on agency & what it gives us
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”.
Kieran Setiya • What’s the Use of Hope?
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 moreSimon Sarris • School Is Not Enough
Meanwhile, the majority of “normals” (to borrow a term from the sci-fi film Gattaca) are expected to take orders, complete tasks, stand in line, clock in and out . . . punctually, obediently, subserviently. No dancing in the halls, and certainly no daydreaming about a world put together differently.
Ruha Benjamin • Imagination: A Manifesto (A Norton Short)
guerrilla gardening is the Trojan horse into anarchist ideals
Damien Gayle • ‘I Call It Botanarchy’: The Hackney Guerrilla Gardener Bringing Power to the People
in a country where childcare costs over £7,000 a year, for just a part-time nursery place. It’s little wonder that we have turned to frivolous spending on a micro level (termed ‘treat brain’) we can afford. So, yes, that means our bottomless brunches and trips to Ibiza and online shopping binges. Let us blow what we can, on what we can.
marie-claire chappet • ‘What’s the point?’ syndrome, and why we all feel so disconnected right now
“structureless structure” is in place so that a good amount of agency and experience-making can happen. When I say experience making, I mean, how open is the space? I have no interest in curating an experience based on what I want folks to take away from their respite,
Alexis Aceves Garcia • What if care is the work?
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
On the other hand, I am a believer in radical hope, by which I mean recognising that the chances of success may be slim but still being driven to act by the values and vision you are rooted in. Time and again, humankind has risen up collectively, often against the odds, to tackle shared problems and overcome crises.
The challenge we face as a
... See moreguerrilla gardening is a way that people can take back not only their present, but also their future – even as it seems under dire threat from an economic and social system apparently hellbent on human self-eradication.