The Agency Crisis
Why Agency is Important and How to Get More of it
The Hero’s Journey is an ever present pattern/process found within learning. It can be simplified to an individual travelling into the unknown and coming back with a piece of ‘sacred knowledge’, knowledge that cannot be obtained by simply reading a book. This in turn increases the person’s sovereignty (their belief in their own abilities). The greater the chasm crossed, the greater the reward. However with greater chasms, there are greater risks, risks that can result in not being able to return at all e.g. going insane. These risks however can be reduced with the help of a guide, mentor, shaman or support network of people who have been through the same chasm. Chasm’s can include nihilism, rites of passage, hallucinogens and even COVID-19. Any time the threshold of the unknown is crossed, we inadvertently follow the Hero’s Journey to a lesser or greater degree.
The agency crisis is one of the many underlying crises that is affecting current society. Whilst we have vast amounts of knowledge at our fingertips, there are very few support networks, guides or teachers out there who are willing to mentor others ‘freely’. There is also a fear around the unknown which has been increased through helicopter parenting. Due to this, very few of us feel able to look into the chasm let alone jump into it. This has the resultant effect in that very few people feel able to do anything that involves even the slightest risk or uncertainty. As a society, we lack agency. When we look at the many crises that we face, whether they are political, economic, climate or endemic in nature, what is needed are individuals who have the confidence and direction to show up.
One of the easiest ways to create agency in people is through an initiation ceremony which is essentially a dramatic play. The initiate is the audience and the support network the actors. The script contains the creed, rules, standards and protocol that binds all the cause’s members together. The chasm is created through the mystery of the ceremony. Once initiated through the Hero’s Journey, every member is then empowered and gains meaning through a shared narrative. The journey also helps to speed up the process of building trust within the community, as everyone has jumped through the same hoops to be there and is willing to for the community.
Many have made the word ‘Sovereignty’ the focus of this crisis, however it does not address The Meaning Crisis fully. It is much like atheism in this regard, you have complete control over your destiny but no path to direct those energies along. This is why ‘Agency’ is more important, because as an agent to a cause you have empowerment and meaning.
“If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can’t stop you, then you become something else entirely” (Henri Ducard, Batman Begins, 2005)
A good example of this is James Bond, although fictional, he and his real life counterparts are agents of the crown, they are confident in their abilities and they have a reason to fight. Arguably this confidence is largely due to the ceremonies and tribulations that they had to go through in order to get the job and is due to the trust then given to them for going through that journey.
One of the key benefits of the agency process for networks is the shared narrative experience it gives its members e.g. shared meaning. Because whilst many people can have shared values, it is a very different thing to have a rich shared ‘experience’, one in which all of the senses were involved. This allows a network to exceed the Dunbar Number whilst retaining a strong identity and inclusivity. The beauty of this is in its ability to break down boundaries, whether they are race, class, gender etc. Arguably if everyone in the world shared in at least one narrative experience with each other, we could end conflict for good. Through this practice, Freemasons for instance are able to go anywhere in the western world and find someone that they can form a close bond with in seconds.
In summary it is possible to get sovereignty through the Hero’s Journey, but it is only once you integrate the journey with a narrative, that it’s possible to gain agency and thus meaning as well.
The challenge now is to find diverse methods of initiation, mentorship, of holding spaces, of creating mystery through the dramatic arts and creating engaging dynamic scripts that can integrate all of the core tenants of a cause or belief without leading it toward orthodoxy. The further challenge will then be to condense this creative process into a digestible set of open sourced tools so that existing and future networks can integrate agency practices into their operating systems.
