I think people are skeptical of "agency" because people conflate traits and virtues, and agency isn't really a virtue in the classical sense. Plus, people are tired of the "move fast and break shit" philosophy of tech.
And also it doesn't help that "agentic" would apply to a ton of highly accomplished people but it's usually left out as a descriptor when the people have more visible, obviously beneficial or positive accomplishments.
As a result, what happens is pretty unpopular people (VCs) praise people like Roy Lee as agentic when it's not clear to most people that what they're working on is net positive (or even kinda positive?), and it looks like lionization or implying they're virtuous in some way, which reads as incredibly bleak.
But people who have done more obviously positive things and are highly agentic (like the Collison brothers, Melanie Perkins, Nat Friedman, or Laura Deming) get described in a million other ways.
So agency ends up looks like black magic or dark arts, a counter-virtue which only applies to people who will do or break whatever they can to get ahead, not like an important trait for people who accomplish important, unorthodox things.
I think an interesting article would be exploring how certain popular and obviously non tech characters were/are super agentic—people like Mr. Rogers, Dolly Parton, Julia Child, Jose Andres, Malala, Hayao Miyazaki, LeVar Burton etc. The main problem is that these people DO/DID “work too hard,” per your original 6 criteria, but many are otherwise slam dunks
Love this idea. I also wouldn't be surprised if more virtuous motivations for high agency correlate with that work-too-hard feature, as opposed to those motivated by power (maybe) being more inclined to look for a shortcut. Obviously that's not to say a lack of working too hard is a bad thing, but maybe a rule of thumb for spotting the "good ones"?
I think it hinges on your definition of what a shortcut is and whether there's any moral valence to finding and taking shortcuts. One of the key insights I’ve taken away from Cate’s writing on agency is that shortcuts don't necessarily have a moral valence.
Wow thank you for saying this, exactly why I’ve come to hate the word agentic and how it’s being used now, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to do
The problem is that the whole agency thing belongs to the growing category of concepts whose meaning depends on which political bucket the social media algorithms have put you in.
I guarantee you if you asked the average person who buys into the agency thing what they thought of the Collinsons, Melanie Perkins, Nat Friedman, and Laura Deming, they’d undoubtedly say those people are high agency. It’s also unclear quite what you’re saying with these examples. Not sure what you mean when you say those people are described “a million other ways”. I’m sure they have been or would be described as agentic. And I’m sure the people you’ve seen described as agentic are also called a million other things. If what you’ve seen deviates significantly from that, it’s probably because of the highly curated subset of views you get served by the algorithms.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of people we might cite as typical exemplars of civic virtue accomplished their achievements with a very specific set of experiences, associations, and personal traits. They probably did well in school and associated with various prestigious institutions. They’re overwhelming from big cities, Western nations, and stable and supportive families. They’re probably organised, conscientious, and extroverted by nature—not to say they haven’t cultivated themselves, but they were spikey in the right traits to begin with.
Cat may disagree with me on this, but I think some people are born with higher agency traits than others. I absolutely believe agency can be cultivated, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people with an innate predisposition to “high agency” behaviour. That’s how most traits work: they can be cultivated, but some people start with an innate advantage.
The talk about agency online isn’t for those people, nor is it about those people. In the first instance, it’s for people who are predisposed to struggle with it, like me and Cat—people who’ve struggled with addiction, impulse control, and ADHD. In the second instance, it’s for everyone else, because there are a lot of norms we don’t break which we should.
I grew up believing it was rude and uncouth to promote yourself (UK upbringing, go figure). But this isn’t so great when you’re applying for jobs! It’s easy for us to consider whether we should attempt something worthwhile and then look at the people doing it and think we’re not good enough, or that there’s no clear path to it, or that it isn’t possible when in fact it’s probably more possible than we realise.
Generations of kids have grown up with this kind of learned helplessness that lulls you into this stupor that’s difficult to get out from under. I wanted so badly to have a job and earn money as a kid. I wanted to start a business. But the only job I could get was delivering newspapers for a laughable sum of less than £3 an hour. I worked all day because none of the other kids showed up. I eventually left when, at the end of my last week’s work, they halved my pay, saying “oh, nobody told you?” I had to bike 5 miles just to get to the shop, and it was steep uphill back, so it wasn’t worth it any more. When my friend and I wanted to start a business writing basic Python programs for laundromats, my parents—both busy with full time jobs—dismissed it as nonsense and refused to let me do it because I was “too young” and it was “too much hassle”. And when we tried anyway, nobody would even let us show them the program. I struggle constantly between nature and nurture, and reading Cat’s work has helped me break free of some of those deeply instilled beliefs (“it won’t work”, “you won’t be able to do it”, “you’ll screw it up”, “you’ll embarrass yourself”, “there’s nothing I can do”, “I just have to accept it”). Those experiences aren’t the only reason I struggle with agency, but they’re one of them.
If your life hasn’t been that way, if you haven’t struggled with stunted agency or learned helplessness, then the concept of agency may not resonate with you?
Don’t allow a sordid few to colour your view of the agency stuff. Be more specific in your critique. If your point is that people are cloaking bad behaviour in the language of a hip modern (yet nonetheless legitimate) virtue, that’s fine, but that’s hardly a novel take. If that’s the case, you should ask yourself whether you’ve applied that principle to similarly questionable adoption of nouveau virtues in your own camp (whatever camp that may be). If you want to critique agency-as-virtue itself, critique the concept rather than a few of its adherents. Criticism of those who espouse a particular idea is at best only circumstantial evidence that the idea itself is bad.
I mean no disrespect at all, but it somewhat feels like your criticism is rooted less in any legitimate criticism of agency as a virtue and more in the fact that it’s “vibes of the enemy”. It’s very possible I’ve misunderstood your point, and perhaps I’m being less than perfectly charitable here, but I struggle to find in your comment a criticism of the idea itself. It’s all predicated on a largely unnamed subset of adherents that you have come across, probably via your highly curated social media algorithms.
I have this issue with the way most people read the news... ruminating on a bunch of negative headlines you have no control over will ironically make you less likely to create positive change in the world. It will be bad for your mental health and therefore motivation, productivity, agency, etc, while still making phone use feel "productive." Of course staying informed can be useful, but most people would be vastly better served by cutting their news reading in half and replacing that with almost anything else (but certainly something like volunteering, building a side project, or just talking to more human beings!)
Hell no, that's a scam. You don't need to care about random shit halfway across the globe to make the world a better place.
You have the highest impact on the people you interact with directly in your life. If you're a good friend, partner, coworker, etc, then you've made the world a better place. If you smile at someone on the street, you've made the world a better place. etc.
I do not expect to change YOUR mind, but for the sake of any others reading this, I want to point out that "tribalism" and "random shit the media wants you to think about" are not the only two choices.
It is possible to care about people beyond your own circle and try to help them WITHOUT being a mindless slave to media.
Society has gone away with why news may be important or why it was important previously, where it kept you abreast of happenings within your community and, with a small segment, the general news of the week/day from around the globe. Incentives made that coverage both negative and worse and less local (less relevant to any individual) but more likely to get distribution across areas ($ driver).
Harder model of distribution to do local/area/regional. Spoke with someone who was trying to develop a video network to do this, and technology/AI is such that it could serve any individual with the stuff that that individual is interested in.
It’s wild for the Times to print that article in an era beset by low agency people inflicting such harm on society. Incels are low/no agency beings right up until they go on a shooting spree. Gen Z is famously low agency! They can’t even talk to each other in bars or learn to cook dinner and they’re all miserable. The world needs much more agency right now.
Interesting. To me agency is about whether you can make choices that impact the world around you (regardless of scale). In my head it’s about whether you’re playing life with choices. Or if you’re stuck on a single railroad track from here to eternity.
I wonder whether some amount of the “high-agency comes easily to bad people” phenomenon owes to the motivating force of certain emotions, like defiance.
My high school rowing coach maintained that the most reliable way to certain boys (ehem) to do something was to tell them they weren’t capable of it—not out of spite, but out of genuine solicitude. “That thing is too heavy for just the two of you to move; wait for more guys to arrive, then move it.” He returned five minutes later to find the job done; two scrawny teenage boys had promptly moved something that typically required the strength of eight men to carry.
I hate to admit it, but nothing gets me off my ass like wanting to stick it to someone. It’s far from the only thing that motivates me, but it’s among the most reliable. I loathe myself every time I think about it; it feels childish, spiteful. Why doesn’t upside potential motivate me as much as the prospect of proving a doubter wrong? It’s just… how I am. Does that make me a sociopath?
I owe as much to those who’ve doubted, jeered, and sneered as to those who supported and encouraged me. An alloy of both probably trumps having either alone.
It’s adjacent to competitiveness, which is another one of those traits associated with low likability that isn’t intrinsically bad and can actually be hugely beneficial both for the person and for society.
I was unaware of this dialogue about agency in the cultural zeitgeist right now. But on a personal level making friends with my will and coming to know that I am capable of making things happen in my life rather than things just happening to me has been a huge part of developing my own inner sense of self and healing from a childhood where I learned to dissociate from an early age. As I was growing my own capacities and deepening my self-trust my mother was also dying. Toward the end she was filled with regret and one of her support staff mentioned that her sense of loss sounded sadly like the result of her not having had a sense of agency. When that person left the room, my mom turned to me and asked "What's agency?" It was heartbreaking to see someone I cared about come to the end of her life not knowing that she could have made things happen for herself rather than feeling powerless. So when I think of my own agency I think about it as a gift. That I know that in embracing my responsibility I am able to make decisions, take actions, and create from my vision. It is a capacity that I have worked hard to cultivate, that I don't take for granted and that am deeply grateful for.
You're obviously correct to point out that high agency is not intrinsically bound to low morality, only correlated. I think the op-ed goes wrong because it starts to quietly conflate agency with power, which then taps into the power-analysis politics that we've been struggling with for years: Many high-profile, powerful people do things that harm less powerful people, but in sympathizing with victims we sometimes valorize victimhood, and some people become convinced that to be morally good, one must also be powerless. Now by extension, they must also be low agency.
To put it another way, there's a popular conception that high agency, high power, and low morality are inextricably linked, when in fact you could be any combination of high and low on all of them. As you rightly point out, this persuades some high-morality people that they *should* be low-agency, and ironically, this is catastrophic for any attempt to break the low-morality/high-power dynamic the op-ed is concerned with because we need more high-morality/high-agency people to do so.
I’m wondering how much agency even is correlated with dark triad traits. I thought your explanation made sense, but I’m also thinking of Berkson’s paradox, in which a sampling mechanism (here, publicity? high visibility industries?) is creating what appears to be a negative correlation (agency + being a good person or doing “good” work), when really we’re just not observing the whole population, where agency might actually be distributed neutrally in relation to other traits.
Love the essay Cate, I've been thinking a lot on this specific concept. I think of you specifically as one of the best advocates for individual agency, but I also think it's worth considering the relationship between agency as a striver ideal and agency as it exists in moral philosophy. I believe they can be more compatible than the discarding of the latter by proponents of the former would suggest. The worst exemplars of the sociopathy you call out in this post violate many of the principles that Immanuel Kant sets out in his philosophy, particularly those regarding the instrumentalization of others and the universalizability of our maxims. If instead we promote individual agency in the form of using the opportunities that are neglected by others, but condemn the negative-sum violation that comes from viewing everyone around you as a means to your own ends, it strengthens the appeal of 'agency' as a concept that can be adopted by those who are uncomfortable with its prominence among the openly narcissistic.
I’m not convinced all the “you can just do things” tech people are psychopaths. Some of them, sure, but I doubt it’s radically more than write for the New York Times. It’s become commonplace to derisively psychoanalyse those one disagrees with.
Also: “likability” is a questionable heuristic for moral character. History is riddled with figures whose actions elicit special praise because they did the right thing despite it making them less likable in the minds of the majority. By contrast, too, there are tons of examples of likeable people who did terrible things; often these people would have done significantly less damage had they not been so likable.
This article seems to understand that, but it doesn’t explicitly question the flawed premise that “likable” == “good”.
"If the good-hearted, prosocial people of the world took on 10 percent of the courage of ruthless antisocial powermaxxers, we would all be better off."
Going from a chapter of Atlas Shrugged to this blog post was a divinely timed fever dream.
"If you put a gun to their head and demanded they give you ten ideas for how to make their zip code or their country better, they would prove inventive."
Who is holding the gun, Cate? They're out here doing things.
The more I see the claim that posting online isn't "actually" doing anything, the more moved I am in the other direction - if only in a perception-is-reality kind of way, it matters what people are paying attention to and saying online. Even virtue signaling and awareness-raising are real methods of communication that affect behavior. Of course it's low effort. But I don't think someone would say they deserve an award for their grueling work sharing an Instagram story, so it feels like a one-sided fight that makes me suspicious of the side that picks it. I completely agree the scope of "being informed is important" is way out of hand. I just am skeptical of the implications that come with using it as the foil for agency (e.g., that a slacktivist's time on social media is taking up their Doing Actually Great and Important Things time/energy budget), rather than arguing for its merits (which you very often do). Otherwise I appreciated this reflection, as I've gotten sick of empty appeals to agency on X but still need the reminders. I've enjoyed your writing very much and am looking forward to reading the book!
'The best who lack conviction.' That line has been sitting in the culture for a century and this is the first time I've seen someone build a practical answer to it.
I think people are skeptical of "agency" because people conflate traits and virtues, and agency isn't really a virtue in the classical sense. Plus, people are tired of the "move fast and break shit" philosophy of tech.
And also it doesn't help that "agentic" would apply to a ton of highly accomplished people but it's usually left out as a descriptor when the people have more visible, obviously beneficial or positive accomplishments.
As a result, what happens is pretty unpopular people (VCs) praise people like Roy Lee as agentic when it's not clear to most people that what they're working on is net positive (or even kinda positive?), and it looks like lionization or implying they're virtuous in some way, which reads as incredibly bleak.
But people who have done more obviously positive things and are highly agentic (like the Collison brothers, Melanie Perkins, Nat Friedman, or Laura Deming) get described in a million other ways.
So agency ends up looks like black magic or dark arts, a counter-virtue which only applies to people who will do or break whatever they can to get ahead, not like an important trait for people who accomplish important, unorthodox things.
I LOVE this comment, such a great observation.
I think an interesting article would be exploring how certain popular and obviously non tech characters were/are super agentic—people like Mr. Rogers, Dolly Parton, Julia Child, Jose Andres, Malala, Hayao Miyazaki, LeVar Burton etc. The main problem is that these people DO/DID “work too hard,” per your original 6 criteria, but many are otherwise slam dunks
Love this idea. I also wouldn't be surprised if more virtuous motivations for high agency correlate with that work-too-hard feature, as opposed to those motivated by power (maybe) being more inclined to look for a shortcut. Obviously that's not to say a lack of working too hard is a bad thing, but maybe a rule of thumb for spotting the "good ones"?
I think it hinges on your definition of what a shortcut is and whether there's any moral valence to finding and taking shortcuts. One of the key insights I’ve taken away from Cate’s writing on agency is that shortcuts don't necessarily have a moral valence.
Wow thank you for saying this, exactly why I’ve come to hate the word agentic and how it’s being used now, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to do
The problem is that the whole agency thing belongs to the growing category of concepts whose meaning depends on which political bucket the social media algorithms have put you in.
I guarantee you if you asked the average person who buys into the agency thing what they thought of the Collinsons, Melanie Perkins, Nat Friedman, and Laura Deming, they’d undoubtedly say those people are high agency. It’s also unclear quite what you’re saying with these examples. Not sure what you mean when you say those people are described “a million other ways”. I’m sure they have been or would be described as agentic. And I’m sure the people you’ve seen described as agentic are also called a million other things. If what you’ve seen deviates significantly from that, it’s probably because of the highly curated subset of views you get served by the algorithms.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of people we might cite as typical exemplars of civic virtue accomplished their achievements with a very specific set of experiences, associations, and personal traits. They probably did well in school and associated with various prestigious institutions. They’re overwhelming from big cities, Western nations, and stable and supportive families. They’re probably organised, conscientious, and extroverted by nature—not to say they haven’t cultivated themselves, but they were spikey in the right traits to begin with.
Cat may disagree with me on this, but I think some people are born with higher agency traits than others. I absolutely believe agency can be cultivated, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people with an innate predisposition to “high agency” behaviour. That’s how most traits work: they can be cultivated, but some people start with an innate advantage.
The talk about agency online isn’t for those people, nor is it about those people. In the first instance, it’s for people who are predisposed to struggle with it, like me and Cat—people who’ve struggled with addiction, impulse control, and ADHD. In the second instance, it’s for everyone else, because there are a lot of norms we don’t break which we should.
I grew up believing it was rude and uncouth to promote yourself (UK upbringing, go figure). But this isn’t so great when you’re applying for jobs! It’s easy for us to consider whether we should attempt something worthwhile and then look at the people doing it and think we’re not good enough, or that there’s no clear path to it, or that it isn’t possible when in fact it’s probably more possible than we realise.
Generations of kids have grown up with this kind of learned helplessness that lulls you into this stupor that’s difficult to get out from under. I wanted so badly to have a job and earn money as a kid. I wanted to start a business. But the only job I could get was delivering newspapers for a laughable sum of less than £3 an hour. I worked all day because none of the other kids showed up. I eventually left when, at the end of my last week’s work, they halved my pay, saying “oh, nobody told you?” I had to bike 5 miles just to get to the shop, and it was steep uphill back, so it wasn’t worth it any more. When my friend and I wanted to start a business writing basic Python programs for laundromats, my parents—both busy with full time jobs—dismissed it as nonsense and refused to let me do it because I was “too young” and it was “too much hassle”. And when we tried anyway, nobody would even let us show them the program. I struggle constantly between nature and nurture, and reading Cat’s work has helped me break free of some of those deeply instilled beliefs (“it won’t work”, “you won’t be able to do it”, “you’ll screw it up”, “you’ll embarrass yourself”, “there’s nothing I can do”, “I just have to accept it”). Those experiences aren’t the only reason I struggle with agency, but they’re one of them.
If your life hasn’t been that way, if you haven’t struggled with stunted agency or learned helplessness, then the concept of agency may not resonate with you?
Don’t allow a sordid few to colour your view of the agency stuff. Be more specific in your critique. If your point is that people are cloaking bad behaviour in the language of a hip modern (yet nonetheless legitimate) virtue, that’s fine, but that’s hardly a novel take. If that’s the case, you should ask yourself whether you’ve applied that principle to similarly questionable adoption of nouveau virtues in your own camp (whatever camp that may be). If you want to critique agency-as-virtue itself, critique the concept rather than a few of its adherents. Criticism of those who espouse a particular idea is at best only circumstantial evidence that the idea itself is bad.
I mean no disrespect at all, but it somewhat feels like your criticism is rooted less in any legitimate criticism of agency as a virtue and more in the fact that it’s “vibes of the enemy”. It’s very possible I’ve misunderstood your point, and perhaps I’m being less than perfectly charitable here, but I struggle to find in your comment a criticism of the idea itself. It’s all predicated on a largely unnamed subset of adherents that you have come across, probably via your highly curated social media algorithms.
Well, what do you think I was saying? There's a lot going on in your comment and it's kind of hard for me to parse what you're disagreeing with.
Yes, this phenomenon distorted the word agency beyond recognition
I have this issue with the way most people read the news... ruminating on a bunch of negative headlines you have no control over will ironically make you less likely to create positive change in the world. It will be bad for your mental health and therefore motivation, productivity, agency, etc, while still making phone use feel "productive." Of course staying informed can be useful, but most people would be vastly better served by cutting their news reading in half and replacing that with almost anything else (but certainly something like volunteering, building a side project, or just talking to more human beings!)
Reading the news is fucking pointless lmao.
Every 3 months, I ask ChatPGT what happened in the last 3 months. Then I go back to not caring for the next 3 months.
Are you trying to make the world better, though?
Hell no, that's a scam. You don't need to care about random shit halfway across the globe to make the world a better place.
You have the highest impact on the people you interact with directly in your life. If you're a good friend, partner, coworker, etc, then you've made the world a better place. If you smile at someone on the street, you've made the world a better place. etc.
Do you believe in climate change? Do you believe in pollution? Do you vote in elections?
What you describe is tribalism. Tribalism is better than pure selfishness, but it is also the root of much evil.
Tribalism > your attention and care getting siphoned away to a bunch of random shit the media wants you to think about.
You are incredibly lame oof
I do not expect to change YOUR mind, but for the sake of any others reading this, I want to point out that "tribalism" and "random shit the media wants you to think about" are not the only two choices.
It is possible to care about people beyond your own circle and try to help them WITHOUT being a mindless slave to media.
Yah. Tribalism 4 life breh
Society has gone away with why news may be important or why it was important previously, where it kept you abreast of happenings within your community and, with a small segment, the general news of the week/day from around the globe. Incentives made that coverage both negative and worse and less local (less relevant to any individual) but more likely to get distribution across areas ($ driver).
Harder model of distribution to do local/area/regional. Spoke with someone who was trying to develop a video network to do this, and technology/AI is such that it could serve any individual with the stuff that that individual is interested in.
your point about the people who most talk about the agency reminds me of a quote ive always liked that "honesty without compassion is hostility".
essentially, a virtue held with bad posture quickly turns into a pretty noxious vice?
It’s wild for the Times to print that article in an era beset by low agency people inflicting such harm on society. Incels are low/no agency beings right up until they go on a shooting spree. Gen Z is famously low agency! They can’t even talk to each other in bars or learn to cook dinner and they’re all miserable. The world needs much more agency right now.
Interesting. To me agency is about whether you can make choices that impact the world around you (regardless of scale). In my head it’s about whether you’re playing life with choices. Or if you’re stuck on a single railroad track from here to eternity.
I wonder whether some amount of the “high-agency comes easily to bad people” phenomenon owes to the motivating force of certain emotions, like defiance.
My high school rowing coach maintained that the most reliable way to certain boys (ehem) to do something was to tell them they weren’t capable of it—not out of spite, but out of genuine solicitude. “That thing is too heavy for just the two of you to move; wait for more guys to arrive, then move it.” He returned five minutes later to find the job done; two scrawny teenage boys had promptly moved something that typically required the strength of eight men to carry.
I hate to admit it, but nothing gets me off my ass like wanting to stick it to someone. It’s far from the only thing that motivates me, but it’s among the most reliable. I loathe myself every time I think about it; it feels childish, spiteful. Why doesn’t upside potential motivate me as much as the prospect of proving a doubter wrong? It’s just… how I am. Does that make me a sociopath?
I owe as much to those who’ve doubted, jeered, and sneered as to those who supported and encouraged me. An alloy of both probably trumps having either alone.
It’s adjacent to competitiveness, which is another one of those traits associated with low likability that isn’t intrinsically bad and can actually be hugely beneficial both for the person and for society.
my husband is the same way :)
I was unaware of this dialogue about agency in the cultural zeitgeist right now. But on a personal level making friends with my will and coming to know that I am capable of making things happen in my life rather than things just happening to me has been a huge part of developing my own inner sense of self and healing from a childhood where I learned to dissociate from an early age. As I was growing my own capacities and deepening my self-trust my mother was also dying. Toward the end she was filled with regret and one of her support staff mentioned that her sense of loss sounded sadly like the result of her not having had a sense of agency. When that person left the room, my mom turned to me and asked "What's agency?" It was heartbreaking to see someone I cared about come to the end of her life not knowing that she could have made things happen for herself rather than feeling powerless. So when I think of my own agency I think about it as a gift. That I know that in embracing my responsibility I am able to make decisions, take actions, and create from my vision. It is a capacity that I have worked hard to cultivate, that I don't take for granted and that am deeply grateful for.
You're obviously correct to point out that high agency is not intrinsically bound to low morality, only correlated. I think the op-ed goes wrong because it starts to quietly conflate agency with power, which then taps into the power-analysis politics that we've been struggling with for years: Many high-profile, powerful people do things that harm less powerful people, but in sympathizing with victims we sometimes valorize victimhood, and some people become convinced that to be morally good, one must also be powerless. Now by extension, they must also be low agency.
To put it another way, there's a popular conception that high agency, high power, and low morality are inextricably linked, when in fact you could be any combination of high and low on all of them. As you rightly point out, this persuades some high-morality people that they *should* be low-agency, and ironically, this is catastrophic for any attempt to break the low-morality/high-power dynamic the op-ed is concerned with because we need more high-morality/high-agency people to do so.
I’m wondering how much agency even is correlated with dark triad traits. I thought your explanation made sense, but I’m also thinking of Berkson’s paradox, in which a sampling mechanism (here, publicity? high visibility industries?) is creating what appears to be a negative correlation (agency + being a good person or doing “good” work), when really we’re just not observing the whole population, where agency might actually be distributed neutrally in relation to other traits.
Oh excellent point!!
becoming low agency to send a strong signal that im not a sociopath
Love the essay Cate, I've been thinking a lot on this specific concept. I think of you specifically as one of the best advocates for individual agency, but I also think it's worth considering the relationship between agency as a striver ideal and agency as it exists in moral philosophy. I believe they can be more compatible than the discarding of the latter by proponents of the former would suggest. The worst exemplars of the sociopathy you call out in this post violate many of the principles that Immanuel Kant sets out in his philosophy, particularly those regarding the instrumentalization of others and the universalizability of our maxims. If instead we promote individual agency in the form of using the opportunities that are neglected by others, but condemn the negative-sum violation that comes from viewing everyone around you as a means to your own ends, it strengthens the appeal of 'agency' as a concept that can be adopted by those who are uncomfortable with its prominence among the openly narcissistic.
I’m not convinced all the “you can just do things” tech people are psychopaths. Some of them, sure, but I doubt it’s radically more than write for the New York Times. It’s become commonplace to derisively psychoanalyse those one disagrees with.
Also: “likability” is a questionable heuristic for moral character. History is riddled with figures whose actions elicit special praise because they did the right thing despite it making them less likable in the minds of the majority. By contrast, too, there are tons of examples of likeable people who did terrible things; often these people would have done significantly less damage had they not been so likable.
This article seems to understand that, but it doesn’t explicitly question the flawed premise that “likable” == “good”.
"If the good-hearted, prosocial people of the world took on 10 percent of the courage of ruthless antisocial powermaxxers, we would all be better off."
!!!!!!
Going from a chapter of Atlas Shrugged to this blog post was a divinely timed fever dream.
"If you put a gun to their head and demanded they give you ten ideas for how to make their zip code or their country better, they would prove inventive."
Who is holding the gun, Cate? They're out here doing things.
The more I see the claim that posting online isn't "actually" doing anything, the more moved I am in the other direction - if only in a perception-is-reality kind of way, it matters what people are paying attention to and saying online. Even virtue signaling and awareness-raising are real methods of communication that affect behavior. Of course it's low effort. But I don't think someone would say they deserve an award for their grueling work sharing an Instagram story, so it feels like a one-sided fight that makes me suspicious of the side that picks it. I completely agree the scope of "being informed is important" is way out of hand. I just am skeptical of the implications that come with using it as the foil for agency (e.g., that a slacktivist's time on social media is taking up their Doing Actually Great and Important Things time/energy budget), rather than arguing for its merits (which you very often do). Otherwise I appreciated this reflection, as I've gotten sick of empty appeals to agency on X but still need the reminders. I've enjoyed your writing very much and am looking forward to reading the book!
'The best who lack conviction.' That line has been sitting in the culture for a century and this is the first time I've seen someone build a practical answer to it.