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Where would they come from in some alternate reality? What would the difference in your perception be if you weren't just watching a movie of your own life but where actually in charge of your thoughts? It's hard for me to imagine it being any different.

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(It sounds like you're saying you largely also view life as happening to you, but maybe I'm wrong). There's maybe no point in even making a distinction between life-as-movie and life-as-commander, especially if people aren't choosing the camp they fall in!

I would posit there are correlations like "people who view life as something that happens to them tend to enjoy it more, when their economic and political circumstances are good, and enjoy it less when their circumstances are bad". And "people who view themselves as controlling their life enjoy life in a wider variety of conditions". I think some call this internal/external locus of control (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control)

You could probably extend those correlations to things like "societies with an overall internal locus of control tend to support the death penalty more", or "societies with an external locus of control tend to believe in magic more". Whether or not these are useful correlations, I don't know ;)

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