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
Pessimists see problems. They worry about what could go wrong in the future. Optimists see possibilities. They focus on what could go right in the future. Proactive people turn problems into possibilities. They give us reasons to be optimistic about the future.
Adam Granttwitter.com"Proactive people turn problems into possibilities. They give us reasons to be optimistic about the future."
On the one end, you have fully reflexive agency in which you act spontaneously to satisfy your preferences, on the other end you have total obedience to some authority who tells you how to be happy, and in the middle is prompted agency.
David R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
you can just do things
basking in the grace of others
startingfromnix.com
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
Philip Ball • Life With Purpose
In the other direction, I think there are skills and dispositions which increase your agency in general. Practical wisdom, the skill of knowing that to do, is generally agency-increasing because it makes it easier to find paths to act on your preferences, so gets you used to acting in general.
David R. MacIver • Learning to exercise agency
"Can we really just do things?"
>Yes, we can!
"Can you teach me how? Is there a school?"
>Yes, we are making it happen! TPOT Agency School is happening next year!
Workshops & Talks by:
@gptbrooke, @sashachapin, @nosilverv, @kaseyklimes, @leahprime,... See more
Christopher Smederx.comthread
As the old institutions continue to crumble, the most independent minds and high-agency private networks will continue to fill the vacuum.