I’ve shared this blog posting
many times and in many places as it captures elegantly so much of the bullshit of popular media and cultural commentary about the challenges and urgency of our current time. Let’s be all we can be, offer our brilliance in collaboration with others, whereever there are places and spaces to contribute. We can be responsible – each of us! And with lightness and conviction.
let’s connect….
The notion of the individual entity having agency is confused by a paradox. The confusion lies with the idea of individuation. The entity (organism, person, or organization) is bound to its unique perspective or epistemology, and in that sense is identifiable as a separate source of responsibility. But, there is no aspect of that entity that is uninfluenced, uninformed, or unbound to the larger contextual interactions. On closer examination we begin to see that agency is diffused into the larger contextual processes that are shared by the entire community. Agency is a paradoxical product of mutual learning within and between people, nature, and culture.
I appreciate this perspective, and have found the African concept of Ubuntu very profound.