Wise Agency

= "“wise agency”: accomplishing with wisdom, or accomplishing the right thing, in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason, and with the right people." [1]

Graph at [2]

Typology

Peter Limberger:

"Different academic disciplines have different takes on the word “agency”:

• Philosophy sees agency as the capacity to act intentionally and rationally to bring about change in the world.

• Psychology views agency as a person’s capacity to exert control over their environment and experience a sense of ownership over their actions.

• Sociology understands agency as the exercise of individual autonomy within the constraints of social structures."

(https://lessfoolish.substack.com/p/high-agency-to-wise-agency)

Discussion

Peter Limberger:

"Wise agency is not a new way of being but a very old one. Today it is expressed, imperfectly, through a phrase that speaks to modern minds: those who already have the capacity for high agency but are wary of the motivational schema underlying it.

These minds, at their core, are firmly secular, either atheistic or agnostic. Yet they have been cracked open metaphysically through intense experiences such as psychedelics, meditative practices, or spiritual emergencies born of deep personal suffering. As a result, they tend to be intellectually flexible (sometimes called “meta” or “Kegan 5”) and gradually become lovers of wisdom.

Wisdom, as I defined before, is “existential wayfinding”: finding the way, hence your way. It is a deep attunement to the invisible vector that lights the path. My definition has shifted slightly. I no longer view wisdom as merely finding the way, which risks creating a permanent seeker, but as attuning to it so acutely that one is not merely finding it, nor only following it, but ultimately indwelling in it.

When it comes to this invisible vector that serves as the way, the Taoists, Stoics, and Orthodox each have their own name for it. But what do the moderns have?

Many today have what’s known as “Church hurt,” a trauma that originates from negative experiences within the Church. As a result, they are cut off from the best the tradition has to offer due to their understandable wounds. Given this, they will not resonate with it and, depending on their degree of hurt, may even be triggered by it.

As a result, they look elsewhere for the way. The closest secular-friendly metaphor I have seen is the “holotropic attractor,” coined by systems theorist Ervin Laszlo and a foundational concept behind Tom Morgan’s The Leading Edge.

The holotropic attractor, Laszlo argues, is the organizing force that moves life toward increased complexity and integration. It suggests that evolution is not random but has a pull toward greater wholeness. Wisdom, then, is attuning to the holotropic attractor. Tom’s attunement approach is being deeply curious. Another way to say this is sensing into what “resonates,” which allows for “unfoldment,” the effortless effort of today’s modern wisdom lover.

The most popular expression I have seen at The Stoa and adjacent wisdom spaces is “follow your aliveness,” which invokes the conversational greeting: “What’s alive?” This phrase harkens back to Joseph Campbell’s “follow your bliss,” which he later rephrased as “follow your blisters.”

Regardless of how hard one follows their bliss, they will inevitably come across blisters. The Christians call this “soul-making”: you become more whole through the character-building suffering that life brings."

(https://lessfoolish.substack.com/p/wise-agency-the-philosophers-stone)