When you take on a project voluntarily, the challenges inherent in the project give it value. You make yourself known as the person who overcame those challenges. When you are paid or coerced to do a project, the challenges take away value. They are annoyances or evidence of lack of proper planning by the project director. If you’re going to be paid, you’d rather be paid to do something that is less of a bother. It is for this reason that carrying out work that has been chosen is more pleasurable than carrying out work that has been assigned. Fundamentally, it is about agency.
Agency versus Comfort
Agency is more important than comfort. Consider the living conditions you’d prefer to prison conditions. Would you accept the possibility of missing a meal to stay out of a place where three meals a day are guaranteed? Are you willing to sleep with an extra blanket to avoid a place with guaranteed heating? Are you willing to start a business that might fail in order to avoid a business that is guaranteed to succeed? In general, people are willing to endure conditions worse than prison for the mere privilege of agency.
Agency is inversely proportional to comfort. The first reason is that the acquisition of comfort is not comfortable. One must work and take risks and defeat competitors. Furthermore, as long as acquiring comfort is a priority, your range of decisions is limited to that which provides comfort. If you do not work for your comfort, it means someone else has provided it, and that someone is making the rules, not you. You have lost your agency.
There is a vicious cycle set off by a loss of agency. When you elect to pay someone to solve one of your problems — be it a plumber, a life coach, a tailor, etc — you not only lose the opportunity to learn, but you must work for that money. Most of us have jobs that are very far removed from reality. The lack of real-world experience, and the corresponding lack of self-confidence makes us even more dependent on professionals and prepared solutions.
Cultivate Your Experience
There is nothing more important than the quality of your experience. Having material possessions is important, but it is possible to have a shabby experience with them, as when a wealthy person becomes alcoholic in the midst of material comfort. On the other hand, overcoming a lack of material possessions can be an epic experience. Wilderness survival stories make great novels and films.
While material possessions influence your experience, they are no goal. A mansion is either a paradise or a prison, depending on whether you are the owner or a servant. A mountain climber prefers the harsh conditions of a mountain peak to a warm apartment. The quality of experience is the only thing that matters.
If you believe in an after-life, whatever that might be, agency is even more important there. When you die, you cannot take anything with you, so whatever material reward one might get for surrendering agency, like a car or a house, is lost. If you believe there is something you can take with you, it is whatever was cultivated by your experience on Earth. If you think there is any kind of after-life, ask yourself what kind of after-life you are preparing yourself for. If you have trained yourself to seek comfort, to avoid punishment, and obey others, the corresponding after-life is a hell. The principle activities of residents of hell is to seek comfort, avoid punishment, and obey those who control these features.
Does agency mean the ability to do anything you want? Yes — in principle. However, it is self-limiting. For example, you might think that billionaires have the most agency because they have the money to realise their wishes. Nevertheless, very few billionaires are able to enjoy it. The reason is that their attention is on whatever made them billionaires in the first place. They must pay attention to rising and falling share prices, to the actions of rivals, to the potential disobedience of underlings, to government regulatory agencies, etc. Furthermore, their activities are scheduled months in advance. Their freedom is actually quite limited.
There is a sweet spot to be found.
When there are very few people with great decision-making power, that power must be used to protect that power. This is a logical consequence to the concentration of power. If concentration of power does not protect its concentration, it becomes distributed. It is no longer the thing that it was. It stops existing. If it is to exist, it must be used to disable the agency of those who might challenge it. Resources must be diverted and punishments must be issued. It is the logic of concentrations of power that they are stress-ridden.
The sweet spot is a kind of agency which one person may practice without diminishing the agency of others. For the most part, this is collective agency; the ability to act symbiotically with others and to participate in collective decisions. Interacting with humans is not always fun, but the stress of collective decision-making is limited. You are unlikely to find yourself destitute because risk is distributed.
The agency of collective decision-making is more likely to bring us to a sustainable environment. Why? Decisions to improve the commonwealth are the easiest to achieve: They are simply the least controversial because they benefit everyone. Only a concentration of power would oppose them.
What is the solution?
1. Experience with reality
Individual undertakings imply individual risk. Mitigating risk and recovering from mistakes is also a skill. You can begin simply by eschewing ready-made solutions. For example, repair your own equipment and clothing when you can. Instead of taking a tour, read about your destination beforehand and go on your own. Use a map and compass instead of a GPS app.
Parents hesitate to expose their children to reality due to fear of injury. As justified as this fear might be for a single child, it has disastrous collective consequences. It cultivates a generation of citizens without self-confidence, and who are dependent on external solutions, at whatever the price.
2. Participation in collective structures
Lack of experience in collective structures again makes it difficult for citizens to imagine solutions other than ones presented by the free market. Examples are joining a non-profit association, creating a cohousing group, founding a food club.
Clues from the past
Democracy: In 19th century New England, most decisions regarding local life were made in town meetings, with direct participation of citizens. While only registered voters could vote, all could voice an opinion. Many New England towns still hold town meetings, although participation is hardly as general as it once was.
Trade: At a time when paper currency was scarce, town residents conducted commercial transactions with ledgers. The sale of a saddle, say, was entered in the ledger of the saddle-maker. The farmer who bought the saddle might sell corn to the saddle-maker against an entry in his own ledger. At the end of the year, accounts were balanced by third parties paying debts owed by second parties and so forth. Rural New Englanders were thereby somewhat insulated from the vagaries of the financial system. If this seems over-complicated, remember, people with 8th grade educations were able to do it.
Insurance: In the 18th century, most workers with life insurance or health insurance obtained them from so-called friendly societies. Members paid dues, often at a festive monthly meeting at a pub or tavern — hence the name — and in times of need, received payments. Friendly societies were administrated by elected (unpaid) officers. There were no share-holders. At the end of the 19th century, friendly societies were no niche phenomenon: they covered most personal insurance needs in the UK, period. Surprisingly, the size of the average friendly society was not very large, sometimes constrained to a single town or village.
Sustainability: Nineteenth century farms were mind-bogglingly autonomous. Transportation consisted of carts and horses, so the on-site manufacture of goods was often the only reasonable solution. Wells were dug for water, pits dug as latrines. Diets were seasonal. Without refrigeration, vegetables had to be canned when available. Table scraps were recycled in stews. Fabric was spun and woven by daughters in the early part of the century; clothes sewn by grandmothers. Clothes were repaired until they became rags; rags were repaired until finally woven into mudroom rugs. There was almost no waste produced by a 19th century farm.
Life on such a farm is very hard work. It presents itself as an alternative to modern life only to the extremely naïve. Yet, it shows the degree to which it is possible to be autonomous in a capitalist civilization.
Agency is inevitable if survival is possible
Mechanical automation and artificial intelligence are on the cusp of making redundant many classes of workers. Not only factory workers and food service workers, but the likes of lawyers and financial analysts. These people shall need a use for their time; the most useful would be recreating aspects of the shadow economy of their ancestors.
Conclusion
No one knows the true nature of our reality. It could be a computer simulation far in the future. You could be in a coma in a hospital dreaming your present life. The only thing you can know for sure is that you are having experiences. These can be your wealth or your poverty, depending on your agency.
