Reminds me of the Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality quote: "Of course it was my fault. There's no one else here who could be responsible for anything."
Which is to say, if I hear someone apologizing for the weather, one likely presumption would be that they're just assuming fault as a matter of etiquette, or some latent self-hating tendency... but another, more interesting, possibility is that they're apologizing for not having gotten around to the step in their world domination plans where they build a global climate-regulation system yet. Because they would if they could, they will as soon as they can, and it's only their own laziness and ignorance of proper power/wealth/intelligence-bootstrapping methods preventing them from being there already. That, in my opinion, is precisely the type of person you should trust to Get Things Done, even when those things would seem, to most people, to be currently "out of their hands."
In other words, feeling responsibility for everything around you is a necessary prerequisite for agency. You see this a lot in company owners. Why is the founder mopping the floor while everyone else is working? Because nobody else is doing it, it has to get done, and the buck stops with him. He's responsible for everything, even the weather.
For me that's the most irritating feature of hpmor's protagonist. I understand that's probably intentional - so it's working. I wouldn't really trust more a person that claims exclusive agency - I'd probably trust him much less as if he doesn't respect me enough to assign me agency - how can I be sure he respects me enough to not violate my trust? You don't feel to bad if you make a promise to an NPC character in a video-game and break it, right?
I think it's not so much that HPMoR!Harry claims exclusive agency, as that the plot has railroaded him away from any of the setting's other agent-y characters (or, at least, agent-y characters with compatible-enough-to-engage-in-trade utility functions; HPMoR!Quirrelmort is more of an agent-y Other-Optimizer.)
HPMoR!Lucius Malfoy is pretty agent-y, for example, but Harry doesn't get to talk to him much. When he did in the last chapter, the results were exactly what you'd expect from rationalists collaborating -- a sudden acceleration in both parties' world-taking-over plans.
(Though, obviously, "taking the world on your shoulders because you think you can't rely on your friends" is also a standard bildungsroman protagonist trope.)
That kind of notation is often used while discussing various fan fictions to avoid confusion when people are talking about 'canon' version of character and 'modified'. So it's common to just always prepend which version you're talking about, so HPMOR!Harry/canon!Harry/other-fan-fic!Voldemort etc. etc.
It's not at all an issue of agency. It's an issue of responsibility: just because there's someone else with the agency to solve the problem, and even someone whose job it is to solve the problem, doesn't mean you're absolved of responsibility if you could have solved the problem and failed to do so.
Obviously that can quickly lead to insanity if you're not also willing to prioritize problems: "there was something more important" is a completely valid excuse for not solving a problem, but "that's someone else's job and it's not my fault if they didn't do it" isn't.
I think there's an official list somewhere and we are slowly working through it. Much of it we actually did, but we add in a few apologies for the rain as well to make it seem less damning. ;)
I want to bring health and wellness to the world. I'm working my way towards that. It's pretty ambitious. Learning how to not always feel the weight on my shoulders and chest though.
> Learning how to not always feel the weight on my shoulders and chest though.
I want to give you advice on how to do that, but because it's so hard to tell what the recipe for success actually is, I hesitate for fear that the advice would end up being counterproductive. So, for what it's worth, and with a grain of salt:
I've found that the pattern that is functional for me is a cyclical manic-depression. I come up with new ideas, expend energy on them, spinning up projects and pouring out thoughts and insights, and then I collapse into an emotional death spiral and am forced to spend effort on self-improvement of various kinds before going into another burst of creative energy. The length of the cycles vary tremendously.
This sounds about right. Though I've gone through enough self-improvement cycles that my "emotional death spiral" aren't as drastic now - mind you, they still suck and do contrast strongly the feeling and productivity when in the creative energy bursts. The more pieces of life I have figured out the better too. I almost found a permanent counter-balance, a woman, who I thought would end up inspiring me permanently - though that opportunity never ended up not being possible.
> I almost found a permanent counter-balance, a woman, who I thought would end up inspiring me permanently - though that opportunity never ended up not being possible.
I've been in this trap before; it's a bad idea. A support network is critically important, but don't put a lover on a pedestal to act as your muse. It's murder for a healthy relationship.
Nope, I realize that. It wasn't meant for that - it would have just been inspiring enough or rather elevating to have found someone I could start to build deep trust with, but I don't absolutely need that. For now I'm just focusing on building better friendships and relationships in general. Just the thought of having someone I can fully confide into - business wise or otherwise - is appealing.
YMMV but realising that you can't possibly do it alone is one good step. Then getting a good team around you to work on it together. Finally, don't look at the top of the mountain all the time, look behind you and see all the good things you have achieved. Check where the top of the mountain is occasionally to make sure you don't stray from the chosen path. But if you keep staring at it you'll never get there.
Good advice, and hard to remember when so focused at times. Looking behind me at the good things achieved usually happens when I am in a down cycle of being slightly burned out or demotivated. Something I should work on doing more regularly.
Which is to say, if I hear someone apologizing for the weather, one likely presumption would be that they're just assuming fault as a matter of etiquette, or some latent self-hating tendency... but another, more interesting, possibility is that they're apologizing for not having gotten around to the step in their world domination plans where they build a global climate-regulation system yet. Because they would if they could, they will as soon as they can, and it's only their own laziness and ignorance of proper power/wealth/intelligence-bootstrapping methods preventing them from being there already. That, in my opinion, is precisely the type of person you should trust to Get Things Done, even when those things would seem, to most people, to be currently "out of their hands."
In other words, feeling responsibility for everything around you is a necessary prerequisite for agency. You see this a lot in company owners. Why is the founder mopping the floor while everyone else is working? Because nobody else is doing it, it has to get done, and the buck stops with him. He's responsible for everything, even the weather.