When I first heard the phrase “high agency,” it prompted some self-questioning. Was I living my life in the driver’s seat? Was I keeping in mind the phrase that was constantly circulating online: You can just do things? I had lived in the same place for five years, had a day job, was putting a little bit in my 401(k) every month, was comfortable and generally happy. But I wasn’t really thinking outside the box, and I definitely wasn’t moving fast or breaking anything. I felt a little old-fashioned all of a sudden. As I wrote in a guest essay for Times Opinion this week, “high agency” has become the trait in vogue in Silicon Valley, and from there has made its way into the broader lexicon. There are plenty of things I find compelling about it: It’s good to remember that your life really is in your own hands. A dose of self-reliance, coupled with thinking more expansively about the possibilities for your life, seems undeniably good. But something troubled me about the new fixation on agency. Being “high agency” is individualistic, but unlike old-school mottos like “pull yourself up by the bootstraps,” it places emphasis on risk, on the rewards that come from big gambles; this seemed like an ethos for our time, when gambling of all sorts is on the rise. Quit your job! Start a company with bad credit! Move to the desert and do whatever you want! Those are all high-agency moves, and equally valid under this sort of worldview. That was really where it started to trouble me: All the emphasis seemed to be on agency, on action, and not very much on direction. While I was working on this essay, I spent some time in San Francisco, where I grew up, and the center of gravity for agency boosters. Chatting about it with someone in a bar, I found myself saying, “Yeah, you can just do things. But what?” That strikes me as the harder question.
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