Agency

There is a Tibetan form of spiritual hyperstition that is more powerful than any of the modern day forms.

It works by living and believing as if you have already awakened to the ultimate truth of reality.

Tibetan Buddhists mastered this technique hundreds of years ago.

In their “pure vision” practice, they spend all day everyday playing the role of an... See more

In my way of thinking, radical agency is about finding real edges: things you are willing to do that others aren’t, often because they’re annoying or unpleasant. These don’t always surface in awareness to the point one is actually choosing -- often they live in a cloud of aversion that strategically obscures the tradeoff.

Another example of this sort of thing that I am constantly frustrated with is something that I experience as other people being very lacking in curiosity, but from the inside is probably more a lack of reflexive agency over their understanding of the world: It seems like people just stay confused about things that matter to them, and I find this

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Agency is the skill that built the world around you, an all-purpose life intensifier that lets you make your corner of it more like what you want it to be, whether that’s professional, relational, aesthetic, whatever. Build a better mousetrap. Have an enviable marriage. Start a country. No one is born with it, everyone can learn it, and it’s never... See more

First, be clear about your intentions. For myself, I want to maximize learning and improving myself, and minimize “zombie entertainment”. This is when we’re caught in a pattern of consuming from a firehose feed for entertainment, without intentionality. It’s a fake flow state: time passes quickly and the world fades away, but there’s no cognitive... See more