futures That Construe Us
To host a future is not to predict it.
It is to shape the symbolic conditions under which it might emerge.
In this post, we explore how collectives can prepare to be transformed—
by making space for what does not yet have a name, a form, or a meaning.
This is not anticipation. It is invitation.
1. The Futural Cut
A collective is never complete. It is always being re-actualised through phasing construals.
But sometimes, construal anticipates what is not yet available:
a new symbolic cut is prepared, even before it arrives.
This is the futural cut:
A shift in symbolic infrastructure that opens onto the not-yet-construed.
2. Symbolic Infrastructure
We often think of infrastructure as roads, institutions, or systems.
But symbolic infrastructure is subtler—it is the patterned ways a collective:
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Frames difference
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Admits novelty
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Stabilises emergence
It includes genres, rituals, metaphors, ontological assumptions.
Together, they constitute what a collective is ready to hear—and able to become.
3. Openness Without Collapse
To host the future symbolically is not to erase the present.
It is to:
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Leave symbolic affordances undefined
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Hold genre boundaries lightly
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Let language stretch without snapping
This kind of openness does not mean anything goes.
It means that what construes may be altered by what arrives.
4. The Paradox of Futural Readiness
The more a collective insists on its current self-construal,
the less it can symbolically accommodate transformation.
To host the future, a collective must:
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Cease projecting it as a version of the present
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Resist closing off the not-yet-known with familiar forms
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Accept that itself will be rewritten in the process
Futural readiness is a letting go that retains symbolic coherence.
5. Examples in Motion
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A tradition that carries a symbolic reserve—spaces for reinterpretation
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A movement that builds infrastructures for dialogue, not dogma
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A system that encodes its own incompleteness, refusing closure
Each becomes a host not by declaring the future,
but by making itself capable of being disrupted without disintegration.
Conclusion: From Fidelity to Fertility
To host a future is not to stay true to a form,
but to stay fertile for meaning.
It is to cultivate a symbolic architecture
that holds, shifts, listens, and remakes itself—
so that what construes today is not a prison for tomorrow.
In the next post, we ask:
What happens when symbolic hosting fails?
What does symbolic foreclosure look like, and how can it be undone?
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