on agency & what it gives us
“I do think there is an issue in society at the moment with the lack of agency and autonomy for people,” she says. “Guerrilla gardening, even if it is just sowing something in a tree bed, it might not change the world – you might help some bees, you might bring joy to someone walking down the street – but you’re also reminding people, or awakening
... See moreDamien Gayle • ‘I Call It Botanarchy’: The Hackney Guerrilla Gardener Bringing Power to the People
tomorrowing — an active mindset of anticipating challenges and opportunities rather than passively waiting for the future.
Sarah DaVanzo • Gen Z’s Curiosity Fingerprint for the Future
Chat” evokes what search engines and databases cannot: a sense of personal involvement. It implicates one’s selfhood, which helps cultivate certain behaviors
Anna Wiener • The Age of Chat
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... See more
Bennett Gilbert • On hope, philosophical personalism and Martin Luther King Jr | Aeon Essays
Adaptation work builds agency. It counters the attitude of ‘There’s nothing I can do’/‘I’m too small to make a difference.’ This is because, unlike decarbonisation work, it is by definition focused, local, concrete and tangible. One then reaches the point of people being able to say to themselves something like this: ‘Our climate concern isn’t just
... See moreRupert Read • Welcome to the Chaoscene
What solitude gives you is an opportunity to study what personal curiosity feels like in its undiluted form, free from the interference of other considerations. Being familiar with the character of this feeling makes it easier to recognize if you are reacting to the potential in the work you are doing in a genuinely personal way, or if you are
... See moreHenrik Karlsson • Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born
Most of us really have very little say in the diagnoses we get, even though we all carry a lot of self-knowledge about our bodies and minds. You see the impacts of this a lot when it comes to mental health and neurodivergence: people fighting for years for their autism or ADHD diagnosis, or trying to get an eating disorder diagnosis despite their
... See moreDazed • This New Book Asks Whether Capitalism Really Is Driving Us All Crazy
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 moreRebecca Solnit • Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities
This is also a form of abolition—how do we figure out how to let people be free by prioritizing their needs and getting clear about what is going to make someone feel safe in a space?