Agency and mores
Agency and mores
If agency is more than (freedom to/from) what are its mores?
If agency is more than (freedom to/from) what are its mores?
Mores (/ˈmɔːreɪz/, sometimes /ˈmɔːriːz/;[1] from Latin mōrēs [ˈmoːreːs], plural form of singular mōs, meaning "manner, custom, usage, or habit") are social norms that are widely observed within a particular society or culture.[2] Mores determine what is considered morally acceptable or unacceptable within any given culture. A folkway is what is created through interaction and that process is what organizes interactions through routine, repetition, habit and consistency.[3]
Putting forward agency as a primary foundation of how to live well together, rather than some contract, or subjectivity, or surrender of a point-of-view, recognises us as animals first. Any other accoutrement we find useful or necessary, are secondary or derivative accessories. Even if we feel them as primary.
Thus agency is not defined then by secondary abstract notions, such as freedom, or conscience, or identity, but in terms of responsibilities/actions with/in a web of relationships, one chooses to live by/in. The choice itself is not an option, the accessories are, even if one is as fully dressed as a nude, or as naked as a influence maker.
Our investments betray us as much as our wants and needs portray us.
Basing how we world on agency, rather than on some set of rights or traditions and their (identitarian) privileges, recognises the world we live as an animal thing. As animals that we are and will be.
Movement is growth.
Animals arise in evolution as movement. Movement is an outgrowth of growth in a flow of energy. In growth as movement we each live in co-evolving relationships as earthly humans in what we then regard as nature, and with each other in society/economy.
Our humanity is based there with-in/out us.
We move, we choose, we eat and compose the movement as a body and landscape that we world with each other in ever increasing complexity. We can map the complexities to progress or decline, we can label the layers as a structure, depending how we view change and stability, or resilience and survival.
Those accessories to outcomes distract us from our animal humanity, even as we blame our animal natures for our mistakes, those failures we cannot, or refuse to, learn from.
To recognise agency as an active learning which recognises the mistakes we all make, can forestall the recognition of outcomes as causes, and the rash dogmatic answers our accessories provide by way of identity, tradition, ritualism, revolution or sport. These are investments we make with our success or profit, even when there is not winter coming to plan for.
As babies we do not begin as individuals, we do not begin as souls, we begin in great need and a want to grow out of it. Our first movement is to separate from our mothers and kin, while remaining close and supportive of our origins. This growth into ourselves begins in hunger and comfort, that communes into love and language. By our humanity made at/through meals and meetings we have expanded the (mammalian) dyad of birth into a circle or band of humans we call kith and kin.
At dinner we discuss the day as if it were tomorrow, where we wake after/by dreaming the day we shall have. We used hindsight to predict, and in that prediction we create our world, rashly or well.
We see the world then as our creation, and how it should be reflects what movements and growth we have experienced in loss, in evens or betterment. Or we have learned is just-so from our elders’ experience.
Agency-based mores, or agency in short, recognises mistakes as freedoms to learn in safety. We suspend judgement in order to sees ourselves better, and thus world better by not force the facts to fits our views. The facts here can simply be the other people we live with.
Agency is an active learning that seeks to inform the world that is beyond us as learners, in order to nurture further the possibilities that allowed us to begin our own growth in the first place, even if this is our last act.
This is worlding well, world-building better, this is how hope springs eternal despite our attempts to control the source in the name of some other outcome or accessory we feel invested in.
Following from and finishing up for now:
There is no need then to fight for freedom nor win it away from some lack of it. As that framework may then empower or emplace might-is-right over worlding. And reduce sovereignty to a bad dream.
Comments sections need to be also task masters. Need to write up on the perceived differences between movement and flow.