Agency is a philosophical term that refers to one’s ability to act in a given situation. When discussing the nature of free will and responsibility, it is important to be mindful of how much agency a person has. If there’s an electrical fault in your house and you’re alone, there might not be anything you can do about it. If you’re a trained electrician, there might be a great deal you could do to fix the problem. However, being knowledgeable about electronics might not be enough if your tools are at your workplace. Thus, agency depends on both having the knowledge and having the means. A person with electrical training and tools has full agency over the problem of the electrical fault, whereas a person with no training and no tools has no direct agency over their electrical problems. They will have to pay someone who does have agency in this situation to fix it. Despite sounding so simple, problems with agency account for a lot of drama in relationships. This article will discuss a healthy sense of agency and then compare it to unhealthy perceptions of agency such as hyper-agency and hypo-agency. Continue reading
self-respect
The Virtue of Selfishness
When I was a teenager, I had a fascination with all things supernatural and superstitious. It started out with me telling stories about witches and the occult. Then I started to carry an astrology book with me and work out the horoscopes of my schoolmates. My tarot card reading phase got me into trouble with a catholic priest once. I must confess I actually read those incredibly boring books about witchcraft while the other kids merely put them on their shelves to impress fellow adherents to the gothic sub culture. But one day a classmate produced something truly scandalous: a copy of “The Satanic Bible“. Now I can’t for the life of me articulate what I actually was expecting to find in this book, I just knew it had to be bad. Preferably dark, sinister, and disturbing so I could impress girls with my wicked seductions or some other nonsense. However, I remember feeling disappointed with the book. It just didn’t contain anything in it that sounded particularly evil. The idea behind the book was the assumption that Christianity was altruistic and therefore Satanism logically should be the opposite of Christianity and thus be selfish. However, the book quickly ran into some philosophical problems regarding the nature of selfishness and how it related to evil. Namely the assumption was that being selfish was necessarily a bad thing, however, this assumption about selfishness quickly hits a brick wall. So for a book that’s meant to be about being evil it ends up being a rather peculiar, if not silly, unintentional self-help book.
A Brighter Perspective on Depression
Last night I was chatting to a friend about depression. As someone who is still recovering from depression she kept referring to it as “her weakness” which bothered me a little. This lead to her sharing with me a perspective on depression she had encountered recently: that depression was a method by which nature would rid a tribe of weaker members. Presumably it worked something like this: a person who couldn’t meet the expectations placed on them by their tribe would develop depression and end their own life so that only the strong members would survive. Thus it is a form of eugenics programmed into our psyche to effectively off ourselves for the benefit of the rest of the tribe. Now, I am trained as a biologist and such a genetic trait is unlikely to be passed on via natural selection because it actually lowers the probability of an individual passing on their genetics. Such genes usually die out quickly. However, this got me thinking about something: if so many people have the potential to get depression – why would such a trait be preserved by natural selection? What survival advantage does a propensity for depression actually have? Here is my case on why depression is helpful rather than harmful.
Tantrums and Those Who Enable Them
For many years now I have worked with children. Most of them have had autism, speech problems, cognitive delays, or some kind of behavioural problem. It has been an immense privilege to work so closely with so many children and their families over the years. No two families are the same in how their household is run in my experience, every family is its own unique culture. However, I have never encountered a family without the most classic and pervasive power struggle dynamic of them all: the tantrum thrower and the enabler. In every family I have encountered there has always been two people taking on these roles in some way. Child to child, child to adult, and adult to adult: the methods of throwing a tantrum may vary in age groups, but tantrums are ubiquitous. Understanding the nature of tantrums is a good strategy for unravelling the origins of dysfunction in any unhealthy relationship.
First, since we’re all about philosophy here, we need to make sure that we define our terms. A tantrum is a display of hyper emotionality usually resulting from being informed of some bad news. They can be overt through the use of shouting, crying and other verbal cues. They can be violent with the throwing and breaking of things. They can be subtle with silent treatment, passive aggressive words and deeds. They can be sophisticated with rationales, lies, excuses, and guilt trips. A tantrum never involves negotiation or an honest account of one’s situation. Continue reading
Philosophical Therapist 