Agency – Self-Empowerment

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What is power?

Is it super powers like in those superhero comics? Or perhaps being rich – that’s basically batman’s super power. How about political influence; does that count? What about nuclear weapons? Those are considered incredibly powerful.

To define power, we simply have to contemplate the supposedly most omnipotent beings – religious deities. Most religions claim that the world exists merely because God willed it so, the same reason any given event takes place. And so, we can conclude that power is the ability to impose one’s will upon the world. I defined will in another post.

If superman wants to stop a derailed train, he is powerful enough to do so, whereas the average person cannot. If an aristocrat wants to travel to a different country every weekend, he certainly could, whereas the average person cannot. But what about inanimate objects like the powerful nuclear weapon you mentioned? The weapon itself is destructive, not powerful – for the weapon has no will – those who wield them are. All else equal, the words of a nation armed with ICBMs hold a bit more weight than the words of those who aren’t.

I believe power consists of two components:

  1. The influence of one’s will over the internal
  2. The influence of one’s will over the external

In this essay, I will be exploring the former, which I will henceforth refer to as “agency.” Whereas not everybody can change the world (external), all sentient, intelligent creatures possess some capacity for self-determination, for those characteristics precede the will. Specifically, agency refers to the mastery of the self, i.e. self-determination. That means the supremacy of the will over one’s emotions, instincts, animalistic impulses, etc. Without it, one cannot exert one’s will upon the external world, for whatever controls oneself has the true power. In this post, I will enshrine agency.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is hard business. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” Rudyard Kipling

Just as a humorous aside, let’s contrast Darth Vader and Kylo Ren in the Star Wars universe. On paper both have comparable abilities as combatants, in psychic powers and sword-fighting prowess, yet one of them is far more intimidating and powerful than the other. Whereas Darth Vader possesses agency, Kylo Ren does not. Whereas the former can bring his immense strength to bear towards achieving his goals, wild mood swings seem to control the latter, who’s prone to throwing tantrums when things don’t go his way. Kylo Ren can be manipulated, for whoever can sway his emotions can by proxy wield his might.

Agency is self-actualization

Agency is the purest expression of individualism and self-assertion, for there is nothing more singular than one’s true will. It’s to be the captain and navigator of your own ship, sailing across the sea of life. Will you head for uncharted water, testing your skills and resolve against the unknown? Will you follow the paths of famous voyages, hoping to replicate their success? Will you run into a storm only to have found that the ship has been sailing in circles the whole time? Or will you be lured to your doom by the sirens? Ultimately, to live a life with the fewest regrets is worth striving for, since it implies you’ve made the best out of what you have, to the most of your satisfaction. In other words, a willful life is a life well-lived.

The amount of agency a person has depends on how frequently he makes decisions in accordance with his true will, weighted by the stakes of those decisions. Naturally, the decision to take two cheat days consecutively wouldn’t matter as much as choosing the lower-paying job with better work/life balance. Therefore, to live willfully, one must first internalize one’s core values and then live up thereto. One must know, implicitly or explicitly, what’s truly important and prioritize those values in both thoughts and actions. The latter differentiates “exercising is good for the mind and body, therefore I will go to the gym regularly,” from “although I know exercising is good for the mind and body, I just don’t have time for it.”

Note: although individualism and “living for oneself” are often associated with placing one’s own interest above all others (and thus with greed and selfishness), to discuss an individual’s core values merely references that person as the progenitor of those values rather than those values being tools to further his self-interest. For instance, honest, loyalty, family, camaraderie, and benevolence are often progressed at the expense of self-interest. In fact, there are many people who live for themselves through helping others; Steve Irwin and Mr. Rogers are two of the more well-known examples in popular media.

At the cost of agency

Thus far, I’ve written largely in abstract – it is easy to draw broad generalizations about life and espouse platitudes as if they are profound. Allow me to translate these ideas into concrete examples to fully illustrate my point.

Consider fame and fortune. It’s no secret that those who possess them are more powerful than those who do not, by both the conventional understanding of power and my definition. After all, a well-connected aristocrat can achieve a lot more than an anonymous hobo. However, the “all else equal” condition rarely holds – the prospect of fame and fortune comes often at a steep price of agency.

Perhaps the most well-known example of this tradeoff is pop culture celebrity. We all know how it goes: some bright-eyed kid dreams of wealth, popularity, and status hops on a flight to the big city to chase his/her dream of stardom, at whatever the cost. Setting aside the fact that the overwhelming majority of celebrity hopefuls never break out of obscurity, even attaining fantastic fame may not be worth it. Every single view, every single fan, every single sponsorship comes at the expense of personal freedom, of agency.

Barring the internationally renowned Hollywood stars, even successful actors, musicians, artists must obey the whims of their agencies and the studios. Artistic freedom is a privilege occasionally granted rather than an innate right. At the end of the day, they must cultivate an image to be marketed to the masses – the agencies/studios prohibit actions discordant with said image under the threat of losing that popularity. And compared to agencies and studios of traditional celebrities, fans of social media celebrities scrutinize their subject with perhaps even greater interest, often to the point of fanatic obsession, where even the most innocuous mistake could result in a vengeful crusade against the “offender.”

What are some examples of the costs of stardom?

The point of this section is not to weigh the pros and cons of being a celebrity or to dissuade anyone from becoming one, but to highlight the loss of autonomy associated with something considered “powerful” under popular imagination. The average person dreaming of fame and fortune don’t fully appreciate just how much free will they must forfeit in exchange for stardom. Those multi-million-dollar contracts, the fame, the parties – all of them are golden chains that bind the pop stars to the whims of their masters: the agencies, the studios, and the audience. Of course, the celebrity can always refuse to comply with those aforementioned terms, but they’re usually in too deep and don’t have to will to give up their lifestyle, which they’ve sacrificed tremendously to attain, even if they acknowledge that it causes them no shortage of travails.

The will to refuse – the defiant spirit

And so, we can conclude that a will to refuse, to defy, is paramount for preserving agency, for it fundamentally breaks the ability of others to impose their will upon you. Why do teenagers have their rebellious phase? I wager that it’s the manifestation of their desire to assert their self-mastery, even at the expense of their own wellbeing (smoking, drugs, laziness, promiscuity, etc.), since compliance would be a subversion thereof. Even Alexander the Great admired Diogenes for his refusal to submit – a resolute assertion of self-mastery; Diogenes lived on his own terms, giving no thought to what others consider improper or distasteful.

Whereas deities reign as the most powerful beings, slaves toil away at the bottom. The latter has neither the ability to mold the world to his will nor even control his own destiny, by definition. In theory, there’s always a choice, but for a slave, disobedience is disincentivized with the threat of death or torture insofar as to render that choice illusory.

When one considers the image of the most pathetic state of existence, one can hardly imagine a life worse than that of a slave consigned to his own fate, working himself to death purely for the benefit of a despotic master. Unfortunately, a man can no more choose the circumstances of his birth than he can choose the natural color of his hair – being born to a slave would guarantee your position as one in every single society that allowed slavery. However, submission will always be a choice.

Now, what if that same slave defies his master’s orders? What if he works tirelessly at the risk of his own life to organize a revolt so that his people can finally break free of their bondage? Why do we get shivers down our spines when we watch/read/hear of heroic tales where the protagonist stands firm against overwhelming odds? The answer is clear – the defiant spirit is a powerful assertion of total mastery over oneself, something we all intuitively respect, even if we may not agree with what that iconoclast, rebel, martyr, apostate, etc. stands for.

The master holds power over his slaves through threat of violence, by the slaves’ fear of pain and death. By daring to risk his own life, the rebellious man snaps the final leash with which his master could compel him to obey. And in that sense, he has achieved self-mastery. By that mindset alone, he is already free mentally.

Lastly, I want to make it clear that I’m not passing judgment on those who choose to submit – I believe strongly that people’s values differ quite drastically and that there’s no single universal set of values. You’ll also have to forgive me for taking this illustration of Spartacus rather than drawing it myself; I don’t believe my atrocious MS Paint skills would do him any justice.

Of course, this defiant spirit I keep referring to can be better referred to colloquially as the ability to tell people to “fuck off.” In that sense, a rich celebrity has far less power than a wealthy man with “fuck you” money.

In a future post, I will be discussing the ways in which agency can be preserved and strengthened.