on agency and incredulity

“Each of us loves to think himself unique, self-made, moving in a path all his own. To be sure, he finds his feet in worn paths, but he imagines he follows the path because it is the right one, not because it is trodden”
~ Edward Alsworth Ross in Social Psychology

Newton‘s Law vs. BS

Can anyone argue that there aren’t forces at work in the world that thrive on obsequiousness, servitude and gullibility? Who doesn’t like being flattered, right? The reason we find ourselves tilting at windmills is that these forces often occupy positions of influence and power and dictate the status quo.

Fortunately, life has bestowed two invaluable gifts on humanity–agency and incredulity–Newton’s third law against the powers that be.

Why Newton? If power structures exist with all their weight, gravity and inertia, then we need to react with a equal and opposite forces of meaningful action and disbelief to achieve anything of lasting value. Therein a caveat: if you’re not working damn hard to keep your agency, it will accrue with unnerving ease to the aforementioned forces. And: there is so much crap competing for our limited cognitive capacity, that we have to erect very, very high barriers to entry just to not be carried away by the wave of digital effluent breaking over our head.

God, the media and algorithms

At some point during the long parallel development of society and technology, it became more economical to form opinions using persuasion rather than coercion. “Civil” society rests on the threat of violence but rarely involves resorting to it.

Let’s take an average person over the last 150 years being faced with the opinions of others and use the pulpit, the press and the smartphone as symbols of social and technological power and a crude simplification of progress. While the pulpit has been around much longer than WiFi, all methods are very much alive and can be wielded in combination.

Dimension	The preacher1	The newspaper	The smartphone
circulation	1:10	1:1000	1:1000000+
power center	local/regional patron	national wealth	international superwealth
subject	right and wrong (morality)	right or left (politics)	everything (novelty)
frequency	weekly	daily	constant
social contact	face-to-face	indirect	zero
range of choices	1 (God)2	2 (political dichotomy)	infinite
Effect of manipulation	fear	partisanship	outrage

Not surprisingly, under manipulative conditions, things get more difficult for the users as technological progress increases and social interaction becomes more diffuse (basically optional):

• Credulity causes dependency, dependency saps agency. It’s quite easy not to listen to one person preaching, less easy to avoid newspapers and television, impossible to escape the echo chamber in your pocket.
• Fear causes passivity; partisanship divides; outrage can lead to violence with unpredictable effects.
• Focus gives way to novelty
• The locus of power increases in size and distance from the user

So here we are, stuck in bubbles of unreality³, novelty and outrage, getting worked up and thinking it’s righteous self-expression. All the while stuck in well-trodden pathways, believing them to be unique.

The paradoxical path to independence

You’ve won the lottery, congratulations! The odds of you winning–by which I mean existing, breathing, thinking–are so incredibly small that every second of life should be a riot of unique expression. Especially considering the rewards of this infinitesimal probability: non-negotiable, infinite worth. And yet here you are, talking and acting like your parents, passing off things you’ve heard as your own ideas, locked into cultural stereotypes and buffeted by pressure to prove yourself. What gives?!

“I guess I wouldn’t believe in anything anymore if it weren’t for my lucky astrology mood watch.”
~ Steve Martin

We’ve got it wrong! Purpose, passion, dreams, desires. “Following this” and “finding that” imply that the answer is external, outside of ourselves; these are all dependencies–lucky mood watches. All that means is someone else is driving the narrative and the chances are they don’t have your best interests at heart and won’t have your back when things go awry. What do you want? Someone who cares for you or someone who is being paid to pretend to care for you?

The potential of an individual cannot possibly lie externally, it has to come from within; but there too lie weakness, failure, shame, pride, doubt alongside joy, strength, talent, humour. And guess what: whatever you choose to follow, all of that is coming along for the ride. You can’t pick the “best of” but you do get to decide whether to accept your whole self or waste time trying to get the fig leaves to fit properly.

The mad, random whirl of history, genealogy and relationships–also known as who you are and where you have come from–is not there to define and circumscribe your identity, it’s meant to be a springboard to independence and a full life⁴. Life should swing between the Hallelujah Chorus and Killing in the Name, the sheer joy of doing meaningful things and the liberating kick of incredulity summed up in, “F*ck you, I won’t do what you tell me!”⁵.

The paradox of independence is this: if we truly want to engage with the world, we have to turn inwards. The bizarre collection of beliefs and behaviours, impulses and idiosyncrasies you call yourself is eminently capable of change; it is not meant for blind faith, partisanship, ideology or social media. Those things hijack our emotions and push us into conformity; play on our fear of not belonging. They push us into a hierarchy we think goes like this:

wealth + power + status = success

If that’s not a well trodden, deceitful pathway…And we chase the symbols and trappings of success, failing to realise the equation is more like this:

wealth + power + status = dependency

Power-broking, influence, endorsements; a fight for scarcity. Outsourced identity and meaning? Very fragile. Everyone who has suffered at the hands of tyranny knows how contemptible and downright evil “successful” people can be.

There is another way to success:

agency + incredulity = independent potential

You have absolutely no need whatsoever to compare yourself to anybody or anything else. Anyone else’s beliefs, opinions, advice or influence might be valuable but is discountable. Success is measured in how much bullshit and manipulation you can deconstruct, how free from externalities you are, and how many lives you can touch and inspire because you have worked out the truth about independence: The dead end of self is an invitation to embrace the world.

“The while her Son, tracing the desert wild,
Sole, but with holiest meditations fed,
Into himself descended, and at once
All his great work to come before him set”
~ John Milton in Paradise Regained