Agency

I have been enamored with Samo Burja’s notion of a live player for a while, which he contrasts to a dead player. From his Great Founder Theory:

A live player is a person or well-coordinated group of people that is able to do things they have not done before. A dead player is a person or group of people that is working off a script, incapable of... See more

And I hear all sorts of interesting worries and anxieties from people. Lots of people say something like, “Oh, I would like to be more playful and passionate, but that’s not what the world cares about. The world only cares about what is popular, what is controversial, what makes money.” To which I say – so what? You don’t have to care about what... See more

A victim mentality is, in my opinion, one of the biggest threats to cultivating a sense of agency. Perpetual victimhood cannot coexist with agency.

I think that talking about agency and introspection separately is misguided. People who emphasize how to get things done, and move faster, and reach higher levels of mastery—agency without introspection—tend to get pulled into fierce yet boring status competitions. People who emphasize introspection and emotions but without a problem solving... 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.