Serendipitously, there are some fascinating parallels between this dichotomy/opposition and what Zevedei Barbu describes in Problems of Historical Psychology (a short, fairly readable book which I recommend, not because most of what Barbu says is right—his views are rooted largely in a psychodynamic perspective, after all, so there’s an upper bound on literal correctness/truth of what he says—but because the book is packed with fascinating and, to me, fairly novel perspectives, some of which make predictions that sound like surprisingly familiar descriptions of social phenomena and dynamics which we have all observed).
In particular, Barbu describes the evolution of civilization as the result of the arrival on the scene of the second part of a dichotomy very similar to (but also importantly different from) what you describe (and the beginning of a corresponding conflict/interaction). Under this view, we might construe personal development (of the sort of category that “increasing your agency” might fit into) as a sort of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” echo of that same process.
(I don’t endorse any of this as a literal description of either historical nor personal development—but, again, the perspective is an interesting one.)
In particular, Barbu describes the evolution of civilization as the result of the arrival on the scene of the second part of a dichotomy very similar to (but also importantly different from) what you describe (and the beginning of a corresponding conflict/interaction). Under this view, we might construe personal development (of the sort of category that “increasing your agency” might fit into) as a sort of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” echo of that same process.
Reading this, what I’m imagining is that the development of individuals happens through this conflict/interaction between ‘individual desires’ and ‘external reality’, and that the development of civilization happens through the conflict/interaction between ‘individual desires’ and ‘external social reality’. (Using the same sort of labeling scheme, I’m thinking of this as ‘self’ and ‘others’.)
I suspect there’s a detail being added by the “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” reference that I’m missing; the obvious echo is “if you already have machinery for managing the conflict/interaction of two forces that you need to do for individual agency in physical reality, just do the same thing for individual agency in social reality.” Thinking about it more, it seems like if we take the individual as the ‘fish’ and the civilization as the ‘reptile’, there’s a way in which the development of the reptile includes within it the development ‘as a fish’, either through the Sowell-style “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late” or the forward-looking “when you try to develop your civilization, you have the options of 1) developing yourself and 2) developing others / the dynamics of the civilization.”
Serendipitously, there are some fascinating parallels between this dichotomy/opposition and what Zevedei Barbu describes in Problems of Historical Psychology (a short, fairly readable book which I recommend, not because most of what Barbu says is right—his views are rooted largely in a psychodynamic perspective, after all, so there’s an upper bound on literal correctness/truth of what he says—but because the book is packed with fascinating and, to me, fairly novel perspectives, some of which make predictions that sound like surprisingly familiar descriptions of social phenomena and dynamics which we have all observed).
In particular, Barbu describes the evolution of civilization as the result of the arrival on the scene of the second part of a dichotomy very similar to (but also importantly different from) what you describe (and the beginning of a corresponding conflict/interaction). Under this view, we might construe personal development (of the sort of category that “increasing your agency” might fit into) as a sort of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” echo of that same process.
(I don’t endorse any of this as a literal description of either historical nor personal development—but, again, the perspective is an interesting one.)
Reading this, what I’m imagining is that the development of individuals happens through this conflict/interaction between ‘individual desires’ and ‘external reality’, and that the development of civilization happens through the conflict/interaction between ‘individual desires’ and ‘external social reality’. (Using the same sort of labeling scheme, I’m thinking of this as ‘self’ and ‘others’.)
I suspect there’s a detail being added by the “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny” reference that I’m missing; the obvious echo is “if you already have machinery for managing the conflict/interaction of two forces that you need to do for individual agency in physical reality, just do the same thing for individual agency in social reality.” Thinking about it more, it seems like if we take the individual as the ‘fish’ and the civilization as the ‘reptile’, there’s a way in which the development of the reptile includes within it the development ‘as a fish’, either through the Sowell-style “Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late” or the forward-looking “when you try to develop your civilization, you have the options of 1) developing yourself and 2) developing others / the dynamics of the civilization.”