Agency

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

Agency can be formally defined as the subjective feeling of having control over one’s actions and their consequences…Put differently, you don’t feel as though life is just happening to you, with your only choice being to sit back and accept it all. Instead, you feel as though you are an active participant in your life; you are making things happen.

In short, if one presents high agency as the supreme good, rather than as one value within a broader ecology of values, they risk becoming an agentic fool.

So, what is “wise agency”?

To modify the above definition of agency, it is:

Taking the right action toward getting the right things done, despite complex (and clear, complicated, chaotic, or

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