Autonomy and Life

Just two years back, never would we have thought that the corruption at the highest levels of our trusted institutions would once again precipitate a financial meltdown. Lives have been ruined. Millions of our best, brightest and most reliable are unemployed. Hard working, salt-of-the-earth families are losing their homes. Insecurity, pessimism and fear are commonplace in every single neighborhood.

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The knight’s far-flung quest for the grail is legend. If he found the object, he would have in-hand a key to an encompassing truth that would make sense of his life. Today the search for this bigger truth takes place closer to home. Just as exciting, the quest is a creative process, dependent on intelligence, imagination and honesty and answerable to both the moral imperatives to which we are heir and the findings of science.

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When I started this blog last July, I said that stormy days are upon us, that these are volatile frightening times, that our hopes for ourselves, for the whole world, are threatened by this crisis of confidence. The same is true today.

In such times, less sure about how the future will play out, we look beyond our certainties for what constitutes a substantive life. “There,” we hope to find a bigger truth that will give meaning, purpose and hope to our lives and strengthen our ability to provide leadership for those who depend on us.

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No one said it would be easy, and it won’t. A well-designed, meaningful and rewarding life takes work. Careful thought. A big picture. Goals and objectives. Resolutions and resolve. Passion and restraint. A moral compass and a voice uniting conscience and deed.

Success in the new year is also going to take a willingness to return to the drawing board as we face inertia, criticism, moral dilemmas, cheap-shots, complexity, disappointment, breakdowns, rivals or the Scoreboard’s suggestion that we sell our souls for some really nice bling.

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Much of the good fight discussed in my previous posts has to do with self-determination and self-control, with mediating immediacy’s constant demands. But the good fight is also sustained by the ability of the conscience to withstand challenges from the voices of the ethically and lawfully bankrupt. So, this post will focus on the creative and assertive power of conscience to deal with this threat to our autonomy and life.

What is a conscience if not a voice? But if the voice is not in fighting shape, disciplined, trained and practiced, its grandeur and authority will be compromised. Said another way, if it lacks the substance and know-how to prevail, its voice, and thus the voice of autonomy, may be muted or silenced by other voices for whom materially serious corruption is a way of life.

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We know transcendence. Love’s chemicals send us soaring. Under their spell, we wing above the humdrum and find enchantment in a world no different than it was before.

Put our lives in danger and we know transcendence, too, thanks to the autonomic nervous system going into overdrive. More chemicals. Nothing lazy, quarrelsome, or conceited stops us then. Pumped, we rise above our usual habits and meet the demand.

We also go beyond our immediate selves when a pivotal interview demands that we rise to the occasion. Or when team spirit, or a paycheck, or the promise of our name in lights force discipline. Or when we’ve had it up-to-here, but keep our anger in check.
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We had our eye on the Scoreboard, not on our autonomy. In fact, we watched it carefully and it watched us, whether we comply with its commands in a low profile way à la Bohemia or a high profile conspicuous consumption way. Adamant that it has the real lowdown, and monopoly, on success, the Scoreboard’s propaganda and ads are everywhere. We learned about Scoreboarding from others, of course, and from movies, newspapers, magazines, television, the Internet, from the front of tee shirts and artfully placed designer labels.

Blitzed, bedazzled, bedecked, we could have been billboards ourselves. Think about the brands we buy and display; the taste, style, image and opinion we like to represent; the profiles we create for our social networks; the resumes we present to establish ourselves and the blurbs we write for alumni publications.

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One would think there’d be no shortage of information about the right stuff that human beings like to know, and need to know. But about the significant place the good fight has in our lives, there is little data of import. Just how disappointing, meaningless and unfair life is remains a problem to be solved. Especially now.

Of course, much of this discontent is covered up. We, ourselves, have probably been conditioned to look as if we’ve sucked it up, so to speak. Looks are only skin deep, however, and the problem persists. And what about the circumstance that leaves millions of us ill-prepared, by dint of birth and/or limited opportunity, to prevail in the challenge that life is? If we have even a shred of conscience, we feel the moral obligation to endure, to stand up and be counted, to make it matter that we lived at all.

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During the long march from creature to culture, always at play and usually dominating the play is the rivalrous impulse. We are born with it, bred to it, conditioned by it and rewarded for it.  We are also saddled with it, subject to it, undone by it and, as illustrated by Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, punished for it.

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Life is not fair. And we suffer for it.

These are not the best of times. Further, intelligence, talent, opportunity, energy, sex appeal and luck are not equally distributed. Millions live in conditions too impoverished to pretend that they have access to any of life’s bounty. Even efforts to level the playing field are unfair, subject to shifting circumstances, partisan politics and the cold hard facts of recession and unemployment.

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