Agency

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

Stephen Cave formalized “Freedom Quotient” as an additional dimension to evaluate human competencies beyond IQs (intelligent quotient) and EQ (emotional quotient). Cave defined FQ as a measure of natural free will, and he argues that smoothing out inequalities in FQ – and to raise the FQ of everyone – should be a goal of schools and of social

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How can I thrive while operating contrary to dominant social and cultural trends?

The experts all agree: the trend, they say, is your friend.

All you need to do is identify it, and then you ride it out. And, true enough, I’ve watched thousands of people make a buck doing just that. If you are active in the arts, that may be the single most obvious... See more

“A people or a class which is cut off from its own past is far less free to choose and to act as a people or a class than one that has been able to situate itself in history.” - John Berger

if i'd had more agency when I was younger,

I would have acted on some truly terrible decisions that I may never have recovered from

...which makes me suspicious of agency as the latest all-good panacea