On hope, philosophical personalism and Martin Luther King Jr | Aeon Essays

"If “grit” – the desire to persevere when faced with a challenge, popularized by psychologist Angela Duckworth – has been the human trait  du jour  of the last fifteen-odd years, I suspect that “agency” – a belief in one’s ability to influence their circumstances – could be the defining trait of the next generation."

If we believe most people can’t be trusted, that’s how we’ll treat each other, to everyone’s detriment. Few ideas have as much power to shape the world as our view of other people. Because ultimately, you get what you expect to get. If we want to tackle the greatest challenges of our times – from the climate crisis to our growing distrust of one an

My sense is that those with a strong sense of personal agency don’t always realize that not everyone shares this position.

All of these underlying ideas can be thought of as a kind of folk sociology or political science. They are everyday explanations of how the world works that sit alongside the folk economics that makes people think, for example, that there is a fixed stock of jobs at any one point or that a nation’s finances should be run in the same way as those of