"Human agency is the capacity for human beings to make choices. It is normally contrasted to natural forces which are causes involving only unthinking, deterministic processes. In this respect, agency is subtly distinct from the concept of free will, the doctrine that our choices are not the product of causal chains, but are significantly free or undetermined. Human agency entails the claim that humans do, in fact, make decisions and enact them on the world. How humans come to make decisions, by free choice or other processes, is another issue...If a situation is a consequence of human decision making, persons may be under a duty to apply value judgments to the consequences of their decisions, and held to be responsible for those decisions. Human agency entitles the observer to ask, should this have occurred? in a way that would be nonsensical in circumstances lacking human decision-makers such as the impact of a comet on Jupiter."
Upon reflection, I realize that my last post about Bryan's inability to drift with fate was completely wrong. Bryan drifted for much of his life; that was one of his problems. He never accepted the responsibilities and rewards of his own human agency.
We are put here to make choices, make mistakes and learn from them. That's how we evolve, and the process never ends. Bryan would never accept responsibility for his mistakes, so he couldn't learn from them and move on. Instead, he constructed a world view in which he was always a victim and his mistakes were always someone else's fault.
I realize now that perpetual victimhood is an extreme form of egoism. We are all victims at one point or another; shit happens that is beyond our control. But, most of the time, we make our own mistakes. In accepting responsibility for those mistakes, we acknowledge and accept our fallibility and imperfection. In the darkness of his heart, Bryan believed himself infallible, incapable of making a mistake. Thus, he believed that his problems were never of his own making; how could they be, if he was infallible? His problems were always caused by an outside source beyond his control. That way, he could still be right when he was wrong.
He had locked himself so tightly into a tiny closet of ego that he could only conceive of one way out. What a waste.
The man had a master's degree, parents who loved and supported him, friends. He got bailed out of trouble more times than I can count. He had a career that, with a little effort, could have easily made him a decent living. He had options, right up until the day he died, yet he chose to live in squalor and despair with drug addicts and criminals. If he was here right now he would still insist that his wasted opportunities were someone else's fault. The truth is, he was never a victim of anything other than his own ego.
He leaves nothing for his family but chaos and unimaginable psychic damage. There was no insurance, no money in the bank. Greg and I had to bail him out one last time and pay for his goddamned funeral.
I don't begrudge the money. I do begrudge the useless, senseless waste.
I mourn the funny, nervy, smart-mouthed, talented, opinionated kid he once was. I'm having a harder time mourning for the man he became, the man he chose to become.
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