“The first sense of agency we develop, the first sense of ownership that we have as humans is over our own bodies,” Wendell Harris told him. “Think of a baby holding up its hand, delighting in realizing how it can control the hand, make it move and hold and grasp. That’s a realization of agency over one’s body. “So, if while a child we are robbed of that … if someone takes that body, uses it, deprives us of control over it, we can lose all sense of what’s ours in this world. Ownership of ourselves, of things, of anything, may begin to matter too much. Or not at all.”
