Agency
In psychology: the capacity to initiate and direct your own actions — and the sense that you, not the situation, are their author. It is what Rogers was describing in 1969, and what a hurried interface/intake takes away.
“I can stop when I want to.”
Fred Rogers said that to a Senate subcommittee in 1969. Twenty-one years later Salovey and Mayer named “emotional intelligence” — the capacity he was describing — and Goleman popularised the term in 1995. Rogers didn’t detect the concept; the name arrived afterwards, for what he was already doing.
In the lab, naming an emotion dampens the amygdala’s response to it.
Public-domain recording via Wikimedia Commons · 2 min 50 s excerpt · the song as performed on the show: PBS · Fred Rogers Productions
Read the full lyric
Fred Rogers, What Do You Do with the Mad That You Feel? (1968), as read into the record in the testimony above, 05:31–07:03. Lyric © Fred Rogers Productions.What do you do with the mad that you feel
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world seems oh, so wrong...
And nothing you do seems very right?What do you do? Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or see how fast you go?It’s great to be able to stop
When you’ve planned a thing that’s wrong
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song:I can stop when I want to
Can stop when I wish
I can stop, stop, stop any time
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling is really mine
Know that there’s something deep inside
That helps us become what we can
For a girl can be someday a lady
And a boy can be someday a man
Small, careful tools for people who help people.
The Agency Project is a personal project, not a practice. It makes small, careful tools for people who help people.
Fast, accessible, no trackers, no ad tech, and hosted in Canada.
What it will take on
- A page for a person, a group or a service, that loads on a phone
- Sign-ups or a waiting list without a third-party tracker
- Tools that keep people's data in Canada — and hand it back
What it will not do
- Ad tech, pixels or audience profiles
- Sell or share anyone's data
- Lock anyone into a platform they cannot leave
In progress. If you want to talk about a project, write to support@helpwell.ca.