{
  "id": "reach.action",
  "term": "reach",
  "sense": "action",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "published",
  "level": 13,
  "domain": "agency",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "Each window a thing can enter, and each wall it can set, by its own action.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "possibility.potential",
      "window.range",
      "wall.range-end",
      "set.fix",
      "enter.spatial",
      "action.deed"
    ],
    "interaction": "Of the windows possibility leaves open, some can be entered, and some walls moved, only if the thing itself acts; that part of possibility, drawn around the thing, is its reach. It is smaller than what could happen and larger than where the thing now is.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "a region drawn around an actor",
      "the difference between what could happen and what one can make happen",
      "the object every self-model of ability reports on"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "possibility.potential",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "possibility is every window reachable from here; reach is the part reachable by the thing's own action"
    },
    {
      "id": "reach.spatial",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "the noun (a thing's reach), not the verb 'to reach a point'; the article or 'within/out of' marks the noun"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [
    "agency.capacity",
    "ally.aligned",
    "american-dream.upward-reach",
    "animal-spirits.urge",
    "asian-century.claimed-future",
    "bruised-ego.hurt",
    "buyers-remorse.own-choice",
    "checkmate.other-set",
    "chilling-effect.induced-under",
    "consent.given",
    "consumer-confidence.measured",
    "control.ability",
    "country-in-decline.downward",
    "crisis-of-confidence.collapse",
    "deep-state.hidden",
    "despair.state",
    "deterrence.modeled-wall",
    "dichotomy-of-control.sort",
    "double-bind.contradictory",
    "economic-nationalism.firms",
    "elite.few",
    "enemy.against",
    "fear-and-greed.swing",
    "fear.nearing-wall",
    "flight-to-safety.pulled-in",
    "helicopter-parenting.never-withdrawn",
    "hobsons-choice.one-option",
    "hope.emotional",
    "hubris.overreach",
    "hunger-for-change.appetite",
    "illusion-of-control.over",
    "impostor-syndrome.validation",
    "investor-sentiment.read",
    "learned-helplessness.under",
    "locus-of-control.attribution",
    "loophole.unmodelled",
    "loyalty.kept",
    "miracle-economy.outran-model",
    "mood-of-the-country.read",
    "morale.collective",
    "nation-of-shopkeepers.kind",
    "national-champion.carrier",
    "painting-yourself-into-a-corner.self-set",
    "paper-tiger.untested",
    "playing-within-yourself.margin",
    "pot-committed.priced-in",
    "power.over",
    "punching-above-our-weight.outsized",
    "reinventing-yourself.relocation",
    "relief-rally.receding",
    "rising-power.upward",
    "risk-appetite.width",
    "sandbagging.understated",
    "self-efficacy.calibrated",
    "selling-yourself-short.underpriced",
    "shell-shocked.stunned",
    "shock-doctrine.exploit",
    "sick-man-of-europe.others-read",
    "sleeping-giant.unread",
    "smothered-mate.self-set",
    "sour-grapes.want-edit",
    "taking-off-the-training-wheels.withdrawn-support",
    "ultra-vires.unauthorized",
    "ulysses-contract.precommitment",
    "us-versus-them.split",
    "watchful-waiting.declined",
    "wealth-effect.spending",
    "zugzwang.forced"
  ],
  "forms": [
    "a reach",
    "beyond reach",
    "its reach",
    "out of reach",
    "own reach",
    "reachable",
    "the reach",
    "their reach",
    "whose reach",
    "within reach"
  ],
  "closed": true,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "claude-opus-5-5:hand-curated",
    "date": "2026-09-28",
    "confidence": 0.85,
    "sources": [
      "schema/power-agency-phase.md"
    ]
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-reach.action"
}