learn to notice what your awareness is doing, because a collapse in awareness is a clear sign that you are losing the capacity to make a new choice, becoming more like a train that can only run on pre-laid tracks rather than, let’s say, a drone that could go anywhere. If you notice this, first re-expand your awareness by noticing more of the space... See more
Be optimistic, you only stand to gain. You are as good as you believe you are, your beliefs will shape what you do and, ultimately, who you become. Pay attention to your thoughts, they are the First Movers of your journey through this path called ‘life’. You are not a helpless bystander, you have control. You are the main character of your story.
biggest joke of my life… after years and years of trying so hard, i can just unclench the sense of doing anything and
1. my “willpower” increases dramatically
2. i get better at pretty much everything
(this is not the same thing as non-coercion!)
A popular narrative now casts all living entities as ‘machines’ built by genes, as Richard Dawkins called them. For Mayr, biology was unique among the sciences precisely because its objects of study possessed a program that encoded apparent purpose, design and agency into what they do. On this view, agency doesn’t actually manifest in the moment of... See more
You might have independence, and you might be an ambitious person—but if you can’t even begin to fathom creating and playing by your own rules, do you really have agency?