How Does Impermanence Affect Responsibility?
Impermanence means that bodies, relationships, memories, institutions, roles, meanings, symbols, and material forms change. DCI places responsibility inside that changing field, where an earlier decision may need review as conditions develop.
This page explains DCI terminology in ordinary language. Canonical formulations remain in the DCI corpus.
Responsibility inside time
A decision can be appropriate to one set of conditions and become inadequate after those conditions change. New information may arrive. Capacity can decline. A role may outlive its purpose. A relationship can acquire needs that were absent when an agreement began.
DCI therefore treats revision as part of responsible participation. Corrigibility allows a participant to remain reachable by evidence and consequence. Reauthorization keeps transformative contact connected to present conditions by updating permission as circumstances change.
Maintenance, succession, and release
Impermanence makes maintenance relevant because useful forms require recurring care. Succession matters when a function should survive a particular steward. Release becomes appropriate when a structure has ended, changed beyond repair, or consumes resources needed elsewhere.
Responsibility can therefore include tending continuity and tending endings. DCI's idea of honorable exit focuses on clarity, reachable obligations, and the conditions left for future agency.
Finite responsibility
Impermanence also places limits around responsibility. Capacity changes. Knowledge remains partial. Some consequences move beyond practical reach. Reachable onus keeps responsibility scaled to what a participant can meaningfully perceive and address now.
Canonical sources
See Impermanence, Reachable onus, and Part II: Praxis.