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Tag: free-will

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    The Friction of Authenticity

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    1–2 minutes

    We often mistake authenticity for an effortless state—the version of ourselves that remains once we “ignore everything.” Yet, a total lack of effort is a passive self, one that rolls downhill along the path of least resistance. You do not choose your destination; you are merely a byproduct of gravity and circumstance.

    True authenticity is a developed trait, not a default setting. It is the result of a passion or drive that maintains focus against external influence. (You cannot be authentic if you can be swayed; that makes you part of the crowd.)

    The difference lies in the struggle: moving downhill avoids friction but surrenders agency, while authenticity requires breaking a new trail uphill. It is an active struggle against fate, in which the “unique self” is not discovered but forged through the effort to resist the easy path.

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    The Parasitic Boogeyman

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    1–2 minutes

    Power often secures compliance by conjuring an “avatar of fear”—a boss, a rival, or a catastrophe—to justify (stabilize) a fragile status quo. This “things could be worse” tactic is a coercive deterrence mechanism that serves the “collective elite” by scaring the individual into non-agency.

    This is not a culture to “raise all boats,” but a mercenary society of individual domination. The calculus of success becomes openly parasitic upon the bonded society.

    If the path to greatness is paved with selfishness and inflated threats, the logical move for the ambitious is to fragment the culture for personal gain.

    We are left in a cycle where the elite achieve heights by creating enemies, ensuring that society eventually collapses (fragments) under the weight of its own manufactured divisions (fears).

    To rule, one must first manufacture fear (boogeyman), then feed on it.

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    Beyond Truth: Strategy Over Fact

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    1–2 minutes

    While facts are powerful and can point to the truth, they can mislead. A leader will use facts to categorize people (geography, race, religion). It is true, but it is a tool to limit full agency, turning people into victims of "facts."

    So, to protect ourselves, we learn to be skeptical: to deny accepted truths. While useful, it too is limiting.

    To recapture agency, we can temporarily ignore the framing of "truth/lies" or "good/bad" and focus on what works (utility). As we become strategists, we make changes in the world, turning us into authors who can seemingly write reality without the same limitations of those concerned with truth and facts.

    ~ from Scott Adams

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    The Paradox of Ethical Autonomy

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    1–2 minutes

    Ethics precedes choice; to act ethically is to align with a pre-existing moral structure. Culture and context define these structures, limiting the individual’s moral authorship. The individual’s choice tends to select from prior notions or frameworks.

    Thus, acts of radical freedom—like resisting systemic oppression—may be unethical within the current system, yet moral under broader humanist ideals.

    This tension reveals a paradox: the individual, desiring autonomy, must navigate between inherited ethics and universal values (both of which are communally developed ideas rather than original individual constructs).

    In such a case, "human rights" serves as both a shield and a weapon: a higher ethic (meta-tool) serving the particular desire. And yet, the ethic is still communal, only donned by the individual to both disguise and empower.

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    “only broken tools know they are tools”

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    1–2 minutes

    “Only broken tools know they are tools.”

    ~ China Miéville

    Consider that when your agency is absolute, you move through the world effortlessly while performing your function—it is who you are.

    And yet, once you break or lose your edge, you recognize how you have been used and used yourself: Your frustrated limitation allows insight that smooth functioning hides.

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    Attention as Free Will

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    1–2 minutes

    In the attention economy, our capacity to focus is the measure of our free will.

    When attention is commodified and captured by digital devices and advertising, we lose the ability to engage in deep thought -the kind that shapes an authentic self rather than one driven by manufactured desires.

    While we naturally filter countless stimuli to focus on single tasks, our attention is constantly being spent. This spending shapes who we become.

    Critically, we must choose whether we consciously direct our attention (prioritize and focus) or surrender it to external forces that would mold us according to their interests, into their subjects.

    tags insight, perspective]

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    to increase your agency is to become complicit

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    1–2 minutes

    To increase your agency within a system is to align more fully with it: power is achieved through functional value, which is making yourself available for use.

    As this exchange occurs, there is less separation between you (subject) and task/society/economics (object). This merged state, a synthesis of mutual need, flattens you into passive codependency. Agency (the power to enact change) within the system is counterbalanced by the system’s pacifying, enabling support, which makes you less you (subject) and more it (object).

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    Distancing sanctimony

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    1–2 minutes

    Freddie deBoer discusses the moral sanctimony of claiming to be on the side of the poor, disenfranchised, and mentally ill by asking for money for them.

    Consider money and social status as a feel-good distancing mechanism: write the check or post online rather than physically, personally engage with (or take responsibility for) those suffering.

    The reality is difficult but not complex: ill people do not make rational, normative decisions, but declaring their lifestyle as a choice or unique expression of their autonomy is another clever avoidance of responsibility/reality wrapped in the rhetoric of individualist freedom.

    By requesting funds without participatory understanding layered with evermore attenuated disclaimers about autonomy and agency, we are left to surround problems with resources: we encircle difficulties with money and abstract empathy, like walling off an invader or parasite, yelling our care over the barrier we created.

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    feigning agency as free will

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    1–2 minutes

    Subjectivity is about internal preferences and our personal perception of the world, while objectivity acknowledges external, unchangeable facts accepted by consensus.

    However, consider that "to object" is to block or challenge (obstruct), while "to subject" is to submit and limit yourself.

    Žižek argues that in this reversal of language use, we encounter the parallax, where the subject, typically the active agent, is acted upon by the previously passive object.

    Seen from this point of view, our subjective agency and sovereignty is a delusional game. We gracefully feign agency by embracing submission as an expression of free will: amor fati.

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    Being is allowed

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    1–2 minutes

    We have notions about who we are and what we would like to be.

    To become requires being adamant and being championed by others around you.

    You must constantly remind yourself (who you want to be) and be grateful that others allow your being, that is your agency to produce yourself in the way you wish.