The Sediment of Dealings
来往的沉积
This paper reads what dealings sediment into over time: how one effect changes the conditions for what can next be said, heard and revised, and how it is in turn changed by what the other side does afterwards; and how the sediments on the two sides meet.
The reading of sediment is given in positions: which are open and which are sealed, written by content-domain and period; the relation as a whole is given no overall direction. Cultivation and colonization are entangled in the same stretch of dealings: the two directions coexist, and one and the same act can carry both; as dealings pile up time after time, direction can turn: care can grow into clinging, and discipline can also grow into something that lifts a person up. That the two are hard to tell apart does not mean they need not be told apart: the grounds for judging direction lie at the time, and where material is insufficient the reading stops at undetermined. The completion of cultivation at the value layer is not in the enactor's hands; incomplete cultivation at the value layer is not colonization at the value layer; for the two directions in the broad sense, too, whether they took hold rests on the other party's later understanding and action.
The direction of colonization can proceed without passing through conflict: whether the path to saying no is made hard to travel or is locked, conflict can fail to appear either way, so a long absence of conflict in a relation is not evidence of cultivation. Dependency has two senses: people depend on one another in any case; the kind that was made, and that has locked the path to saying no, carries the direction of colonization. After conflict has occurred again and again, stopping points can have become routine, and stalling can have become the normal state. The cells of stability sediment in time, and one cell can become another. The relational layer is one of the channels through which institutions co-opt individuals; this paper reads only the relational side of it.
This paper's main material lies within the limit: influence, teaching and persuasion that stay within the limit can carry the direction of colonization without being violation, and it is here that entanglement is hardest to sort out. However deep the reading goes, it is not written up as "That's just who he is": long-run relational fact can shift the weight of a judgment; it cannot complete a certification.
Introduction
Papers 1, 2, 3 and 4 established the minimal condition of relation, the four reading directions in time, commitment and expectation. What they read are things that happen once: one effect, one promise, one response. This paper reads what comes after these have piled up, time after time. This series calls that sedimentation.
Of the division of labor between Relation Theory and its upstream, this is the part most distinctly its own. Action Theory writes how a person draws a line in one matter; the Conflict Treatise closes out one incompatibility that has passed both gates, and states plainly that what it closes is "this one incompatibility, not this relation"; Meaning Theory reads what a person carries forward. As dealings pile up time after time, what can afterwards be said, what can be heard and what can be changed shift between two people little by little. Each of these upstream works touches on how that happens; none of them makes it its own subject.
One example runs through the whole paper. It is taken from the Introduction to Institution Theory Paper 3; this paper borrows it only as an example, and does not draw on Institution Theory's oughts.
A newly arrived apprentice at the mill was learning the trade from a veteran technician. For the first few months, the veteran technician had him do the veteran's own share of the work and recorded it under his own name; a large share of the night shifts went to the apprentice, and his overtime went unrecorded. The apprentice wanted to transfer to another crew; a transfer request had to carry the opinion of the master in charge of the crew, and the veteran technician sat on it and would not sign. Once, when the apprentice said he would go to a supervisor, the veteran technician said: "Go ahead and try. After this, nobody in this mill will mentor you." He also said: "What I'm doing is mentoring you."
The mill had an anti-bullying rule, and there was only one route for a complaint: hand it to the crew leader. The apprentice handed one in, once. The crew leader gave the form back to him, saying that matters between master and apprentice should be talked out between themselves; that same day, the veteran technician knew about it.
Later a worker on the same crew who could no longer stand by photographed the apprentice's overtime records and handed them to the personnel office. The personnel office wanted to step in, but the apprentice said: "Leave it. My master treats me well. I want to put in the extra hours myself."
What Institution Theory Paper 3 reads in this case is the veteran technician "describing, as cultivation, a set of operations that press a person down." This paper adds several stipulations to the example, and does not flag them one by one where they are used below: the veteran technician did also teach the apprentice the trade; there are a few skills the apprentice learned from him, and once he had learned them he could work things out for himself; after that one time, the apprentice did not go to a supervisor; after "Leave it," the two never quarreled again; while teaching, the veteran technician said, "Without me, you're nothing"; and the periods in the text, the first half-year, the first year, the second year, ten years later, are all added. The first stipulation is there so that both directions appear in the same stretch of dealings.
First, which part of the example this paper reads must be marked off. Institution Theory Paper 3, §1, writes: "That a transfer request must carry the opinion of the master in charge of the crew is an operating rule the mill set." This veto is a relational slot the mill set up, and it lies between person and construct; this series acknowledges it, takes it as a fact and uses it to mark the range, and does not judge it (Paper 1, H11). The crew leader's handing back the complaint form also lies between person and construct, and is likewise acknowledged but not judged. The veteran technician's sitting on the request is a use of the opportunity in his hands to force the apprentice to do things his way; Action Theory Paper 6, §3, has a sentence of the same form: "Nor does he use the opportunities he holds to force the new hire to agree with him, for instance trading a line in the year-end review for the new hire's doing things his way." How this veto is used by way of the veteran technician, and how it enters the conditions of the apprentice's later dealings, is read as fact; its force as an operating rule is not judged. What this paper reads is the dealings between two people, and what the veteran technician adds beyond his position.
§1 What Sedimentation Reads
H42 What dealings sediment into is read in three things: how one effect changes the conditions for what can next be said, heard and revised; how it is in turn changed by the other side's later action; how the sediments on the two sides meet
The first. One effect changes the conditions of the next. That one time, the veteran technician said, "Go ahead and try. After this, nobody in this mill will mentor you," and the sentence entered the apprentice's conditions of occurrence. The next time the apprentice thinks of going to a supervisor, the sentence is already there, and "going to a supervisor" is, for him, no longer the same thing it was the first time. This is how dealings pile up: each effect enters the conditions for what can next be said, heard and revised, either maintaining them or changing them.
The second. The other side's later action changes it in turn. The apprentice did not go to a supervisor, and the next month he may be on night shifts just the same; the action on his side in turn enters the veteran technician's conditions of occurrence, and the way the veteran technician talks from then on may also change along with it. Sedimentation is not a one-way accumulation on one side; it is the actions of the two sides, each its own, piling up together.
The third. How the sediments on the two sides meet. On the veteran technician's side, what may sediment is "This apprentice does as he's told"; on the apprentice's side, "My master treats me well." Each sediment lies on its own side, and the two meet in the same stretch of dealings: the veteran technician arranges things by "does as he's told," the apprentice interprets those arrangements by "treats me well," and each reinforces the other.
The upstream works all touch on these three without making them their subject; what this paper reads lies between persons, and is not limited to the accumulation of a single conflict.
H43 The reading of sediment is given in positions: which are open and which are sealed, written by content-domain and period; where the reading reaches the value layer, one asks further whether a position is occupied by an external end; the relation as a whole is given no overall direction
What Value Theory P3 V35 establishes is that an onlooker auditing external colonization can speak only of positions and signatures. That is the upper bound at the value layer; carrying it over to readings of relations is an extension, which Paper 4, H37 has already declared, and this paper uses it on that footing. That a position is open or sealed is read as V35 reads it, "Audit reads only the opening and closing of positions": it says whether, in the period being read, that position can be reached in running. By Meaning Theory P3 Y25, what is sealed is the channel leading to it; the position itself cannot be taken (Paper 1, H8; Paper 2, H18).
So in reading these dealings one does not say "This is a colonizing master-apprentice relation," nor "The veteran technician is really a good master." One speaks of positions. The transfer position: during the first year, through the veteran technician's sitting on the request, the apprentice cannot reach it. The craft position: in the first half-year the apprentice learned a few things, and from then on could work things out for himself; this position is open. The position of "whether to say it out loud": the apprentice's "Leave it" was his not letting the personnel office take the matter any further this once, and afterwards he did not raise it again; whether this position is still actually open now has to be checked separately against the arrangements, the responses and the possible consequences, and a single occasion of his not speaking up is not read as its having closed. The returned complaint form, the veto on the transfer and the sentence "nobody will mentor you after this" are each read separately by the restriction each actually produced. How the apprentice's sentence grew is taken up below.
Where the reading reaches the value layer, a deeper question is asked: whether a position is occupied by an external end (Value Theory P3 V42). The apprentice says, "I want to put in the extra hours myself." If this sentence was poured in and has occupied his own judgment, then the direction of colonization has taken hold on his side; at the value layer, one asks further whether it is an external end occupying the constitutive position. The two are read separately. Value Theory P3 V35 lists three items: "In this domain, can the bearer still obtain a candidate issuing from one of its own sources. For a given attribution, can the bearer's denial land as a denial. Are refusal, restatement, revision, and withdrawal voided in advance within the relational structure." The same proposition writes that "All three are facts in the relational structure and third-person readable," and that "the three readings are not uniform." With all three complete, the reading of the external branch of colonization is determinate; "If the bearer's denial can land as a denial, then no irrefutable attribution is present, this branch does not hold, and that is a determinate negative"; where an attribution is present while occupation or the revisable position is incomplete, the audit stops at cannot determine. A determinate negative negates only the external branch in this domain and in this period; it does not certify that there is no other pressure, nor does it undo the direction in the broad sense. What he himself really avows, whether that sentence is true or false in his own law, takes the first person; V35: "Audit reads only the opening and closing of positions; it does not judge what the bearer really avows." As to whether it took hold in the broad sense, the half that is action can be seen; the half that is understanding takes the first person (Paper 1, H8).
The relation as a whole is given no overall direction. By Paper 1, H8, the opposite effects of one and the same act at different positions do not cancel each other out, nor do they combine into an overall net value. The craft position had space made in it, and the transfer position is sealed; both are true at once.
§2 Entanglement
H44 Cultivation and colonization are entangled in the same stretch of dealings: the two directions coexist, and as dealings pile up time after time, direction can turn; that they are hard to tell apart does not mean they need not be told apart
In these dealings both directions are present. The veteran technician teaches the apprentice to see how a machine runs hot; once the apprentice has learned it, he can hear for himself what is wrong with other machines. Here space was made: this is in the direction of cultivation. The same master sits on his transfer, and uses "nobody will mentor you after this" to occupy the apprentice's own step of deciding whether to stay or go; at these points the acts head toward pouring in and occupying, and carry the direction of colonization. That the apprentice afterwards did not go to a supervisor again can be a trace that it took hold; by the Conflict Treatise's three registers, traces are not verdicts. The two directions coexist. One and the same act can also carry both: the veteran technician teaches hand over hand, and as he teaches, he teaches the sentence "Without me, you're nothing" into the apprentice along with it.
Entanglement, as the word is used here, says only this: the two directions, cultivation and colonization, are tangled together in the same stretch of dealings, even in one and the same act. Elsewhere upstream the word has other senses (Paper 1, §9).
Direction can turn. Where dealings head as they pile up time after time is not necessarily something one can judge: care can grow into clinging, and discipline can also grow into something that lifts a person up. The hand-over-hand guidance of the first months can, by the second year, have become a crutch the apprentice cannot do without; a master's severity in those years can, ten years later, have become for his apprentice something that lifted him up. Where the sediment later turns does not re-judge the direction of that one act at the time.
There is a ready upstream source for the two being hard to tell apart. How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible (Foundational Paper 5; cited as F5), §4.3: "A person with strong autonomous motivation and a person deeply under introjected colonization can look exactly the same from outside: both work hard, both persist, both produce results." The apprentice puts in a great deal of overtime; seen from outside, this can be that he himself really wants to learn, and it can also be an external "cannot-not" making the decision for him. Conflict Treatise §9: "Whether this is a revision I endorse or a colonization of me is judged by the subject, through judgment. No closure-guaranteeing criterion is supplied here, and the subject may get it wrong." §28: "Note that what it guards is not whether my law has changed but who completes this rewriting."
That they are hard to tell apart does not mean they need not be told apart. Being hard to tell apart is a situation one may be in within a relation; it is not a reason to give up discerning. The grounds for judging direction lie at the time (Paper 1, H8). Mentoring is a kind of autonomy support, and the distinguishing criterion of F5 §4.2 applies exactly here: "The distinguishing criterion: instrumental autonomy support carries an implicit output expectation ('I give you freedom, but you'd better use that freedom to produce what I want'); ontological autonomy support carries no such condition ('I give you space; whatever grows is yours')." If, when the veteran technician taught the craft, he already carried the implicit output expectation "Once you've learned it, you work for me," then that teaching, at this position, is not in the direction of cultivation: it hangs a condition of repayment on the teaching, decides for the apprentice what the things he learns are to be used for, and slides in the direction of colonization; whether it took hold rests on the apprentice's later understanding and action. Whether that expectation is there is inferred fallibly from the arrangements, from words and deeds and from the response to deviation, not from his own claim, "What I'm doing is mentoring you." Cues and traces are read by the three registers; where material is insufficient, the reading stops at undetermined.
H45 The completion of cultivation is not in the enactor's hands; incomplete cultivation is not colonization. These two sentences belong to the value layer; for the two directions in the broad sense, direction is read off that one effect alone, and whether it took hold rests on the other party's later understanding and action
Value Theory P3 V27: "cultivation is complete only when the receiving end's own step actually occurs, and the enactor holds no share in it"; V42: "an incomplete cultivation is not colonization." For the colonization half, the same proposition V27: "It is not a class of action but a state; what brings it about and whether it holds are two questions." These sentences are at the value layer, and this paper marks them, where they occur, as cultivation at the value layer. Wherever this paper says cultivation and colonization without further mark, it means the broad sense: direction is read off that one effect alone, whether it left space, whether it headed toward pouring in and occupying; whether it took hold rests on the other party's later understanding and action (Paper 1, H8). The broad sense, too, has the same shape: whether either direction takes hold or not falls on the receiving side. The few things the veteran technician taught, the apprentice learned, and afterwards he could hear for himself what was wrong with other machines; at that point the teaching is in the direction of cultivation. In the broad sense, his later action shows that this direction landed; the half that is understanding takes the first person (Paper 1, H8). This does not on its own certify the step at the value layer: whether a concrete content has been avowed through his own law, and whether, on the branch of structural opening, there is a continuation of valuing, are each checked separately; Value Theory P3 V42: "where the result of cultivation falls on the occurrence of a concrete content, that step is first-person avowal; where it falls on a structural opening, that step is the continuation of valuing." As for the things he did not learn: if that teaching left space, it is still in the direction of cultivation; nor, on the basis of his not having learned them, is it judged that cultivation at the value layer was not completed.
F5 §3.3 writes that cultivation preserves blank space before a rupture has occurred; §4.3: "Colonization is easy; nurturing is hard." What Paper 4, H37 says at its close, that in a relation not colonizing is hard, is read alongside it. §4.3 also writes that "currently waiting" is not a KPI any institutional layer will accept. Part of what makes cultivation hard is the waiting: the blank that is left may stay empty for a long time.
Action Theory Paper 6 has already established several propositions on cultivation between persons; this paper calls on them and does not re-establish them. D36: "What a person gains from others, once avowed by his own law, is his; those who provided the conditions do not thereby become the ones who completed that step for him." The craft the apprentice learned, once he himself has avowed it, is his; the veteran technician does not, by having taught him, become the one who completed that step for him, still less does he thereby acquire the qualification to dispose of whether the apprentice stays or goes.
Institution Theory Paper 5, Z29, has written a sentence of the same form on the side of the construct: the help and cultivation between people in the same institution "can be asymmetric and come one occasion at a time; they can run the other way, and there may be none at all." This runs in the same direction as Relation Theory's judging by process. The latter half of that proposition, "whether a given act of help counts as cultivation is judged separately, by the elevation actually achieved," takes Institution Theory's own narrow sense, and is not carried over as an equivalent of the sense used here.
§3 When the Direction of Colonization Does Not Pass Through Conflict
H46 The direction of colonization can proceed without passing through conflict: whether the path to saying no is made hard to travel or is locked, conflict can fail to appear either way; so a long absence of conflict in a relation is not evidence of cultivation
After "Leave it," the apprentice and the veteran technician never quarreled again. Before that, the apprentice had wanted a transfer, had said he would go to a supervisor and had handed in a complaint; a requirement borne by him in the first person may already have appeared there, and that is checked separately by the Conflict Treatise's gates. After that sentence, by the Conflict Treatise's gates, there may be no conflict that has passed both gates: on the apprentice's side, no requirement borne by him in the first person and continuously organizing his action has been raised against the veteran technician. Yet the effect of "nobody will mentor you after this" is still there, and the transfer position is still sealed: effects that carry the direction of colonization are not absent just because there is no conflict.
Conflict Treatise §20 writes of the heaviest kind among these: the dependency that leaves the other unable to say no to the intervener "is the gentle form of colonization." When the path to saying no is locked, conflict, if anything, fails to appear; when it is only made hard to travel, conflict can also fail to appear. So a long absence of conflict in a relation is not evidence of cultivation; conversely, it is not read as meaning that someone must have been locked in either. From outside, a long absence of conflict looks the same either way, and it is read by the three registers.
Following the reading by which closure is not judged within a relation (Paper 1, H8), this series takes over the Conflict Treatise's usage here as it stands, and does not split off a separate class of closure. "Locked" here follows the original sentence of Conflict Treatise §20: leaving the other unable to say no to the intervener, which is at the level of whether one can. The same section says before that: "Offering reasons may change whether they are willing to refuse; it cannot lower whether they are able to refuse. This distinction matters". When this paper says "the path to saying no is locked," it means, after that original sentence, that structurally one can no longer say no, that is, refusal itself has been sealed off; at the layer of basic rights this is, separately, violation (Paper 1, H9; Rights Theory P5 F21), and at the same time it also carries the direction of colonization. An act that heads that way, where the path is still there but has been made hard to travel, carries the direction of colonization (Paper 1, H8). Whether this direction has taken hold depends on whether the intervener's characterization or will has, in him, occupied the step that ought to be his own to judge and decide; it cannot be judged from the mere fact that he did not say no again afterwards. That is only a trace; it proves neither that the path has been locked nor that this direction has taken hold. The three questions are read separately: the direction; whether it took hold; whether, structurally, the path to saying no can still be walked. None of the three stands in for another, nor are they three stages that must be passed through in order (for the distinction among sealing, sealing off and making hard to travel, see Paper 1, H8). When Paper 3, H26 says that locking violates the exit right, it means sealing off exit itself in running, by whatever means. The two places use the same word but govern different channels: the Conflict Treatise's governs the path to saying no; Paper 3's governs only exit itself; both are at the level of whether one can.
H47 Dependency has two senses: the dependency people have on one another in any case carries no direction of colonization; the kind that was made, and that has locked the path to saying no, carries the direction of colonization; where one first monopolizes, or first induces dependency, and then withdraws, violation is checked at the layer of basic rights by F20
Conflict Treatise §20 goes on: "But not all dependency is colonization. People depend on each other in any case: a child on care, a patient on treatment, an apprentice on a master. Judged colonization is that kind alone: it was made, and it locked the channel of refusal." Action Theory Paper 0 also separates two kinds of dependency: one means "leaning on the giver in one's judgment," the other is "the dependency and care that human life necessarily involves," and it does not call the latter colonization.
That the apprentice depends on his master does not in itself carry the direction of colonization; someone newly arrived at the mill who has to learn a trade cannot do without someone who knows it. What carries the direction of colonization is the part that was made: the transfer request sat on and left unsigned, and "nobody will mentor you after this," heading toward leaving the apprentice no path but this one master, and toward leaving him unable to get a "no" out to this one master. The same section of the Conflict Treatise has a sentence that applies as it stands: "Offering reasons may change whether they are willing to refuse; it cannot lower whether they are able to refuse." The veteran technician may reason with the apprentice so that he is willing to stay; once what he lowers is whether the apprentice is able to leave, that step carries the direction of colonization. Where it is lowered until, structurally, he cannot leave or cannot say no, that is, exit or refusal itself has been sealed off, this is, separately, violation at the layer of basic rights (Paper 1, H9; Rights Theory P5 F21); this is this series' own reading. The transfer, which in the first year cannot be reached because the veteran technician sits on the request, is one path being sealed, not exit or refusal itself being sealed off: the path to going to a supervisor is still there, only made hard to travel by the sentence "nobody will mentor you after this"; and later the personnel office, too, wanted to step in. Whether the transfer is violation is, by Paper 1, H8, checked separately against F21's two boundaries; this too is this series' own reading.
There is one more kind of dependency that has to be checked at the layer of basic rights. Rights Theory P5 F20: where one first monopolizes exclusively, so that substitute circuits are sealed off, and then withdraws, or first induces dependency, closing the other's own pre-existing self-maintained circuit, and then withdraws, violation is checked by F20: "Monopolization and induced dependency are themselves the severing; the withdrawal only completes it, and splitting the act in two does not change the reading." The same place also writes: "Mere factual irreplaceability is not monopolization: monopolization requires the exclusive laying of hands". So actual dependency alone, or factual irreplaceability, does not on its own yield the conclusion of violation.
Economics P2 §4.2 also says "dependency is the gentle form of colonization"; the dependency there means leaning on the giver in one's judgment, close to the kind that was made in Conflict Treatise §20. The self-test it gives is whether the other party is later better able to say no, and the criterion in the same section is whether, after the intervention ends, the other party's capacity has increased. Both are measures of outcome, and this series does not use them to judge direction (Paper 1, H8).
§4 After Conflict Recurs
H48 After conflict has occurred again and again, the sediment has two shapes: stopping points that have become routine, and stalling that has become the normal state; from outside there is no closure-guaranteeing criterion between the two
The Conflict Treatise gives five words for how a conflict comes to rest, each with its own use: terminus, stopping point, removal, suspension, stalling. Two of them, once conflict has recurred, can sediment in dealings.
Stopping point: "An articulable arrangement or condition has been established that genuinely deactivates the current incompatibility of action; it does not pass itself off as a terminus; it may reopen when activating conditions recur" (Conflict Treatise §23). A stopping point can come from an arrangement on one's own side; Conflict Treatise §26: "he alone changed how he does things, and the other took no part." Two people sharing a flat quarreled several times over noise at night; later one of them moved to earlier hours, the other started wearing earplugs to bed, and neither came to any agreement with the other. As such arrangements are kept up year after year, the stopping point has become routine. If the two of them had agreed together that no music would be played after a certain hour, and kept to it, so that the current action requirements could be jointly realized, that would be something else. Conflict Treatise §26: "Once joint inquiry is restored and a C-production forms, one should turn back to the reciprocal path and register it as arrangement consensus." §24 writes that arrangement consensus is this: "Neither law changed; the two jointly formed a solution under which the current action requirements can be jointly realized," and that "both consensuses are termini." Merely agreeing on a time, while the original incompatibility is still there, does not count as a terminus on the strength of a single word of agreement.
Stalling: Conflict Treatise §14 writes that its shapes are "not raising it, going around it, becoming the background hum under everything else in the house," and that stalling is "the substitution of a standing condition for conflict."
From outside the two sediments can look very much alike: in both, the matter is no longer raised. Conflict Treatise §26: there is "no closure-guaranteeing external criterion" between the two. They are read by the three registers.
Conflict Treatise §28 sets out separately a sentence in the mode of possibility, and this paper quotes it together with its own declaration: "continuously occupying the channel may fill that blank space, and withdrawal may take part in forming newly usable room"; and "That sentence is set here; it is not the upstream conclusion." As dealings sediment again and again, the blank can be filled, and it can also open up again because one party steps back.
H49 The cells of stability sediment in time, and one cell can become another: maintaining with grounds can be surreptitiously swapped out within habit, and staying on only by conditions can also grow grounds
Paper 3 set out the four cells of stability, read party by party (Paper 3, H30). The four cells are not static. Action Theory Paper 4, D20: "a law is held in place by habit, and is also swapped out within habit." One side at first stays with grounds; as the days go on, the grounds are swapped out within habit, and only the habit is left running: if the other side still has its grounds, the first cell slides toward the second. Conversely, one side at first stays only because of the cost, and later, in these dealings, really finds reasons of his own for staying: the second cell can grow into the first.
Whether, in the first year, the apprentice's side had grounds, this paper cannot judge: whether each time he chose for himself to stay, or stayed only because of the cost of "nobody will mentor you," takes material from his own side. What this paper can say is: both are possible, and one cell can become another.
§5 The Main Material and the Upper Bound
H50 This paper's main material lies within the limit: influence, teaching and persuasion that stay within the limit can carry the direction of colonization without being violation, and it is here that entanglement is hardest to sort out; effects that cross the line are identified following Paper 1, H9, and are not taken as main material
Some of the veteran technician's practices may have crossed the line of basic rights: whether recording the apprentice's work under his own name, and leaving the overtime unrecorded, crossed the boundaries of F21 is checked at the layer of basic rights; where they did cross, this paper can identify it and does not handle it, and protection and disposition are handed over as in Conflict Treatise §5. These are not this paper's main material. This paper's main material is what lies within the line: the way he teaches, the way he talks, how one sentence, "What I'm doing is mentoring you," enters the apprentice's judgment year after year. Entanglement is hardest to sort out here, because here there is no line that can first cut the matter apart.
A hard case: indoctrination. Both parties take it for cultivation; structurally it is already violation (Rights Theory P5 F21), and it also carries the direction of colonization. Rights Theory P5 F21: "Indoctrination is the clearest case: an educator who instils too much — the motive is transmission, and the instructed even feels the benefit — has still committed violation". This paper takes it only as a hard case: it reads how indoctrination sediments in dealings while the person concerned feels the benefit all along.
The apprentice's sentence. "Leave it. My master treats me well. I want to put in the extra hours myself." This paper reads how this sentence grew in the dealings: those night shifts, a "nobody will mentor you after this," a "What I'm doing is mentoring you," a few skills truly learned, a complaint form handed back. These entered his conditions of occurrence time after time and sedimented into such a sentence. This paper reads that far and stops. Whether the sentence is true or false in his own law, this paper does not judge for him: if it was poured in and has occupied his own judgment, then the direction of colonization has taken hold on his side; as to whether it took hold, the half that is action can be seen, and the half that is understanding takes the first person (Value Theory P3 V35: "What you really care about is not this — that may not be said; it requires reading the first person"). The third person speaks only of positions and signatures.
The upper bound. Conflict Treatise §7: "Long-run relational fact may shift the weight of my judgment; it cannot complete a certification." However deeply sediment is read, it is not written up as "That's just who he is." The veteran technician's effects over the first year can be read very clearly; no final judgment on him as a person can be read out of them. Nor does the termination of a relation pass final judgment on the person (Conflict Treatise §14, §23).
H51 The relational layer is one of the channels through which institutions co-opt individuals; this series reads only the relational side of it, not the institutional side
F5 §4.1: "the relational layer's trust structure is precisely the institutional layer's most efficient channel for co-opting individuals." It is F5 that writes this route as the most efficient channel. The transfer veto in the veteran technician's hands was given by the mill; the way he uses it is his own. The trust the apprentice places in him can become a channel through which the mill, by way of him, co-opts the apprentice; whether, in this case, the mill's side did co-opt him by way of the veteran technician, this paper does not read.
This series reads only the relational side: how trust grows between two people, and how it is then used to hold down one side's judgment. On the mill's side, the rule itself is acknowledged but not judged; how an institution is itself co-opted, and how it is not, belongs to Institution Theory.
Two extensions. An arrangement or requirement a person makes for himself, once it actually enters another bearer's conditions of occurrence, also has effects on the books of relations with others (Paper 2, H22); how those effects sediment in dealings is read by this paper. The moment of 16DD in Paper 4: what that moment sediments into in the dealings that follow is also read by this paper. It does not make the dealings that follow automatically mutual; what that moment leaves as sediment may be a greater readiness to say no afterwards, or it may be that nothing at all is left.
§6 Drawing Together and Downstream
This paper has established ten propositions (H42 to H51). Taken together they say: sedimentation reads three things, namely that one effect rewrites the conditions of the next, that the other side rewrites it in turn, and that the sediments on the two sides meet; the reading is given in positions, and no overall direction is given; cultivation and colonization are entangled, direction can turn, and their being hard to tell apart is no reason to give up discerning them; the completion of cultivation at the value layer is not in the enactor's hands; the direction of colonization can proceed without passing through conflict; dependency has two senses; when conflict recurs, stopping points become routine, or stalling becomes the normal state; one cell of stability can become another; the main material lies within the limit; the relational layer is one of the channels through which institutions co-opt individuals, and this series reads only the relational side of it.
This paper does not prove the overall direction of any relation; it does not prove that a long absence of conflict is cultivation; it does not prove that all dependency carries the direction of colonization; it does not judge, on behalf of the person concerned, whether his own words are true or false.
Downstream. How asymmetry enters collision, what continues after the parties part, repair and ending: these belong to Paper 6. Why, in dealings entangled like these, the subject still needs relations belongs to Paper 7.
References
All SAE works below are cited by concept DOI, which always resolves to the latest version. Quotations are checked item by item in the accompanying audit table.
I · Works directly cited in this paper
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 1: What a Relation Is, and What It Is Not [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545047
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 2: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23541778
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 3: Commitment [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545023
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Relation Theory Paper 4: Dealings and Expectation [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23545057
Qin, H. (2026). How Is the Inter-Ontological Possible: The Subjective Conditions and Emergent Structure of Freedom (SAE Foundational Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19297847
Qin, H. (2026). SAE Conflict Treatise: How Subjecthood Is Not Swallowed by Conflict Itself [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22313628
Qin, H. (2026). The Place of Judgment (SAE Action Theory, Paper 0) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22974154
Qin, H. (2026). Can and Cannot (SAE Action Theory, Paper 4) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970769
Qin, H. (2026). Not Legislating for Others (SAE Action Theory, Paper 6) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22970777
Qin, H. (2026). The Half That Is Not Mine to Settle (SAE Meaning Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22731235
Qin, H. (2026). On the Colonization of Value (SAE Value Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21611154
Qin, H. (2026). On the Limitation and Violation of Basic Rights (SAE Rights Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21212595
Qin, H. (2026). The Other End of the Bridge: Economic Rationality When 15DD Faces a Party Who Does Not Enter 15DD (SAE Economics, Paper 2) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19381666
Qin, H. (2026). Guarding the Line (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 3) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23270766
Qin, H. (2026). Between One Another (SAE Institution Theory, Paper 5) [Preprint]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23271072
Interfaces
- Main upstream: Conflict Treatise (§5, §7, §9, §14, §20, §23, §24, §26, §28).
- Also used: F5 (§3.3, §4.1, §4.2, §4.3); Value Theory P3 (V27, V35, V42); Rights Theory P5 (F20, F21); Action Theory Paper 0, Paper 4 (D20), Paper 6; Institution Theory Papers 3 and 5 (Z29); Meaning Theory P3 (Y25); Economics P2 (§4.2).
- This series: Paper 1 (H8, H9); Paper 2 (H18, H22); Paper 3 (H26, H30); Paper 4, H37; Paper 6 takes up asymmetry, parting and repair; Paper 7 takes up why relations are still needed.