We are agents engaging with an environment. Based on the environment we, as agents, act.
Action will be determined by two aspects: magnitude and direction.
Magnitude is the execution, the effort, or the immensity of the action.
Direction is the reasoning, the strategy, or the path you ultimately choose to take.
Choosing to write is my action, choosing this topic is my direction, and choosing to spend hours researching, writing, discussing, and editing is my magnitude.
A mix of internal (factors of the agent) and external (factors of the environment) forces will catalyze and instantiate actions, each with its own unique magnitude and direction.
A good agent will choose the appropriate actions to respond to the environment, but a great agent will choose actions to intentionally change the environment.
As an agent, the environments you encounter throughout life present opportunities for action, yet not all of these environments initiate action evenly. The key to living a free and fulfilling life is understanding how action is initiated.
The first catalyst for an action is a shove.
A shove is a rude and obtuse external force that pushes you to do something.
It provides you with a prescribed magnitude and direction. In my essay “What fills a vacuum?” I would label this as something that claims a stake in your life. If my boss asks me to complete a menial task, I know exactly what I have to do and at what intensity; this is a shove.
This shove gives you a direction of action, and it requires some magnitude (which is usually evident).
The second catalyst for an action is a tunnel.
A tunnel is an external restriction that limits which direction you can go but has no claim on the magnitude.
It is a specific action you have control of the effort on. When your roommate asks you to tidy up something, they are providing you with a direction, yet you can choose how much effort to apply to the action. It becomes a trade-off, rather than something you have little control over.
The third catalyst for an action is a displacement.
Similarly, a displacement is an external force that pushes you to do something, yet unlike a shove, it is agnostic to the action itself, but it does demand an action is taken. It creates an exclusionary zone, a metaphorical “no loitering” sign. You cannot stay here but it doesn’t care where exactly you go. This instantiates a requisite magnitude, but it has no say on direction. When you graduate high school, the environment demands that you take some action to continue onwards, but you are provided with no prescription for where you must go.
The fourth catalyst for an action is the chase.
The chase, rather than originating externally, is an agentic decision. An action where you choose both the magnitude and direction. If the first three catalysts are external “pushes”, this would be an internal “pull”. You, of your own volition and desires, are taking a paintbrush across a canvas and making an indelible mark on your environment.
With these catalysts in mind, we can create a matrix to determine whether direction and magnitude are prescribed or chosen. In other words, whether actions are “forced”, or “free”.
Ostensibly, humans value freedom. We can rank the action catalysts according to this.
The Chase
Displacement
Tunnel
Shove
This is our hierarchy of environmental freedoms.
In life, we want to seek out freedom. We then want to leverage that freedom to accomplish our goals and pursue our values.
There will be some mix of all four action catalysts, but it is our goal to work our way up the hierarchy as much as possible.
Importantly, these catalysts apply to any agent, not just humans. This includes organizations.
Organizations (especially businesses), however, see the value of freedom very differently than people do. I believe, similarly to Naval Ravikant, that good judgment is valued above all else.
A business (or a person) will succeed or fail by their ability to turn a world full of options into a world full of action. A business that is facing a barrage of shoves (keep-the-lights-on decisions), is not necessarily a business that is able to exhibit good judgment: it is an organization simply reacting to the external world. Though it may appear that this business is making good decisions, it rests relatively low on the freedom scale. A good business needs to push past the shove/tunnel, even past displacement, and to chase after the vision of the world it wants to create.
A good business needs excellent executives and passionate leaders. These people should not be toiling on drudgery for any longer than necessary. They should be the ones in the driver’s seat, piloting the chase, rather than withstanding the back-and-forth of daily shoves.
A manager responding to shoves is not exhibiting judgment. Your organization needs to find ways to systematically empower its members to reach “the chase”.
The notion that someone is either working on the business or in the business can be mapped to our action catalysts. Shoves, or claims on your time that are bothersome but rather easily executed, can be considered working “in the business” Engaging in the chase, on the other hand, where one defines their own direction and magnitude, could be considered working “on the business”.
Freedom is not some byproduct of the environment, but it is instead a product of the friction between the agent and the environment over time. Regardless of your starting hand, the agent can use whatever freedom it is given to earn more freedom for itself. An agent can draw out as many chases as possible from any given environment, rather than sticking to the shoves, tunnels, or displacements.
A good agent will choose the appropriate actions in regard to the environment, but a great agent will be able to intentionally change the environment with their decisions.
Freedom can be earned by incrementally transitioning your option sets from shoves, to tunnels, to displacements, to the chase. All accomplished by making good decisions with your previous environmental freedoms.
Freedom comes from your environment, and your environment is an extension of you.
So where does freedom come from?
You.
It would be interesting to compare this analysis with the framework behind R. J. Rummel’s behavioral equation.