My opinion on Agency

For the short time I've lived, I've noticed that the environments in which we grow will mold us into adapting the ideals, traditions and values passed on by the older generations.

As such, any youngling that dares to break the traditions of the fathers is exiled from the tribe.

Such rigidness, in my opinion, breeds a generation of humans who can't not think for themselves. They live for the pleasure and appeasement of other humans. Their agency has been violated and they don't even know it. They live under other men's shadows.

They never stop to ask why are things the way they are?

I mean, some of these values are not inherently bad... heck, they're useful in many ways because in most cases the generations before us paid the price of blood to get these lessons to us and trying to make the same mistakes driving towards the same outcome is arrogance of the highest order.

But even though that's the case, I believe any value system looses its meaning the moment it starts to be imposed on people as gospel truth.

What fundamentally makes us humans different from other species is our innate ability to choose. The power of choice is the essence of Agency.

Once a people are robbed of the fundamental right to choose their path and direction, then they live for another's pleasure.

This can be seen in the paths people have ranked as default today, like:

• If you don't go to University, well, that's not right.

• If you don't marry, hell, what's wrong with you?

• If you don't have kids, why are you so selfish?

• If you haven't achieved X and Y at this age, what're you doing with your life?

...and I could go on and on. But you see the point. Humans have set rigid default standard pathways for the younglings to follow because unpredictability for some people means rebellion.

To be fair it all makes sense in a way... on one end of the spectrum, some of these pathways are all the ways we've proven to work over the years.

But also on the other end, when some of these pathways start to be imposed on the younger generations as the ONLY way to do things, cracks start to appear.

I'm of the view that there are an infinite number of ways of getting from point A to B though some might be unknown... and yes some of those ways might be more efficient than others but that doesn't mean we should close our minds off from exploration.

Agency begins when we acknowledge that any adult human being has the right and the power to choose their path, even though presented with all the right options, choosing what's right is subjective to them. It's their decision to make.