A MODERN AND WORLDLY PERSPECTIVE
Capable Capable
Capable Capable

Because we can't stay silent
Arnold Siegel —January 19, 2015

Martin Luther King, Jr: Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

In 1985, when I started this work, I believed that classes in autonomy would have a significant impact on students’ experience of independence and command. I believed we could become the kind of human being we wanted to be, and carve out a life of our own design, if we were willing to embrace human autonomy as it is practiced in its elite range. 

What do I mean by the elite range of human autonomy? I call it elite because it has the depth and dimension to lead us. In this range, our intelligence is not largely compromised or co-opted by mimicry, conformity and timidity, or by prejudice, injustice, moral grandstanding and sincere ignorance. King again: Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

This range of human autonomy is also elite, that is, not commonly held or practiced, because it requires that we transgress the common parroted self-congratulatory rhetoric that endorses how things stand. This quotidian vocabulary both ignores what would be humane and equitable and, at the same time, endeavors to justify its apathy. 

Typically, we give little consideration to the vast unconsidered because we are born onto the tides of the status quo, carried by their current and our own force of habit to drift through our lives.

In my 02.24.14 post titled, Caring about what your peers think, I addressed what it takes to carve out a life that really matters amid all this unexamined convention, conformity and habit. Indeed, our choices—what we attend to and what we care about—reflect the extent to which we have taken responsibility for our autonomy and life. And, as I said in my most recent post, it mattered that we came to be born if it mattered to those we served with our work and our care and concern. 

Certainly we hear the conventional drummer and yes, we want connection, acceptance and belonging. As such, we simply adapt to normal life as it appears.  

But the social pressure to conform may have silenced us. In other words, the too superficial, too busy, too indifferent struggling-for-position practices that absorb us, along with our own lingering passivity and inertia may have compromised the voice of our independent thinking and good judgment. 

Drummed and numbed, we have to press ourselves to reveal conceits and convenient expedients, such as arrogance, naiveté and insincerity, that beggar our ability to look deeply, to think closely and to extend help and respect to those whose hopes depend on our kindly consideration and responsiveness. Intentionally, we find our way through the unjust morass by giving sustained thought and forthright speech to that which matters, an achievement both astonishing and humbling in its reach and generosity.

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Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and the leader of its Retreat Workshops and Advanced Classes.

Arnold Siegel is the founder of Autonomy and Life and the leader of its
Workshops and Advanced Classes.