Or phrased negatively, the opposite of agency can mean one of two things. Either (1) doing what you are “supposed to do,” playing social games that do not align with what, on reflection, seems valuable to you and/or (2) being passive or ineffective in the face of problems (assuming your problems can’t be solved, that someone else should solve them,... See more

agency is acting with the belief that one can attain something by committing to it. Agency is a Stoic value, as it encourages one to focus on what is under their control—taking action, self-belief, and commitment—unlike success, which requires something outside of one’s control, mainly recognition from others.

Agency, as I see it, is an amalgamation of two skills, or mental dispositions: autonomy and efficacy.

Agency requires the capacity to formulate autonomous goals in life—the capacity to dig inside and figure out what wants to happen through you, no matter how strange or wrong it seems to others. In other words, it requires autonomy (which was what I... See more