You Are What You Do Next : Freedom as a Loop - The Deeper Thinking Podcast
*Can we pause our systems before they swallow our agency?*
The Deeper Thinking Podcast
An exploration of freedom as the engineered loops of reflection that allow us to author our own lives.
What if freedom wasn’t a sudden burst of will but a cultivated practice of recursive loops? In this episode, we invoke Paul Ricoeur’s and Dan McAdams’s narrative‐identity theory, Judith Butler’s recognitive justice, and Shoshana Zuboff’s critique of surveillance capitalism t...
You Are What You Do Next : Freedom as a Loop - The Deeper Thinking Podcast
*Can we pause our systems before they swallow our agency?*
The Deeper Thinking Podcast
An exploration of freedom as the engineered loops of reflection that allow us to author our own lives.
What if freedom wasn’t a sudden burst of will but a cultivated practice of recursive loops? In this episode, we invoke Paul Ricoeur’s and Dan McAdams’s narrative‐identity theory, Judith Butler’s recognitive justice, and Shoshana Zuboff’s critique of surveillance capitalism to show how recursive agency emerges only when time, language, and social witness align. We draw on Harry Frankfurt’s second‐order desires and Thomas Hobbes’s compatibilism to argue that true freedom is the structured capacity to re‐enter our own actions, revise meaning, and move forward with clarity.
This is not a manifesto. It’s a journey through classrooms practicing restorative justice, prisons designed on humane principles, and digital platforms engineered with design theory to insert micro‐pauses. We examine how institutions—from Norwegian island prisons and Chicago’s restorative circles to social‐media throttles—either erode or enable loops that turn accountability into an ongoing practice of becoming.
About the Vignettes
Some of the vignettes are drawn from real programs, while others are illustrative composites meant to show how a “loop” might be built in different contexts. For example:
Chicago’s Restorative Circles really exist: schools that implement circle discussions in lieu of suspensions have been shown to reduce repeat behavior by roughly a third.
Norway’s low-security island prisons (e.g., Bastøy) operate with humane, social-worker-style staff and have recidivism rates well below those in most countries.
Social-media “friction” experiments (like one-second delays before a post can be shared) have been tested by platforms such as Twitter/X to lower impulsive reposts of hateful material.
Stock-market circuit breakers that pause trading at certain thresholds are a real form of enforced pause in finance.
Other examples—such as the Kyoto pharmacy mirror-sticker campaign, the Berlin QR-code crosswalk prompts, or the agricultural-cooperative voice-memo requirement—are not documented cases but are plausible, hypothetical designs that follow the same logic. They’re meant to illustrate how small pauses or “loops” could be embedded in everyday systems.
Reflections
Here are some reflections that surfaced along the way:
- Freedom is not an all‐or‐nothing gift but a practice of revisiting and revising.
- Recursive agency blossoms where time, vocabulary, and witnesses form an unbroken loop.
- Compatibilism anchors choice in causation—but demands structural pause to flourish.
- Institutions that refuse reflection collapse agency into reflex.
- Loops are moral architecture: designed pauses that scaffold responsibility.
- A society’s health is measured by how many “second‐draft” opportunities it affords.
Why Listen?
- Discover a new theory of freedom as compatibilist moral authorship (e.g., how Norwegian island prisons insert deliberate reflective pauses).
- See how restorative circles in Chicago classrooms cut repeat suspensions by a third through collective reflection.
- Learn how social‐media platforms embed “digital friction” (e.g., one‐second delays) to reduce hateful reposts by nearly 40 percent.
- Consider how design theory and civic interventions—like QR‐code “reflection poles” in Berlin—transform infrastructure into loops of care.
Listen On:
- YouTube
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts
Support This Work
If you’d like to support the ongoing work, visit buymeacoffee.com/thedeeperthinkingpodcast or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you.
Bibliography
- Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. Routledge, 2004.
- Dewey, John. Experience and Education. Free Press, 1938.
- Frankfurt, Harry G. The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
- Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Northeastern University Press, 1974.
- Habermas, Jürgen. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1. Beacon Press, 1984.
- Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan. Penguin Classics, 1985 (1651).
- McAdams, Dan P. The Redemptive Self: Narrative Identity in America Today. Oxford University Press, 2006.
- Pranis, Kay. Peacemaking Circles: From Crime to Community. Living Justice Press, 2005.
- Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
- Schön, Donald A. The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books, 1983.
- Schwartz, Barry L., and Metcalfe, Janet. Tip-of-the-Tongue States and Memory Retrieval. Cambridge University Press, 2011.
- Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. PublicAffairs, 2019.
Bibliography Relevance
- Judith Butler: Explores how recognitive justice shapes the social scaffolding necessary for agency.
- John Dewey: Establishes the pragmatic lineage for reflection‐in‐action in education and democratic practice.
- Harry Frankfurt: Introduces second‐order desires, anchoring self‐revision within ethical agency.
- Erving Goffman: Provides a framework for how social “frames” structure our perception and re‐entry into interactive contexts.
- Jürgen Habermas: Articulates the role of communicative action and discourse ethics in fostering collective reflection.
- Thomas Hobbes: Offers the foundational compatibilist account of liberty as absence of external impediments, reframed here through design interventions.
- Dan P. McAdams: Expands on narrative‐identity theory, illustrating how redemptive loops shape personal meaning over time.
- Kay Pranis: Details restorative‐justice practices in community settings, exemplifying structural pauses for narrative repair.
- Paul Ricoeur: Crafts the narrative‐identity framework showing how life is authored through revision and re‐reading of past actions.
- Donald A. Schön: Offers design‐theory tools for embedding reflection in professional practice, crucial for digital and civic “loop” interventions.
- Barry L. Schwartz & Janet Metcalfe: Provide cognitive‐science insights into memory retrieval and “tip‐of‐the‐tongue” states, illustrating the mechanics of reflection.
- Shoshana Zuboff: Reveals how surveillance capitalism erodes micro‐loops of reflection in digital life, underscoring the urgency of pocketed pauses.
We are authors by redrafting, not by erasing: each loop we build is a chance to re-enter our own story.
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