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Huet: Silicon Valley's "agency" obsession stems from personal transformation seminars

Ellen Huet · Communal Living, Sex, And Silicon Valley's Groupthink Problem — With Ellen Huet · Nov 26, 2025 · at 11:53

Bloomberg features writer Ellen Huet explains how Silicon Valley's cultural obsession with personal agency and radical responsibility draws directly from the lineage of large group awareness training and personal transformation programs.

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“What's interesting to me about agency being popular in my view, among a certain like circle of tech people is that. Agency is a different way of saying this idea of like, oh, you should consider yourself like radically responsible for your life experience and the things that are What's happening in your life? And that's very much an idea that comes from these personal transformation workshops and lineages. So that is something that you would find at landmark. That's something you'd find at Tony Robbins for sure. That's something that comes up a lot at one taste in conscious leadership group and also this. And so it's sort of been reframed as agency, but it's all getting at the same thing.”

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