on autonomy

The word autonomy possibly comes from the early 17th century: the Greek’s “Autonomia”(from autonomos) meant ‘having its own laws’, autos being the ‘self’ and nomos being the ‘law’. When you interpret the modern meaning of autonomy we often refer to concepts such as freedom of choice and expression. 

With that context, autonomy is often used interchangeably with the word freedom. Often, we see autonomy as complete freedom, making choices based only on your own environment and not affected by the other conditions around you. 

I think this really doesn’t work for some key reasons.

In the terms of an Anarchist such as myself, I believe that autonomy is something that you choose to sacrifice at the behest of another or of a group. I’ve been asked questions such as “If I am living in an anarchistic society, how can that society have any rules without sacrificing my freedom?” and my answer to that is actually way more simple than it seems.

In a truly free society, you are led by your autonomy to make choices that suit your wants or needs, without constricting upon the freedom of others. When you join a collective, essentially creating a small society, you have decided to withhold certain individual freedoms as your own autonomous decision.

To give an example of this, let’s look at the average relationship between two lovers. Both are free, autonomous beings that have chosen through bonding to be together as a unit. Thus, when one person's needs exceed the other halfs, a “sacrifice” of freedom takes place. 

Let’s say one person wants to cover themselves in tattoos as a form of expression, but their partner does not like that idea, and creates a compromise between the two allowing them to have tattoos, but only an acceptable amount. You could view this action as restricting a partner's freedom of expression, thus reducing their autonomy.

In reality, the person who wanted tattoos in this case is choosing to actively sacrifice this freedom to remain in a healthy and positive relationship. The compromise creates a collective understanding that these rules in place exist to maintain happiness, while still allowing freedom.

This could extend to any aspect of a relationship not only in a romantic sense, but with one's relationship with society. The individual makes sacrifices for a collective purpose that they may believe in, and that sacrifice causes society as a whole to function on a much more free and personal basis. 

This seems like a very simple way of defining any system of government, however there is a very large difference between a society in which you are forced to participate simply by being born, and that of a society in which you are free to join and take part of, but also to exit any any time when the values don’t align with yours anymore.

And that is where autonomy becomes confusing in the modern context. The relationship between the choice of a person and the society they live in is no longer symbiotic, instead, a person is pressured into making decisions within a confined and controlled version of autonomy. This governing society tells the individual that they must actively contribute and participate in the systems it has established, with no free choice to exit.

The worst part is that we are led to believe that we have a choice. In many talks of mine with people who believe in the modern American ideals, I’ve been told “If you don’t like this place, why don’t you just leave?” They don’t realize the systems in place that make that decision extremely difficult, or that there's really nowhere you can go in the world right now to solve this specific issue in the first place.