20 hours ago
- Agency is defined as the capacity to notice and act on the degrees of freedom life offers, requiring both awareness and action.
- Agency can be cultivated through three main pathways: psychedelic experiences, desperation (e.g., addiction recovery), and exposure to high-agency people.
- There is a key distinction between agency (personal freedom) and ambition (external achievement); toxic agency often correlates with dark triad traits and transactional worldviews.
- The book 'You Can Just Do Things' aims to provide a deliberate, accessible method for cultivating agency, as an alternative to luck or extreme circumstances.
- Romantic partnerships can enhance agency by enabling mutual support, allowing each partner to take risks and explore freedom.
- The phrase 'you can just do things' has mixed connotations—it can be empowering but also used to justify antisocial behavior, and the Bay Area's high-agency culture is prone to groupthink.