Crisis of faith

[sabrinamari]

Much of my life has been spent attempting to understand the relationship between structures (the outside economic, political and cultural forces that control and constrain us) and agency (our own internal, individual power to shape our own lives and circumstances).

In my academic life, that's meant exploring how much real power individuals can deploy when they live in poverty-ridden circumstances that control and constrain them---deprivation, severe chronic illness, a marginalized social status, a minority status. That's what my dissertation research was about, and that's what my book is about.

After many years, I've come to the conclusion that even though the forces of "structural violence," (poverty, deprivation, stigma, etc.) are very powerful, it's unexpectedly difficult to completely strip human beings of their own agency.

If they have enough "cultural capital"---basically, access to intellectual, emotional and knowledge-based resources like education and exposure to many different ways of living as well as their associated world views---they can *and often do* assemble diverse social networks ("social capital") that help them shape their own lives.

In other words, they get good at getting the exact help they need to regain the ability to shape their own experiences in the face of challenges.

Hopeful, yes?

But now, I am seeing---in excruciatingly painful detail---how our individual agency, our freedom to choose, is also profoundly limited by internal psychological "structures" as well. Just as Trent's amazing and wonderful brain enables him to make some kinds of choices easily, it inhibits him from making others, despite his strong desire to do so.

And just as my childhood experiences have helped me develop extraordinary resilience, they've also shaped my psyche in ways that subtly, and not-so-subtly, incline me to make choices that probably aren't good for me.

That's very discouraging.

Suddenly, I'm re-sorting the explanatory models that help me move through the world. Suddenly, I find myself asking, "If human beings must work so hard to act as free agents in the face of profound outside structural constraints, what in the hell hope do we have of acting in real freedom if we must also, at the same time, battle equally powerful internal psychological structures that limit us below the level of our consciousness?"

Where is our freedom?

Where is our agency?

I am having a kind of crisis of faith.

I am asking myself, "Am I really just a girl on a string?"

No---a girl on two strings---one external, one internal, neither of which I myself control.

Already, I can see that the more insight I have into my own internal psychological constraints, the more I am able to reclaim my power. But that insight must be translatable into real, autonomous action---it's not enough to have the insight but remain unable to apply it in the world.

And even here I have to be careful.

For example, if I have been shaped to seek out swords queen friends out of a deeply unconscious desire to sort things out with my mother, is my freedom to be found in immediately rejecting that pattern?

No, of course not. To respond in simple, knee-jerk opposition to your ingrained patterns is *also* to give up one's agency.

I don't want to be controlled.

I don't want to be controlled!

So where, exactly, is my freedom?

That's what I need to work out.

No, that's not exactly right, either. I know *where* it is: "...in the moment between stimulus and response."

I just don't yet know how to enact it.