Scripting for Agency presents a new theory of character, whether fictional, human or corporate, in which it can be understood as an attractor in a behavioural space.

To use a more familiar analogy, character is to behaviour what climate is to weather, since a climate “attracts” weather to fall into familiar patterns in the space of meteorological possibility. Implied within this theory of character is also a theory of “the human being,” which, by virtue of being capable of performing behaviours in patterned combinations, can be understood as a character substratum, or character-playing machine. Specifically, the human being is versed in playing out the kinds of characters that are commonly recognised as “personality.”

Following this, the thesis posits a second theory: that “the social agent” can be understood as a character (or relatively narrow family of characters) which the human being consistently adopts when it enters the social milieu. Given that the human being is a social animal and spends much time in the social milieu, the social agent and the human being appear, most of the time, to be the same thing. However, the fact that the social agent represents a relatively narrow group of characters within a much vaster character repertoire suggests that the human being is oddly overqualified for society: it is capable of playing out a far greater diversity of characters than it typically does. This attenuation of human character range, or “bureaucratisation of spirit” (to use Erving Goffman's phrase in "The Presentation of Self..."), may have evolved to enable social collaboration, as evidenced by social practices and aesthetics of authenticity that police human character variability.

This raises questions with potentially far-reaching social and ethical implications in areas such as politics of identity, human rights law and AI alignment efforts: are there any benefits to embracing the character diversity of the human being? Would a greater acceptance of personal diversity endanger, or enrich, social complexity?

Art, a discipline that is characterised by running experiments in social contracts, aesthetics and states of being on its audience, is precisely suited to the task of probing this question. From within the spiritual laboratory of a performance practice in which I am possessed by characters, and by drawing on Daniel Dennett’s evolutionary theory of agency, Erving Goffman’s theatrical framework for self-presentation, Alfred Gell’s theory of art and agency, and Miloš and Slavica Ranković’s work on cultural formulas, the thesis demonstrates that cultivating personal diversity can enhance critical thinking, engender more creative explorations of aesthetic space, and bring new philosophical intuitions to one's everyday experience of selfhood.