Agency
Ideas around agency, aka the sense of control that you feel in your life + your capacity to influence your own thoughts and behavior
unoptimal and
Agency
FOMO is good. Being plugged in is good. There is valuable info at all levels from twitter gossip to philosophy books. You should stay plugged in. You can manage anxiety and beat the House without resorting to shaming social platforms into managing attention for you. That's a terrible yielding of agency.
Venkatesh Rao • Against Waldenponding - by Venkatesh Rao Against Waldenponding
“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all
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agency is acting with the belief that one can attain something by committing to it. Agency is a Stoic value, as it encourages one to focus on what is under their control—taking action, self-belief, and commitment—unlike success, which requires something outside of one’s control, mainly recognition from others.
Peter N Limberg • Be Agentic, Stupid
Interrogate your influences.
We all have favourite influencers and influences - people we know, celebrities, artists, friends, writers, and uh, influencers. Books, TV shows, movies. Most of the time we’re happy just to accept that those are the people and things we admire and seek to emulate. But what artistic careers show us is the importance of
... See moreEven if you work inside the system, you don’t need to let the system work inside of you. And if you summon up the boldness to go in a different direction, others might even surprise you by following along.
"Multitasking Isn't Progress—It's What Wild Animals Do for Survival"
It has become hard to be intentional about the future — to imagine and shape the worlds we want to live in — because the modern state rarely assumes any role in doing that or in encouraging us to do it either.
Substack • Imagining a World Beyond Consumerism
