PhronesisChronic urgency-addiction (CUA) is a dynamical attractor in which an agent's regulatory architecture persistently generates emergency-mode states in the absence of genuine emergencies. We develop a formal attractor-theoretic account of this phenomenon, identifying CUA as a wrong attractor W that displaces the system's natural ground state S^0—calibrated productive rhythm—through a sustained-pace foreclosure basin (SPFB).
The SPFB is a region of state space in which the behavioral and neurological feedback loops sustaining W render S^0 locally unreachable by ordinary relaxation dynamics. We propose nine propositions (P1–P9) characterizing the architecture of emergency manufacturing, the conditions for SPFB formation, the bifurcation from adaptive urgency to addictive urgency, the role of pseudo-productivity signals in stabilizing W, the cognitive costs of sustained crisis-mode engagement, and the structural requirements for a genuine return to S^0.
We distinguish calibrated urgency—appropriate alarm in the presence of genuine time-pressure—from manufactured urgency, which is self-generated and self-sustaining. The paper concludes with a constructive account of the return trajectory, describing the conditions under which the SPFB can be dissolved and S^0 restored as the dominant attractor. Our framework draws on dynamical systems theory, behavioral regulation theory, and attentional resource economics.