I posted this meme to the Lemmy Shitpost community. I reckoned that it might generate a bit of debate, and would probably end up locked, but the entire post got deleted, and moreover, I’m now forbidden from sharing political posts to the community. Political posts are not against the rules of the community.
I have reason to believe that the post was deleted not because it was controversial, but because the moderator (Decoy321) disagreed with the political slant of the meme. The reason I find this suspicious is because other controversial posts, such as one about veganism remains up, and Decoy321 seemed to enjoy the fact it was controversial:
Intention exists, its just a form of information processing in your mind. Like all thoughts and motivations.
it’s meaningless since I couldn’t choose to act on my intention
Its not meaningless, at least not in a material sense. Trying to identify intent is useful information, it can guide interactions to being more empathetic/sympathetic, productive, or interesting.
Is it meaningless in the sense of like, spirituality? Or existentialism? Absolutely. Like, we aren’t here for any reason and no one choose to be here. It never mattered in any mystical, magical, spiritual reason. There is nothing beyond what is here. We just exist and we like what we like and want what we want.
if it’s meaningless, why are you so focused on trying to define it and defend your position? you must recognize this is only rational if you have agency.
Because I love discourse. I love discussing these ideas. (Though sometimes I also hate it)
Agency is one’s ability to influence your environment. Agency feels good. So does solving puzzles and helping people.
if you’re not choosing how to change your environment, you have no agency. rock slides change their environment but they have no agency.
Rocks have no agency because they aren’t conscious or contain intelligence.
Characters in books are fictional autonomous beings and are often described as having agency or having no agency on the basis of their level of influence on the story. That’s what I’m describing in a sense when I use the word, but applied to real conscious beings.
consciousness doesn’t grant agency. free will does. if we can’t agree on this, then go on making up your own definitions.
Perhaps I should try for a different word to describe it or modify it in some way. I will concede it ends up entering into semantic debate sometimes (if the discussion even reaches this point) and I find that kind of discussion pretty dull.