Glossary

Orientation and Base Terms

This glossary fixes terms required to read the work that precedes and follows. Terms appear in the order they are needed.

Orientation terms describe recurring structural failures observed in existing systems. They are diagnostic only. No mechanism or rule relies on orientation terms.

Base terms describe conditions that exist prior to engagement. Base terms are not altered downstream.

I. Orientation — Structural Failure Terms

These terms name patterns observed in existing systems. They are descriptive, not operative.

Legitimacy Inversion: A condition in which systems require compliance from individuals while exempting themselves from equivalent standing, exposure, or consequence.

Jurisdictional Absence: The condition in which systems act upon persons without acknowledging jurisdiction over the person as a person.

Threshold (as absence): The absence of a clear, enforceable boundary determining when authority, use, or consequence becomes legitimate. In its absence, action precedes standing.

Inversion of Risk: A condition in which institutional uncertainty, failure, or illegitimacy transfers cost and exposure downward to individuals by default.

Settlement Without Standing: The extraction, monetization, or resolution of value derived from persons without prior authority to do so.

Instrument Priority: A condition in which tools, platforms, or processes are treated as having authority independent of the standing required to use them.

Administrative Substitution: The use of procedural compliance in place of legitimate authority or jurisdiction.

Pre-Participation Contact: Interaction, influence, or use occurring before engagement, consent, or declared intent.

II. Base Terms — Conditions Prior to Engagement

Person: A human individual who exists prior to any system, process, or declaration. Personhood is not granted, inferred, modified, suspended, or revoked by participation, recognition, or use.

Presence: The condition of existing without action, declaration, or participation. Presence does not imply engagement, availability, consent, or intent.

Continuity: The condition of persistence across time without requiring action, engagement, or justification. Continuity exists prior to and independent of systems. Continuity is not participation, and it does not lapse through inaction or silence.

Engagement: Any action that creates contact, use, or consequence within a system. Engagement occurs only when explicitly initiated under defined conditions. Absence of engagement is not engagement.

Refusal: The condition of non-participation. Refusal exists independent of action, declaration, or justification. It does not expire through silence and does not impose cost by default.

Silence: The absence of action or declaration. Silence does not imply consent, delay, intent, availability, or risk. Silence is not a signal.

Time: The condition of sequence. Sequence is not reversible.

III. Structural Terms — Named Elements (Non-Operative)

These terms name elements already described elsewhere in the work. Definitions here are referential only.

Inclusion in this glossary does not create authority, permission, behavior, or obligation. No mechanism relies on glossary definitions to operate.

Threshold: The binary legitimacy boundary that determines whether a proposed action may proceed. Threshold evaluates standing, not intent, benefit, urgency, or outcome.

Clearing: The structural layer that ensures actions reaching people have already satisfied legitimacy, scope, and consequence requirements.

Ledger: The system of record that preserves legitimacy states and their sequence.

Settlement: The mechanical routing of consequence for actions whose legitimacy has already cleared and been recorded.

Enforcement: The prevention of illegitimate action from producing binding consequence.

Window: A forward-facing disclosure surface that displays only what entities require from people and what they are offering.

Hall: The human-facing surface where permitted requests arrive and where engagement or refusal may occur.

Wanble: A non-executing symbolic notation used to express eligibility states, dependency, refusal, rest, and constraint.

Memory: The persistence of legitimacy states once recorded.

Consequence and Eligibility States

Mark: A time-limited public visibility state applied after a serious but non-terminal violation.

Scar: A persistent public legibility state applied to near-exclusion violations.

Exclusion: The terminal eligibility state in which an entity may no longer participate.

Three-Strikes Structure: The fixed sequence governing entry into consequence states:

Strike One → Mark
Strike Two → Scar
Strike Three → Exclusion

Strikes are triggered by structural conditions, not intent, explanation, or mitigation.

Reinstatement: A declared, non-discretionary restoration of eligibility after a completed exclusion period.

2026