on agency & what it gives us
by Keely Adler · updated 2mo ago
on agency & what it gives us
- In ordinary language, we frequently speak of machinery or ideas ‘doing’ things in our lives. But they do nothing. People – human persons – produce, operate and apply their creations. The problem with assigning agency, even informally, to the nonhuman is that this disguises the strength of human control, limited though it is in other respects. It le... See more
from On hope, philosophical personalism and Martin Luther King Jr | Aeon Essays by Bennett Gilbert
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
- Often, hope works best alongside tools for proactively tackling future challenges. If our work becomes a catalysing force for people to imagine things they would not have been able to imagine otherwise and act upon that imagination, then that’s powerful, and for me, this is a slow form of critical activism.
from Calling for a More-Than-Human Politics by Medium
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
- hope is by no means a universal feeling. One recent study found about one-third of young adults describe themselves as encouraged about the future, but 60 percent are “very worried.”
from Hope is not passive: How activism keeps optimism alive by Maddy Lauria
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
- “Active Hope is about becoming active participants in bringing about what we hope for. Active Hope is a practice. It points us toward a way of life that enriches rather than depletes our world.”
from Welcome to Terranascient Futures Studies & Foresight by Medium
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
Agency is the capacity to act. Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something different from the rigid path of events that simply happen to you. Remarkable people typically go off-script early, usually in more than one way. Carnegie becoming a telegraph message boy is one opportunity; asking how to operate the telegraph is another. He was
... See morefrom School Is Not Enough by Simon Sarris
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
When we do not know what we should hope for, we can hope to learn. There is room for what the philosopher Jonathan Lear calls “radical hope … directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is”.
from What’s the Use of Hope? by Kieran Setiya
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
- Gaining agency is gaining the capacity to do something differently from, or in addition to, the events that simply happen to you.
from The Most Precious Resource is Agency by Simon Sarris
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognize uncertainty, you recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable,
... See morefrom Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit
Keely Adler added 2mo ago
- Hope is a gift you don’t have to surrender, a power you don’t have to throw away. And though hope can be an act of defiance, defiance isn’t enough reason to hope. But there are good reasons.
Keely Adler added 2mo ago