Autonomists

There may be organizations that call themselves “autonomist,” but, if there are, whatever the members of such organizations are, they are not autonomists. An autonomist organization is a contradiction in terms.

An autonomist is one who has chosen to be completely responsible for himself and refuses to subordinate that responsibility to any other individual or group of individuals. Responsibility requires authority and no one can be responsible for anything for which they do not have complete authority and power to make decisions. The moment another agency, whether another individual or group of individuals, usurps an individual’s authority to make his own choices, he ceases to be responsible for those choices. The autonomist resists any attempt to usurp his individual authority, and will certainly not surrender it voluntarily.

The autonomist knows what the requirements of human life are. He knows that no human morally deserves what he has not earned or acquired by his own effort, nor can he enjoy it if he should gain it. He knows he cannot depend on any other agency to supply what he needs and desires to enjoy his life. He knows that whatever he might seem to enjoy without earning it, costs much more in terms of the damage to his own personality and consciousness than any unearned benefit is worth.

Obviously, the autonomist is very rare, and since the autonomist accepts no authority above the authority of his own mind and volition, the autonomist’s views are seldom in agreement with any generally accepted views. Nevertheless, the autonomist is not the anti-social, unfriendly, antagonistic loner many accuse him of being. On the contrary, the autonomist is not only sociable, he is more worthy of society than any other members of it.

The autonomist is never a threat to others who are honest, decent, and sincere. The autonomist seeks no relationship with others that are not totally voluntary and benevolent to all. He places no demand on anyone else. You will never find an autonomist that is presumptuous, or authoritative, which are things he hates. The autonomist is accused of being opinionated, which he readily admits, but the autonomist never expects anyone else to accept his opinions, and allows no one to force theirs on him.

The autonomist hates to explain and resents the implication that he must make anyone else understand anything he does. There is a temptation to say an autonomist is someone who goes through life doing things he knows will annoy and irritate others just to annoy and irritate them. An autonomist might do that if he gave rap about what anyone else thinks. He doesn’t. That’s why the things he does annoy and irritate others.

The autonomists I have met in life are universally dismayed by the fact that others, with whom they have no quarrels at all, are so concerned with how they live their lives. They know they do not have the same interests as everyone else. They know they enjoy things the majority of people find boring or tedious. But, the autonomist never expects or asks anyone else to share his tastes or pleasures. Why does the rest of the world get so upset because the autonomist does not get all excited about the latest insipid TV program or what some near neanderthal athlete has accomplished (“on or off the field,” I think they say).

As for caring about what other’s feel, in the area of truth, the autonomist cares not at all what anyone else feels or thinks. If something is true, no one’s feelings or beliefs change it, and to allow anything, especially some person’s irrational feelings, to interfere with a correct choice, is not only a mistake, but immoral.

Most of the wrong acts that have ever been committed in this world are acts in response to someone’s feeling, one’s own or someone else’s. There is nothing wrong with feelings. There is never any good reason to cause bad feelings, so long as avoiding them requires no violation of the truth. There is never any good reason to intentionally cause someone else to have bad feelings. The spiteful behavior of many activists has no other design, but is completely foreign to the autonomist.

Autonomy means self-rule. The autonomist is not interested in changing the world, or society, or anything he is not directly responsible for. The autonomist’s primary interest is the truth.

You are directly responsible for yourself and all that you choose and do, and you have complete authority for that responsibility. You have no responsibility for anything anyone else chooses or does, and have no authority to interfere with anyone else’s choices or actions in any way. The only exception is if another’s actions are a direct physical threat to you or your property.

It is going take all of your time and energy to live your own life successfully. To the extent that you are successful in improving yourself, you will have improved your society and the world. But society and the world are not your responsibilities, and your contributions to them are always a byproduct of what you do for yourself. Those who attempt to improve society or the world directly are neglecting their first responsibility and thereby do great harm to themselves, to society, and to the world.

Learn the truth and pursue it. The more you learn, the more you will discover how little you have in common with most people. Most people do not seek the truth and consequently do not live by it and consequently have desires, purposes, and agendas that you will see are meaningless and bound for certain disaster. You will want to grab people and shake them out of their stupor, to warn them about what they are doing to themselves, their families, and their society. Of course, you will not do this because you know you cannot change people. You can teach those who want to be taught and you can help those who want to know the truth, but you cannot change those that need to be changed because they do not want to know the truth.

Many people confuse autonomy with anarchy, but autonomists are not anarchists. Autonomists neither desire nor make any effort to change or eliminate any government. They believe government is evil just as they believe disease is evil. Autonomists take precautions to prevent the evil of government from affecting them just as they take precautions to prevent the evil of disease from harming them. Marches, starting or joining movements or campaigns, and propaganda are no more affective against government than they are against disease. The way to defend yourself against government is the way you defend yourself against disease.

If you handle something questionable, wash your hands. Eat right. Don’t swallow anything you don’t know is good for you. Some things give momentary pleasure but will make an addictive slave of you (e.g. welfare). Sometimes, a little innocuous dose of a disease will strengthen you against more serious forms of it (possibly, military service). Don’t expose yourself unnecessarily to infection, (don’t ever provide any information to any government agent or agency voluntarily).

The autonomist is a fanatical worshiper of the Truth, gladly sacrificing everything else to it and following wherever it leads without reservation. Truth is the autonomist’s life. He would gladly die in its defence and he would surely die of anguish without it.

If this sounds like religion, it is not. It is what religion should be. What in the world would anyone choose above the truth and why would they choose it? The truth and only the truth describes what is. Everything else is some form of falsehood. How can setting aside the truth, for any reason, ever result in good?

The autonomist and nature are in total agreement. Nature neither cares about nor gives a moments consideration to anyone’s position, feelings, desires, or opinions. Neither does the autonomist.

The autonomist worships truth, not nature - not nature as she is. Nature needs to be converted, domesticated, washed and taught to behave in a civilized manner. Left to her own devices, she is a spoiler, spreading wanton destruction and death wherever she is left untamed.

But to tame nature, one must learn what the nature of nature is, the laws and principals that determine nature’s behavior. We must learn the truth about her to make her serve us. It is the only way with nature. If you tame her, she can provide you with almost anything you want, but if you leave her untamed, she will hurt you and ultimately kill you.

“Honest to a fault.” You won’t ever be accused of that unless you are an autonomist.

The idea of honesty has become so degraded that many people today who are considered by others, as well as themselves, to be completely honest and morally upright are nothing more than second hand thieves, slavers, and cheats. When the average American citizen hears about a truly honest individual being honest, which is a newsworthy event these days, the almost universal reaction is that the honest person is a sucker or a dope.

The reason for this attitude is most people have no idea what honesty actually is, or why someone should be honest, and if they did, they would not choose it. Most people care more about what others think they are than what they are. In fact, most people’s only identity is what other people think they are. Honesty, for them, is making everyone believe they are honest.

Honesty is a moral characteristic. It is part of a person’s chosen view and principles of life. It is the choice to live according the truth, in this case, the truth that no individual can enjoy, without betraying his own character, more than he can produce or earn by his own effort. Honesty is the choice to never seek to have or be more than one is worth, that is, what he has earned. But this requires a person to know how to determine how much they are worth. This is what most people neither can or want to know how to do.

Most people just want everybody to believe they are honest, decent people, and are convinced if that is what people think they are, then that is what they are, and it does not matter if they are enjoying comforts, and pleasures, and a life they never could have enjoyed by their own efforts. Everyone receiving benefits from any government program, and anyone working in any government, “job,” receives those benefits and pay from the government which took them from those who produced them by force or the threat of it. Taxes are nothing but theft, and anyone who benefits from those taxes is a receiver of stolen goods. That is not honest.

The autonomist is not capable of enjoying anything he has not earned or produced himself. Neither are you. The difference is, the autonomist knows it.

There is a lot of talk these days about self-esteem. When I say that someone who’s life is dependent on the government in any way is essentially a thief or mooch, a secondhand one at that, some people think this is a threat to the self-esteem of such people. Well, I do not want such people to have self-esteem. That is what everyone who would like to keep them dependent on government would like. I want these people to have genuine self-esteem, the self-esteem that comes from being self-sufficient, from knowing that a person is worth something, not because society, or the government, or their friends say so, but because they are, and they know it, even if everyone says they are not. That’s real self-esteem, and it’s available to anyone who wants to earn it.

You may be surprised that an autonomist cares about the self-esteem of others. If so, you still misunderstand autonomy. An autonomist is not an isolationist. An autonomist loves the society of others, loves to interact with others, loves to share with others to all their mutual benefit. But a society where men can associate freely and benevolently depends on the society being comprised of a certain kind of people, and one necessary characteristic of such people is honesty.

There is another reason the autonomist cares about how others choose to live. It is none of the autonomist’s business how other’s live, but he cannot feel anything but a kind of bewildered sadness at the fact that so many choose to throw away their lives on so many things that can never benefit them, but only harm them and ultimately destroy for them, any possibility happiness. The autonomist hates to see so much potential human good wasted, and despises the fact that they have made the world in which he must live a place with so much unhappiness.