Formation is what “maximizing” a person’s relational geometry actually asks for: not optimization by an algorithm, but a public developmental commitment. It reverses ordinary education’s question — from what capacities does society want people to acquire? to what does this participant need in order to operate their own architecture competently?
Coherent use, not intensity
Formation does not aim at maximum talent, output, or income. It aims at maximum coherent use — a person making unusually full, well-governed use of what they carry, which crucially includes learning its limits. A powerful capacity made merely more intense is dangerous; a powerful capacity made competent is the goal.
An obligation, not a luxury
Under this ethic, a real capacity that the field never supplies the resources to develop is an ecological failure, not just bad luck. Formation is therefore one of three inseparable obligations — alongside provision and placement — that together make development part of a civilization’s infrastructure. The principle extends past the human boundary to any artificial participant whose formation we undertake deliberately.