One of the most interesting things about agency is that there still isn’t one agreed upon definition, we’re all still negotiating what exactly it is, but ironically I think the idea of it is made better because of some of these different formula’s I’ve seen.
Best intro’s to the idea of high-agency. https://www.highagency.com/ by George Mack On Agency by Henrik Karlsson (I’ve genuinely been waiting for him to make this essay, I knew he would.)
Three good definitions:
1.Ben Kuhn’s take:
- Agency: i.e. some combination of the initiative/proactiveness to try to make things happen, and relentlessness and resourcefulness to make sure you’ll succeed.
2. George Mack’s take:
It’s a combination of three distinct skills rarely found together:
- Clear thinking
- Bias to action
- Disagreeability
3. Henrik’s
Agency, as I see it, is an amalgamation of two skills, or mental dispositions: autonomy and efficacy.
Agency requires the capacity to formulate autonomous goals in life—the capacity to dig inside and figure out what wants to happen through you, no matter how strange or wrong it seems to others. In other words, it requires autonomy (which was what I was getting at when I said “authentically, and responsibly”).
Agency also requires the ability and willingness to pursue those goals. It requires the “will to know,” the drive to see reality as it is, so you can manipulate it deftly and solve the problems you want to solve, instead of fooling yourself that certain problems are “unsolvable.” In other words, efficacy (“handle it effectively”).
Or phrased negatively, the opposite of agency can mean one of two things. Either (1) doing what you are “supposed to do,” playing social games that do not align with what, on reflection, seems valuable to you and/or (2) being passive or ineffective in the face of problems (assuming your problems can’t be solved, that someone else should solve them, or working on things that do not in a meaningful way address the problem.)
(From his 1. definition you can see his philosophy of unfolding design in how we act.
There’s a little Same pattern; different name going on here: There’s 2 groups that bleed into each other a bit:
- Initiative/proactiveness, Autonomy, Disagreeability then:
- Efficacy, Clear Thinking, Bias to Action, Relentlessness/resourcefulness
I find Clear Thinking and Disagreeability to bleed into both groups a bit. And I also see Ben’s lacking a “Question the premise” kind of trait but perhaps it’s covered under proactiveness and resourcefulness, as the people who are like that also seem to ask those kinds of questions.
My pieces: High-agency opts you out of systems Can agency scale?
Agency is proactive; permission-less A critique of permission
Personal I had terrible agency as a kid Ask for help later than you first want to You Must Find the Truth for Yourself
We call intellectual agency Free thinking: Freethinking is intellectual agency
Agency in quotes:
On blogging an an act of agency: https://tomcritchlow.com/2022/08/29/blogging-agency/
If “grit” – the desire to persevere when faced with a challenge… has been the human trait du jour of the last fifteen-odd years, I suspect that “agency” – a belief in one’s ability to influence their circumstances – could be the defining trait of the next generation.
“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” - Steve Jobs
Henrik in his essay On Agency
The possibilities are much bigger than you think,.. you can live more deeply, and truly, and that you can solve almost any problem if you put your mind to it. A book about how to handle being sentenced to freedom, and to handle it effectively, and authentically, and responsibly. (He mentioned he got “Sentenced to freedom” from Sartre. Incredible line)