You Have Agency, but What Does That Actually Mean?

Some popular terms within current culture are determinism, control, and agency.

What is their meaning, and how do these concepts relate to our health and happiness?

Determinism opines that everything that has happened and will happen in this world was determined by the initial cosmic coordinates present at the advent of our universe about 14 billion years ago. All subsequent outcomes were predetermined at this inception, so there is no true free choice in this world.

Agency stands in opposition to determinism. Agency refers to our ability to choose. Choosing is not only selecting from multiple possibilities, but it is also rejecting other possibilities, yet an outcome remains undetermined. It is a response to inputs, not a reaction to inputs, and it is an output, not an outcome.

Under the coordinates, rules, and laws of determinism, our perception of our agency in the world is defined as an illusion. Conceding that it is the environment, the universe, meeting our cells and our genome that determines most of our physical, emotional, social, behavioral, mental, and spiritual states of being, it still feels incorrect to conclude that determinism is the rule of our experience and existence. It feels like we do have some agency.

In fact, when we dig into the depths of cosmic functions at the level of quantum fields and mechanics, it appears that the universe doesn’t run via predictabilities and predeterminations but by possibilities and probabilities—nothing in the universe is strictly dictated, and outcomes emerge within the moment, not in advance of the now.

Therefore, it seems unlikely that from an expansive and indeterminate universe an infantile and temporary species living on a little green and blue spinning spec within a cosmic swirl would be governed by determinism. It seems suspicious that our sense of agency is not an illusion and that determinism is in error.

A third and contrasting concept with determinism and agency is control, which implies that our choices can dictate outcomes. At one level, control feels like extreme agency, but control looks more like determinism, as both determinism and control are falsely perceived to dictate outcomes, whereas agency only offers freedom of choice with possibilities, perhaps probabilities, of an outcome, but no precise determination or control over an outcome.

Determinism gives absolute control to the environment—the universe. Controlism gives determination of the environment—the universe—to the human species and even to the individual human. Both conceptualizations are inaccurate, but the latter seems to be another absurd egocentric construct, narrative, and belief of the human mind. It is here that the illusions lie.

Interestingly, when we are threatened, we are not responsive or contemplative, and we are reactive and impulsive. This reactivity, in combination with our drive to control outcomes within an illusion of control, biologically extinguishes free choice.

Control aligns with threat phenotypes and a reactive, boundaryless, anxious, and obsessive physiologic need to determine outcomes to feel safe. The physiology of control correlates with the physiology of fear, rigidity, impulsivity, distractibility, prejudice, and resistance…maladaptation and anguish can follow. However, these are physiologic correlates to threats, not something we can choose to avoid or dissipate.

Agency aligns with safety phenotypes and having the presence to choose, act, and then respond to inputs and subsequent outcomes without controlling outcomes. The physiology of agency correlates with the physiology of connectivity, flexibility, intentionality, reasonability, objectivity, and acceptance… adaptation and evolution can follow. However, these are physiologic correlates to safety, not something we can choose to have or nourish.

Locus of Control Essential Reads

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Our agency comes in our choosing to create threat or safety within the world—the rest follows.

Knowing that the desire for controlling and the act of controlling are not good for us, or for others, and humbling ourselves to concede that we have very little true control in this world, all help to prevent the adoption of toxic ego-protective illusions of control. Our illusions of control can serve to reinforce our suppressions and repressions and further precipitate our emotional distress, maladaptive behaviors, inaccurate ideations, and our mood, personality, and thought disorders.

Living with, being with, the reality of very little control and yet significant agency gives life a sense of authenticity, spontaneity, and play while wandering along a path of adventure, curiosity, and freedom.

Agency also describes the connectivity and bidirectionality between the inorganic and the organic, life and the environment, and us and the universe—never separate in influence, yet each in absence of control.

There is also a connectivity and multi-directionality to threat versus safety and control versus agency. When we are threatened, we demand control. When we are safe, we have agency. When we give up control, we find freedom and create safety. When we give up agency, we lose freedom and create threat.

The space and time we are living in today create concerns about the threatening forces at play and the grim vortex we are stuck in.

To let go of the need to control and for illusions of control is an adaptation that restores the physiology of safety and creates agency, but more importantly, being safe eliminates the need to control and for illusions of control to further fortify agency.

It is being within a space and time of safety that determines our happiness, health, and freedom to choose, and our freedom to choose controls our ability to be happy, healthy, and safe within this world.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. –The Serenity Prayer