Potentialism

Potentialism starts from the idea that our drives and capacities are neutral potentials that become helpful or harmful depending on how we express them in context.
Will is the skill of regulating these expressions – choosing how and when they show up.
Ethics means orienting expressions toward compatibility: respecting the dignity of awareness and reducing avoidable suffering.
Responsibility grows with awareness and power: the more impact we have, the more carefully we are expected to use our will and ethics to guide how our potentials are expressed, with the dignity of awareness as the ceiling for what is acceptable

This site is a home for the Potentialism Manifesto and for the people who want to work with it. It is a place to read the full text, to question and criticise it, and to share how the ideas resonate or fail in real life. Over time, it aims to collect projects, case studies and experiments – in therapy, AI, organisations and social systems – so that Potentialism does not stay a theory on paper, but is tested, refined and, if needed, contradicted in practice.

This site is for people who feel that our current languages for ethics, mental health and technology are missing something. That includes therapists and counsellors working with shame, fragmentation and inner critics; AI ethics and safety researchers who need a clearer language for awareness, power and responsibility; people designing or changing social systems and organisations; and anyone who senses that they are judged or judging themselves too narrowly, and is looking for a more humane way to relate to their own potentials.