Thanks for the (very relatable) post! I find slack extremely valuable. I agree with the observation that “real-world” slack likely isn’t the main blocker of resourcefulness (as you use the term) for many people, including me. I am not sure I would call the bag of self-imposed limitations, licenses and roles also (a lack of) slack, though—at least for me “slack within identity/role” does not map to the meat of the problem of agency in ownership/role/something. I would be excited to read more on cultivating intrapersonal freedom!
I am unsure about the self-alignment you point to in the last part, especially in context of resulting decrease in agency (I assume you point more to activity/initiative than any pursuing of your goals, which may be e.g. more passive). I often see at least two interpretations of “self-alignment” (with many intermediate variants):
* Finding out what my values are (in particular values of different parts/subagents of myself) and how they interact, and then trying to find a good way to first reconcile and then satisfy most (if not all) of them. I think this may easily make one less productive even when done “right”—especially if one repressed some desires/values before, or it turns out you have some deeper uncertainty about what you want or what some values/desires are after (and then it may be optimal to first figure some of it out, with the risk of this taking a lot of time). (I still endorse this self-alignment to a degree and I think it often is a net improvement, possibly after some investment, but I just can’t really tell when it would not be beneficial or just take long years in therapy. There is so much more to the whole topic and process!)
* Try to make all my goals (and of my parts/subagents) more aligned with each other by modifying them. In small doses, this may be e.g. just habit building but undertaken seriously, I would consider it outright dangerous (with similar dangers of repressing values e.g. as a misused IDC, but also amplifying possibly local or extreme values).
How do you align your actions&goals with your values if it turns out your values are a) partially hidden (c.f. Elephant in the Brain) and b) contradicting each other? (Side note: The second property of values is perhaps a cheap, nasty trick of evolution: Implementing complex multi-criterial optimization as bag of independent, contradictory “values” with convex (=diminishing) penalty functions, pushing the poor animal “somewhere in the middle” of the state space while at least somewhat frustrated even in the optimum).
Thanks for the (very relatable) post!
I find slack extremely valuable. I agree with the observation that “real-world” slack likely isn’t the main blocker of resourcefulness (as you use the term) for many people, including me. I am not sure I would call the bag of self-imposed limitations, licenses and roles also (a lack of) slack, though—at least for me “slack within identity/role” does not map to the meat of the problem of agency in ownership/role/something. I would be excited to read more on cultivating intrapersonal freedom!
I am unsure about the self-alignment you point to in the last part, especially in context of resulting decrease in agency (I assume you point more to activity/initiative than any pursuing of your goals, which may be e.g. more passive). I often see at least two interpretations of “self-alignment” (with many intermediate variants):
* Finding out what my values are (in particular values of different parts/subagents of myself) and how they interact, and then trying to find a good way to first reconcile and then satisfy most (if not all) of them. I think this may easily make one less productive even when done “right”—especially if one repressed some desires/values before, or it turns out you have some deeper uncertainty about what you want or what some values/desires are after (and then it may be optimal to first figure some of it out, with the risk of this taking a lot of time).
(I still endorse this self-alignment to a degree and I think it often is a net improvement, possibly after some investment, but I just can’t really tell when it would not be beneficial or just take long years in therapy. There is so much more to the whole topic and process!)
* Try to make all my goals (and of my parts/subagents) more aligned with each other by modifying them. In small doses, this may be e.g. just habit building but undertaken seriously, I would consider it outright dangerous (with similar dangers of repressing values e.g. as a misused IDC, but also amplifying possibly local or extreme values).
How do you align your actions&goals with your values if it turns out your values are a) partially hidden (c.f. Elephant in the Brain) and b) contradicting each other?
(Side note: The second property of values is perhaps a cheap, nasty trick of evolution: Implementing complex multi-criterial optimization as bag of independent, contradictory “values” with convex (=diminishing) penalty functions, pushing the poor animal “somewhere in the middle” of the state space while at least somewhat frustrated even in the optimum).