One of the many subjects that I feel deserves clarification and rectification is that of autonomy.
I often talk about it myself, because I believe that it is a good thing, from a synergetic point of view, to envisage the realization of designs that support human and non-human autonomy.
However, the notion of autonomy should not only be taken to mean that we can absolutely be individually self-sufficient. Not only is this not possible, but it is not necessarily desirable either.
As living organisms, we live in a state of interdependence with our environment. This means that we need it to be and become and, in some respects, it needs us. Everything in this world is interconnected but not in an equal manner depending on what we consider: our survival and happiness depend more on the quality of the water we drink than on the orbital speed of a planet in a distant star system (or so it seems to me!).
As a result, there are things we are highly dependent on, and those are the ones that satisfy our most basic needs: food, housing, health, relationships and so on.
Basic needs vs optimal needs
However, it can be sufficient, but not necessarily fulfilling. If we were to drink only the water that we find around us, even if we would survive, we would also probably get sick in most contexts (except in unspoilt mountainous areas). If we had to feed ourselves only with what we were able to produce, we might find it a little boring at times.
Our desires, more or less strong and more or less conducive to the pursuit of our own happiness, often lead us to consider new ties of interdependence as preferable to others. And in a capitalistic world like ours, the sources of enjoyment are numerous, as are the desires to take advantage of them.
From risky dependence...
Unfortunately, the current system also mechanically favors monopolistic situations (mostly coming from private companies intertwined with lobbies).
This has led us to develop and reinforce designs that produce situations of enormous interdependence that lead to two important phenomena:
the more our ties of interdependence regard basic needs and are related to a few of big powerful entities, the more we need the latter more than they need us, and the more we tend towards dependence on them (rather than interdependence with them)
if one of these interdependent links breaks, the consequences can be disastrous for us
Let's illustrate these two ideas with a schematic example.
Most of us are directly dependent on an electricity that we don't produce, that we don't transport, and that we barely have the equipment or skills to manage as we wish. If a problem occurs at our level in our access to this electricity, the consequences for us can be terrible, because this technology is now involved in most of our activities, including the most essential ones. However, for the company that produces this electricity, it may not even be aware of the problem we are experiencing or, if it is, it may regard us as a negligible quantity in their electricity production and distribution activity (meaning that they don’t care that we are in trouble).
In short: we are dependent on them, but they are not dependent on us. Of course, we could argue that, on the whole, it depends on all the people like us who use its services, but, like the myth of the general strike or boycott, the plurality of living organisms involved means that the probability of the electricity-producing body being destabilized by the mass of its customers is not zero, but very, very low, all the more so as we live in a society without cohesion, as I discussed in a previous article, and all the more so as the power to produce, distribute and rarefy is concentrated in a just a few entities.
The design in place therefore shows an asymmetry harmful to synergy, mainly with regard to the criterion of predictability. This harmful aspect may not be immediately perceptible, and as the saying goes, "so far, so good", but it induces a gigantic risk of misfortune that History shows us to be very real (our dependence on the banking system, for example).
… to unfulfilling self-sufficiency
However, if we want to create our own electricity, we may find it difficult and may use machines, like photovoltaic panels, which will make us dependent on other companies, more or less large too, and therefore for whom we will have more or less importance from a profitable point of view. It is possible, therefore, that we will change our minds and end up producing a modest amount of electricity from a small hydro or wind power plant.
This modest production may suffice for our basic needs, but it may not be enough to run our three-phased machine tools, with which we make wooden furniture that we sell in our shop. On the one hand, we have reduced our dependency problem, but to do so we have sacrificed our professional activity.
That kind of situation will not necessarily occur for everyone but it is expected that doing only with elements under our direct control will really challenge our contentment and will probably throw some of us into a pond of suffering and depression.
Multi-design solution
Rather than thinking in terms of a single design compromise, I propose that we accept at least two designs: a generous design that is probably riskier but more fulfilling, and a minimal design that is less risky, quite certainly less fulfilling, but which nevertheless enables us to avoid a serious crisis situation if the first design becomes unusable or disappear for some reason outside of our control.
I consider this approach to be highly relevant because, if we apply it to most things, we are bound to end up in situations where we drastically reduce the risks inherent in the unexpected and therefore possibly our troubles and anxiety in general.
For example, in a dedicated article, I addressed the question of trade. At present, fiat currencies are ultra-dominant, and the fact of running out of them plunges many of us into angst and stress, sometimes justifiably so when we know the consequences of being without them for real.
If we had a model where a global exchange system based on fiat currencies - potentially useful for accessing certain pleasures such as travel or exotic foods - coexisted with a local exchange system based on gifts, barter or G.A.M.E, we would enjoy a far less fragile situation than if we depended solely on fiat currencies, the creation and management of which are totally beyond our control, even if those could also be used from time to time to access the same goods as the local system. And the same can actually apply to anything.
We could also use the term backup design in some circumstances when the minimal design is not used in itself but remains accessible at any time if needed, a way of doing things that I propose for the pumping system in my article on rainwater management (an electrical pump by default, backed up by a manual one, just in cast the first one breaks down).
This way of thinking is not very widespread at the moment, because we live in a world where the prevailing dogma is that there is only one perfect solution to one problem, forever, and in the case of money, the idea that we can use several different kinds of it has not yet entered people's minds as a spontaneous possibility.
The same is true of political systems, where we run after the idea that there must be an ideal solution. Personally, I think this is an ineffective way of answering our questions, because, depending on the context, several ways of doing things may be relevant, and when it comes to our pursuit of happiness, we need to consider the real consequences of our choices, and in particular the risks we take by committing ourselves to certain civilizational paths.
Thus, autonomy is not only the ability to be self-sufficient, but also the ability to choose for ourselves the external elements in relation to which we are in a state of interdependence (which we first need and, potentially, which also need us). As for the designs that will actually be adopted, they will of course depend on the choices we make, in the hope that they will be commensurate with the consequences they engender.