Person

Existence Prior to Engagement

A person exists prior to any system, process, or declaration. This existence does not arise from participation, recognition, compliance, or utility. It is not produced by registration, account creation, identification, or use. The World assumes persons as present facts.

Personhood is not granted, improved, suspended, or revoked by system action. No engagement confers it. No refusal diminishes it. No silence alters it. The World does not measure, evaluate, or rank persons.

A person is not a role, credential, or status. A person is not a stakeholder, user, subject, or beneficiary. Those terms describe system relationships, not existence. The World distinguishes existence from all relationships that may follow.

The World does not assign purpose to persons. It does not infer intent, capacity, value, or obligation. It does not require expression, action, or disclosure. Presence is sufficient.

Because persons exist prior to engagement, no system action may presume access, entitlement, or proximity. Contact, use, and consequence occur only after explicit conditions are met elsewhere. Until then, the person remains untouched.

This paper does not describe what persons may do. It describes what may not be assumed about them.

2025