on agency & what it gives us
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
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
Power may really live in the hands of just 50 people, but the way it is experienced in our day-to-day lives is far more diffuse. It’s the constant feeling that anywhere and at any given moment, at the nail salon, the grocery store, while you’re walking from your front door to your car, something is being siphoned away from you without you knowing.
... See moreJasmine Bina • Repricing the Human Experience
A regulated woman pauses and gets curious. She stops absorbing what does not belong to her. That pivot is often misread as disengagement, even though it represents the return of agency.
Substack • The Workplace Runs on Dysregulated Women
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?
Alexis Aceves Garcia • What if care is the work?
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.”
Maddy Lauria • Hope is not passive: How activism keeps optimism alive
The narrative out there right now is revolution - taking back power, reclaiming control and forcing accountability. And maybe that happens. But I also know that revolution requires collective action at scale, and what I'm seeing in peoples’ behaviors and everyday choices is a very different kind of revolution.
People are leaving. The natural
... See moreJasmine Bina • Repricing the Human Experience
“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
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 more