Agency
Everything in our world is there because someone decided it needed to exist. We all have things we know need to exist. What stops us from making them exist?
Agency
A good passage in continuation of the note on collective imaginations.
Responsibility that should be borne by an individual is dissolved amongst a group, who rely on the process of deliberation, passing on the responsibility to the organization.
Excerpt: “Committees are commonly used in our society because they create the illusion of avoiding risk. They are a wonderful device for avoiding responsibility while making the institution seem more rather than less accountable. Modern institutions have overloaded on actual risk while fleeing the appearance of it, especially if you count “failing at core mission” as a risk. Such aversion to the appearance of the unusual can’t be justified on economic grounds. Rather, it is a socially driven aversion.“
I need to come back to this.
Four ways this ailment [of not doing things] shows up as:
Learning Syndrome - “one more tutorial”
Tool Syndrome - “one more library”
Process Syndrome - “I just need the right framework”
Maintenance Syndrome - “let me take care of this first”
Refusing to choose is a choice.
Excerpt: “The upsetting implication, and why I sometimes avoid recognizing my own agency, is that if I have a choice, then what I’m doing is actually what I chose to be doing. This can be kind of upsetting for one’s self-image.”
In my experience, the way you end up doing good in the world has very little to do with how good your initial plan was.
Nate Soares • Dive in
Most people understand that a forest "doesn't exist" in the sense that humans made up that word (the trees exist in a concrete way that the "forest" does not. Same with a "lake" vs water etc)
It just occurred to me that "a person" is more like a forest than a tree
Meta on self and agency
"I could have done it, but I didn't try."
Of all the stories people tell themselves, this is the most harmful.
The truth is: If you didn't do it, and you haven't done it, then you can't do it (yet).
Until you face this harsh reality, you won't make the necessary changes. Show more
Read this a long while ago. I should probably come back to it. Most high-agency people start exhibiting it at a young age. Depending on where you are in life, it can feel like you’re allowing life to happen to you. Is the way to cure that finding examples of agency in the past to convince yourself you’re allowed to do things, or maybe just do it? Seems obvious when it is written down ha
The opposite to reflexive agency is prompted agency - agency which only becomes available given some prompt to action. “That does seem like a problem. Have you tried solving it?” is my only-half-joking prompt I use with people: It’s something that highlights the failure of agency, in a way that makes people aware that action is an option available
... See more