Agency is critical to human flourishing.
We offer resources for policymakers, educators, business leaders, scholars, and individuals to promote agency.
What is agency?
Agency is the ability to self-regulate one’s attitudes, goals, and behaviors. In other words, agency is the capacity to exercise control over one’s own life. Agency can be thought of as a psychological and behavioral characteristic that makes humans distinct. More than any other organism, people have the power of self-determination, to direct their own thoughts, emotions, and actions.
Agency and modern challenges
3 Subjective modes of reaction
1. An individual awaits completion and fulfillment (The perfect conditions for action)
2. An individual becomes reliant on government or other external forces for the conditions of fulfillment.
3. Only by becoming self-aware of personal agency and the incompletion of the world can one fulfill any potential. A lack of perfect conditions becomes a catalyst of action.
Why is agency important for human flourishing?
Barriers to human flourishing can be artificial or natural. Artificial barriers are the ones externally imposed. They can take the form of excessive regulation, unjust discriminatory policies, cronyism, obstacles to educational freedom, and so on. Those barriers can be addressed with policy changes and related activities. However, natural barriers are more intrinsic and personal in nature. Agency is critical to overcoming natural barriers.
Lack and scarcity in agency
Community and reciprocity
Individual lacks and scarcity can create alienation. Not understanding the nature of these phenomena can also encourage projection of personal agency onto external forces or objects.
Understanding our limitations, imperfections and lacks can bring us towards common understanding and cooperation.
Understanding the reciprocity of lacks and scarcity helps to lift alienation and connect the individual to the broader community, rather then constraining personal agency.
