Agency (Part 6 of 8)
Reclaiming Agency in a World That Trains Us to Forget
Welcome back. This is Part 6 of an 8-part essay series on agency. In the last part, we stepped out of theory and into felt experience. We explored agency as something relational and rhythmic – recognizing agency as a volitional moment based on where we place our attention. Attention and volition (manasikāra and cetanā) became our working compass: where we focus, and how we engage.
Since writing part 5, I’ve taken an intentional pause. Not to think more, but to listen more carefully. Before continuing, I had to reconnect with what agency actually felt like. That pause gave rise to my last piece, Recalibration Required. It was a reminder to myself that even the most intentional ideas can easily drift into habit, forgetting the sense of agency. That forgetting doesn’t happen all at once. It happens subtly, over time.
And that’s what I want to name here. We are living in a world that gradually, almost invisibly, trains us to forget how to be with our own sense of agency. The systems we have designed offer a sense of ease in exchange for a gradual relinquishment of agency. We are increasingly, often unconsciously, handing off our agency to systems built to make things smoother, faster, and more convenient. The world doesn’t take our agency. We simply give it away. And after a while, we forget that we ever had a choice to begin with. We start to convince ourselves that agency never existed in the first place.
Philosopher
describes this as the third existential threat. As she writes about it, the danger of systems like AI isn’t the typical Hollywood style annihilation where it becomes smarter than us, or the very real aspect of people misusing AI. The third threat is a form of amnesia. A forgetting about what it means to be human so completely that we begin to doubt there was ever anything essential to forget at all.But there is. And this is where we begin again. And it doesn’t have to be about reclaiming something grand. Agency begins to return through the simple act of noticing that we are still here. And we can still meet what’s here with care. We have the power to participate in the shaping of what unfolds next.
And that participation matters now more than ever. If you haven’t noticed, the world is in turmoil. Staying aware and sane at once can feel impossible. The weight of what we’re facing has become so vast that looking away can feel like a kind of mercy. But that is the lull into sleep that we must resist.
Recursive Delegation
We don’t lose agency. We trade it – one small handoff at a time. A decision here, a convenience there. And this isn’t new. For ages, we humans have looked for ways to offload what feels too heavy to carry alone. We’ve built tools to extend our reach, institutions to hold our values, and systems of authority to help us decide what’s “right” and “true.”
Delegation, in itself, isn’t the problem. That’s simply a strategy for survival. The trouble begins when the act of handing over becomes so seamless, so automatic, that we no longer realize it’s happening. Technology didn’t invent this pattern. It simply accelerated it. Faster. Smoother. “Smarter.” And now, with AI, we’re not just delegating labor or information. We’re delegating interpretation. Meaning. Judgment. Attention. The very qualities that make us human.
What begins as a helpful prompt becomes a habitual default. First we let a search engine finish our sentences. Then we let a feed decide what’s worth knowing. And eventually we begin to rely on it as though it always had. The boundaries between tool and teacher dissolve. The handoff becomes recursive: a loop in which our preferences are shaped by algorithms that were shaped by our preferences, until we’re no longer sure which part came from us at all.
This is the pattern of recursive delegation: a momentum fueled by avoidance, and marked by the slow diffusion of agency itself. We delegate, the system adapts, we respond to that adaptation, and the loop tightens. We do it again and again, until the very capacity to notice what we’ve given away begins to fade.
That forgetting is subtle, but thorough. And the more comfortable the system becomes, the more invisible the cost. We don’t feel oppressed. We feel relieved. But in that relief, we begin to lose the friction that helps us feel awake.
Resistance as the Architecture of Agency
Agency is often mistaken for total freedom – the idea that we can do anything, without limit or resistance. But agency is not the power to move unimpeded. It’s the ability to move and respond within a field of real constraints. And that field always pushes back. Not to block us, but to give form to our movement.
For a long time, I saw resistance as something to overcome. An obstacle. A barrier to clarity or freedom. But I’ve come to understand that resistance isn’t the enemy of agency. It’s the condition that gives it shape.
once described this beautifully in a powerful metaphor, explaining that:“Everything that is created comes out of a flow that has resistance. Without resistance, there cannot be a flow […]. Without resistance the river that passes my house is not a river. It has banks. The banks offer resistance. They make it a river. They don’t somehow constrain the river to not be a river. In fact, by their constraints they make it a river. And we have got a ridiculous view (a lot of us in the modern world) that anything that acts as a constraint on us must be got rid of.”
Without resistance, a river diffuses into a flood. Without resistance, agency dissolves into impulse. What we call limits (friction, delay, discomfort) are often the very conditions through which agency becomes possible. Resistance doesn’t negate agency; it delineates it.
Robert Fritz, in The Path of Least Resistance, calls this dynamic “structural tension”: the energy that emerges between what is and what could be. That tension isn’t a problem to fix. It’s a sign that something matters. It is the dynamic that shapes attention into action.
We often set goals because we care about something. Then we think that the destination of the goal is the point. But it’s not. It’s the structure that helps us orient our attention toward what we long for. And when we treat that tension wisely, it becomes a channel. A way to stay present with the gap between now and next, and to let movement arise from care, not control.
This is how resistance becomes a form of practice. It invites us to stay, listen, and shape. When we meet resistance not as a wall, but as a contour, we begin to work with reality instead of against it. And in doing so, agency becomes less about force or control, and much more about flowing or dancing, gently directed. This is not freedom from constraint, but freedom within it. Coherence emerges as we move with what is, and let that movement shape what comes next.
Practice and the Evolution of Avoidance
And yet, even when we glimpse that coherence, often something in us pulls away. The tension asks us to stay, but staying is hard. Our instincts that evolved to keep us alive are now keeping us disengaged. As aborigines, our instincts used to help us avoid danger. But the world has changed a bit since then, and our instincts are still catching up. Today, most of what we avoid isn’t life-threatening. It’s simply life itself: discomfort, uncertainty, interruption, stillness.
Modern life rewards us for efficiency, for avoiding what we deem trivial or mundane. It cloaks avoidance in the language of ease. Sometimes, we don’t even realize we’re avoiding anything. We just open the app, let the tool autocomplete the thought, follow the suggestion already waiting for us. The feedback loop tightens and friction fades.
But here’s the cost: the less we feel the edge of discomfort, the more we drift from ourselves. And the more seamless the system becomes, the harder it is to notice that we’ve stopped participating at all.
Practice is how we return. And practice begins in the pause. It invites us to take a breath before reacting. And somewhere in that brief space between impulse and action, we regain our sense of agency. In those moments when we sense ourselves wishing it were otherwise: those are the moments to stay alert. Not to some grand ideal of stillness or perfection – but to what’s right here. It’s the act of staying when we want to leave. Of listening when distraction feels easier. This is where agency lives: in the micro-moments of simply not turning away, and instead, deciding to stay present, again and again.
Sometimes, I imagine that pull to escape as a kind of bell. You know the one: it’s the notification chime your phone makes. That little spike of discomfort? That flash of boredom? That urge to move on? That’s the “ding.” The call to stay. Not because staying is noble, but because it’s real. Because only here, in the raw presence of what is, can discernment begin to grow.
Discernment as the Rhythm of Mindful Participation
If attention is what we notice, discernment is how we interpret what we’ve noticed, and choose how to respond wisely. It is the internal compass that helps us move in rhythm with the reality of the moment. Agency, then, is the ability to act on that discernment – to participate in shaping the moment, rather than being shaped entirely by it. These faculties are distinct, but interdependent. And together, they form the rhythm of mindful participation.
But, discernment, like agency, can be difficult to recognize. It often arrives disguised as an uncomfortable pause, a raised eyebrow, or an uneasy feeling in our gut. It’s that impression that the universe is tapping us on the shoulder, often ironically, and asking us to notice what’s actually happening here, without fixating on what we expected or hoped would happen.
I was reminded of this not long ago, while writing about, of all things, letting the moment be exactly as it is. I had just written a poetic line about stillness when my children burst through the door shouting the timeless sibling mantra: “he started it!” Backpacks flew. My son yelled about a mess of crackers. My daughter was crying over something that had spilled. The serenity was gone in seconds.
I felt myself tightening. I could feel the part of me that wanted to react. That self-righteousness that says, don’t they see I’m trying to write something meaningful? But somewhere in the tension, I caught the irony. Here I was, typing about the beauty of accepting what is, while actively rejecting what was happening right in front of me. That moment of awareness, ridiculous and real, snapped me back. It didn’t make everything peaceful. It didn’t get the crackers cleaned up. But it did something more important: it brought me closer to the truth of the moment, and closer to my kids.
That was a rare moment of catching discernment in motion. Not necessarily getting it “right,” but noticing what’s happening, and then shifting how to meet it.
Buddhist psychology names this quality as part of the Eightfold Path: “right effort” and “right intention.” These aren’t commandments. They are invitations. Right effort asks: Are we cultivating what is skillful, or feeding what is reactive? Right intention asks: What quality of heart is behind this action?
Discernment is how we notice what’s needed, and it’s informed by the quality of our awareness. If we’re not aware, then there’s nothing to discern. But when we are aware, even for a brief moment, that clarity can shape how we move. And the more clearly we see, the more finely we feel the tension of choice. Discernment asks that we begin by recognizing the moment (every moment) as worthy of attention, and then determine how to meet it with intention.
We may not choose what arises, but we do choose how we attend to it, and the story we shape from what remains.
Reclaiming Agency Matters Now More Than Ever
We live in a time when attention is under siege. Not with force, but with design. Everywhere we turn, something is vying to claim our gaze, guide our choices, finish our sentences, or make the next decision just a little easier. And in many ways, that promise delivers: a world with less friction, less burden, less reason to pause and reflect.
And in the exchange of friction for convenience, something else is diminished. As volition gets outsourced, our discernment dulls. Because when attention is half-held, our participation becomes shallow. And when we no longer feel the weight of choosing, we can begin to lose the sense that we’re shaping anything at all.
It’s easy, in this moment, to cast technology as the culprit. But this is not an argument against tools, nor against progress. Technology is not the problem. It’s just a mirror. It simply reflects how we choose to use it. And if we meet it with clarity and care, it can be a powerful extension of our human capacity to improve our lives. But to do this, we need to be even more diligent. More attentive. More aware.
Artificial Intelligence, for example, can amplify our abilities instead of diminishing them. But to do this we must invite more of our discernment into the process, not less. When we use these systems passively we relinquish the very thing that makes us human. But when we engage with presence and intention, the question changes from “How do I become more efficient?” to “What do I want to make more meaningful?”
And this is why attention, now more than ever, is sacred. Not because it’s scarce, but because it’s the part of us that still remembers how to choose. Every act of presence is a vote for agency. And reclaiming agency doesn’t require a revolution. It begins in stillness. In breath. In noticing what is here, and choosing to respond with care.
Every moment of attention met with discernment is an opportunity to plant a volitional seed in the shared garden of our becoming.
Every Act of Intention is a Seed
Every act of intention plants something: a mood, a tone, a possibility. Whether we know it or not, we are always cultivating a choice – in ourselves, in each other, and in the world we inhabit together.
This is the garden of agency. Not some distant, lofty ideal, but the living, breathing field of participation we tend each time we pause, notice, and respond with care. Attention is not just a cognitive act. It’s devotional. It is how we bow to the moment. And discernment is how we return, again and again, to the sacred task of tending.
Even if agency isn’t something we “possess” as individuals. Even if it emerges through relationships, systems, or something far more mysterious. It is still real enough to be practiced. Every breath, glance, choice, and pause becomes part of the garden we are growing, together. And what we water grows.
But not all seeds are equal. And not all tending is wholesome. So how do we trust our discernment? How do we know which seeds to plant, which impulses to dismiss or follow, which patterns to avoid or repeat? If agency is real, even in the smallest degree, then discernment carries weight. And it becomes a moral imperative.
That’s where we will go next. In Part 7, we’ll explore how karma, consequence, and care are not abstract beliefs or mystical rules. They are the living dynamics of attention and intention in an intricately woven causal web. We’ll explore morality not as outcome or decree, but as the quality of how we participate in what is.
…more on that next time.
Thank you! Such an important topic. Today, I took my 16 year old granddaughter into town to buy her an iPad for her birthday. On the way home, I talked to her about the fact that we are swamped with so much information that it is important for her to be selective in how she uses it. We talked about how valuable her attention is to others and the importance of her being able to choose how and where she directs it. Whether or not she was paying any attention to me remains to be seen. She could have been selectively tuning me out 😄. When I have another opportunity, I will follow up by reading this article with her.