WHAT DOES ‘AGENCY’ MEAN?
“In social science, agency is the capacity of individuals to act independently and to make their own free choices.”
in practical terms it is an attempt by social scientists to find another name for the (heavily tainted, if not entirely polluted, and therefore unusable) term ‘free will’.
Wiki is your friend:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_(sociology)
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-20 15:55:00 UTC
https://propertarianism.com/2014/09/28/the-evolution-of-cooperation/SCARCITY AND THE CURRENCY OF AFFECTION FOR THE OTHER
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Ultimately it is our mortality that gives us a meaningful sense of time. The fact that life will end for all of us, and its reality is ever present as a probability percentage, no matter how low or high.
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(Affection and some of its forms: Compassion, Empathy, Nurture, Respect, etc.)
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Given this inescapable biological truth, and without entertaining transhumanism, we must acknowledge that while our time is limited so too is our capacity to extend affection to the Other. At first glance this may appear to be radically insignificant, but its implications are vast and stand in stark contrast to the dangerous ideas of our day. I put emphasis on the word “dangerous” because when an ideological framework insists that any human emotion, burdened by the very real constraints of biology, are somehow infinitely unrestricted, it necessarily creates expectations that will forever be unrealized and guide human behavior irresponsibly. In the same way, I may plant 50 carrot seeds and expect an infinite number of carrots to yield, without respect to how long carrots take to grow, or conditions which carrots require, then I have failed to construct expectations which conform to biological reality and simultaneously succeeded in deluding myself about the nature of carrots.
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When we acknowledge that our affection exists in limited supply, or at least our capacity to express it, we can begin to ask more implicative questions.
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Who deserves or is entitled to my affection? How many people can I afford to give affection to at any one time? Is my affection given freely without respect to the actions of the Other? Can one be more or less deserving of my affection? Can unconditional affection have a sensible context? Do we give affection in degrees based on the values of the Other?
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An examination of those questions gives rise to the reality that if we value the Other, our affection must have a value of its own, and its value must be inextricably linked to who we bother giving affection to in the first place.
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We must never forget that the context of affection has always been cooperation, and that cooperation has been the only successful means at organizing civilization. Affection is a critical mechanism of cooperation, and like any valuable currency, should be budgeted wisely. How are you spending your affection? Your empathy? Your compassion? Your respect? Are you going broke? Are you investing for the future?
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To learn more about cooperation:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=382099852163689&id=100010910319967
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-20 15:00:00 UTC
MUST-READ: ON SPECTRUM OF AGENCY DEMONSTRATED BY USE OF TESTIMONY BY BILL JOSLIN
—-“Thoughts that might be worth exploring ->
Qualification to acquire membership in a class based on demonstrated agency affords commensurability in assessing worthiness.
Demonstrate the degree one lives by their own agency dictates which class they belong (vertically) regardless of horizontal class (much talk with Joel on this in January)
Testimonialism forces one to “demonstrate due diligence in speaking truthfully”. But this can also be stated as “demonstrating the degree of agency (due diligence) one has invested in the speech act (truthfulness).
This adds a new “moral” level to testimonialism – in that one can communicate a testimonial truth which they have invested only the time it took to memorize it without any personal agency in developing it(low agency)…. one can speak a testimonial truth another developed but has invested their agency into understanding it (mid agency)… or one can speak a testimonial proof which one has developed on their own (the proof stands as a demonstration of their agency).(posts on cognitive self ownership)”—– Bill Joslin
Now lets look at that last paragraph again:
This adds a new “moral” level to testimonialism –
LOW AGENCY
One can communicate a testimonial truth which they have invested only the time it took to memorize it without any personal agency in developing it….
or
MIDDLE AGENCY
One can speak a testimonial truth another developed but has invested their agency into understanding it…
or
AGENCY
One can speak a testimonial proof which one has developed on their own (the proof stands as a demonstration of their agency).(posts on cognitive self ownership)
Agency of the youth, the adult, and the wise.
-Curt
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-20 11:05:00 UTC
ARISTOCRACY AS AGENCY, AND THE VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL CLASS STRUCTURES.
Eli Harman makes a very important point, that I should, and we all should consider, when we refer to western man: that when constructing a class of Western man that we call ‘aristocracy’, which is a ‘class’ regardless of social and economic class, are we in fact referring to the preference for, necessity of, and selection for ‘Agency’?
We use the term time preference; we use the term impulsivity. But these terms refer to the ‘negatives’ without stating a positive that is informative and testable. I use the term truthful. Others rational.
But isn’t the central question agency? Isn’t that the question going into battle? Isn’t that the question building a social order? Isn’t that a question building a ruling class? Isn’t that a question building a judiciary class? isn’t that a question building an entrepreneurial class (Field Officers)? Isn’t that a question building a administrative class (lieutenants)? Even building the managerial class (sergeants)?
Isn’t it a facsimile of agency that we build in military training? How to ‘report’ (testify), how to hold formation, how to overcome fear, embarrassment, emotion, exhaustion, pain, through training?
Isn’t that military training the involuntary construction of stoicism? isn’t stoicism the construction of agency? Isn’t Aristocracy the achievement of agency? Isn’t that what Sovereignty results in? Agency?
Isn’t Sovereignty an existential Condition in-fact, but Agency the Resource that makes Sovereignty both cognitively possible, and reciprocally necessary for the condition to exist?
This is one of the questions I have been trying to solve for the past few years: Aristocracy consists of a class, like the military consists of a class: Priesthood(gossip), Scientist(craftsman), Aristocracy (force).
And that one can join the aristocracy at many levels in society, just as one can join the military at many levels in society. We join aristocracy through the pursuit of sovereignty, through the use of agency(stoicism), and through the use of loyalty (shareholder contract).
We construct horizontal classes: genetic class, social class, economic class. And we construct vertical classes: Priestly(gossip), Scientific (innovation and production), and Aristocratic (force).
One of my own mistakes has been misconstruing the hierarchy of production, which is scientific, entrepreneurial, financial (administrative), craftsmanly(managerial), and laboring (transforming) classes as science vs craft and this was an error driven by the western tendency for the priesthood to fund ‘writing’ (gossip) intellectuals, and the aristocracy to fund engineers and artists (action) intellectuals.
Like everyone else, despite identifying the three methods of coercion as three sets of elites, I gave too much emphasis to horizontal class structures, and not enough to vertical.
I’ll continue to work on this analytically. But Eli has been framing this for a while now, and I just gleaned his insight.
Curt Doolittle
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-20 09:54:00 UTC
There are a handful of young men in this group who, by the time they are my age will have surpassed me substantially and I am awed by it.
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-19 19:47:00 UTC
—“The Quest in reactionary circles is to how to manage the good impulses within us and bad ones outside of us.”—Jaromír Miškovský
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-19 15:43:00 UTC
SERIES
Limit Ethics: Toddler
Hero Ethics: Youth
Virtue Ethics: Teen
Deontological Ethics: Adult
Teleological: Ethics: Maturity
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-19 10:16:00 UTC
PETERSON is advancing good morals by immoral means: conflationary programming. That’s the problem. The construction of intuitional responses (training in preferences) rather than the construction of rational responses (training in decidability).
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-19 10:15:00 UTC
If you require programming rather than choice then you cannot make choice and are unfit to choose. This is why decidability provided by deflationary truth is not only a test of arguments, but of individuals.
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-19 10:14:00 UTC
PETERSON: INVOLUNTARY PROGRAMMING
DOOLITTLE/HARRIS: VOLUNTARY CHOICE
Source date (UTC): 2017-02-19 10:12:00 UTC