Agency Draft(1)

The amount of agency that we have is slim to none 

Points: 

• We may have a list of decisions that we can choose from, but the list is so large, and in many cases the number of decisions that we choose from is a small fraction from a list. 

Since humanity has been ‘conscious’, we have liked to believe that we can control our surroundings, we can control our happiness, our outcomes of life, and how we move through the world. Many say that we have agency to make our own decisions and pick and choose, what we do with our bodies; to what extent is this true? We may have a seemingly large number of decisions, but out of the infinite number of choices we can make, which ones are we narrowed down to, and which ones are chosen for us. We like to believe that we can move freely but how can one move freely when there are consequences, societally and physically, for our actions. How much of our decisions are our own, and how much do we control our own lives. 

If you were to meet a man named Louis Althusser in a coffee shop in Paris, you would be introduced the not only the idea of personal agency, but the idea of our class structure globally. There is no doubt that state institutions along with political and influential figures have swayed the public. Almost anywhere you are in the world, someone is trying to persuade you. Whether it’s an advertisement you hear over the radio or a gossiper at work, many times you are coerced into an opinion. The biggest violators of control, in the eyes of Althusser, are the pervasive cultural formations of the dominant class. We learn in our youth by connecting other ideas from past ones we are familiar with, take any subject: math, literature, art, etc. They are combinations and evolutions of each other. Each thought you have is a connection from past thoughts that you are familiar with, in this sense, you are not able to think completely from thin air. Arjun Appadurai paints imagination and creativity as an escape from the influence and control of the world, but even our imaginations are limited. What we have seen on TV, the stories we have heard, and the goals and motivations that have been given to us since a young age. Many argue that we have agency: Arjun Appadurai, Elizabeth Wingrove, Michel de Certeau; all may be right in their own way, but their arguments for agency are inherently about breaking free from the lack of agency we have in the modern day. 

• free will/agency was an enlightenment ideal, enlightenment ideals, prospered in a free market system 

• Must be complete randomness in the world for people to have free will 

• If there is a destiny, then people are not free to make their own choices because their future choices are already made for them 

• The idea that we have agency is a precipitation of the enlightenment ideals made to keep the lower class motivated