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Thou seeist we are not all alone unhappy

Okay, I have to admit it: I sometimes confuse Autocracy (a system of government by one person with absolute power) and autarky (self-sufficiency – from the Greek auto (‘self’) and arkeo (‘to suffice’). Perhaps what has been going on with countries around the world lately is to blame, but then again perhaps I have not given spelling or etymology their rightful dues… or History.

Drawing on Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas talked of the ‘self-sufficiency’ of God, in the context of the argument that all existence ultimately flowed from the creator, and the deity wasn’t reliant on anything exterior to himself. That was the seminal ‘scholastic’ argument of the medieval age, and it led to the view that to be more self-sufficient was to be closer to God. But we, unlike Diogenes (pictured at the head of this essay), do not have to prove our independence by living in a barrel.

Personally, I am not particularly religious, nor have I ever participated in the RCIA (the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults); and I am not really interested in anything Catholic (unless, of course, it refers to its etymological  Greek root –katholikos: broad in scope, tastes and interests). But, I am a curious elder: I could probably be enticed into viewing the mysterious interior of a Catholic confessional -if it entailed no enjoinment to confess, of course…

Aquinas (but not God as far I know) also felt that economic autarky was important: cities should be self-reliant. And over the years (centuries, actually) such luminaries as China, Japan, and even the many kingdoms of what we now know as Europe espoused the self-sufficiency rubric.

But, absent a history lesson, why would I be interested in autarky in my declining years? Were the plethora of leaves I have gathered as I’ve wandered through the seasons, not awarded to me -they, like my bruises, were autarked were they not?

It has always seemed a fair notion that exchange -bartering- is, in fact, another worthwhile autarkic gesture I enjoyed: if I needed something that somebody else possessed and they were willing to exchange it for something I had, then we both won; we both had established a proof of concept, eh? Self-sufficiency wears many clothes…

Anyway, historically, or at least philosophically, self-sufficiency does not give autarky its full credit: ‘The term self-sufficient,’ as Aristotle put it, ‘we employ with reference not to oneself alone, living a life of isolation, but also to one’s parents and children and wife, and one’s friends and fellow citizens in general, since man is by nature a political animal.’ This Aristotelian connection between individual and collective self-sufficiency – the personal and the political – endured into the Christian era.[i]

Despite the fact that I may be living in a post Christian era  (I’m just guessing) I am still a little worried about my autarky: I have never been described as a political animal, nor do I have a wife, or a posse of friends eager to engage, let alone send me birthday or Christmas cards. I smile a lot though, so perhaps that earns me a few friendly autarkic points at the store: a smile indicates my independence; that I am indeed able to shop for myself. And since I am also at liberty to pursue wisdom on my own, would my isolation not allow me to develop character and morality while still fostering my (essentially Canadian) autarkism?

In fact, with self-sufficiency, I can pride myself on cooperative and social learning; I am open to whatever culture is on offer. But, I fear that leads me down yet another rabbit hole: is the freedom to choose actually freedom; is autarky in fact burdened with choice?

History again. Choice has been around forever, I suspect, but one important form bloomed  under the tutelage of shops somewhere around the 17th century with the rise of colonial and local trade networks. As an increasing variety of goods became available, people could not only visit shops to provision, but could choose amongst an assortment of other things as well. In time, this process became known as shopping. People didn’t have to succumb to the tempting choices of course, but they eventually took them for granted. Autarky in action.

I’m sure it wasn’t as straightforward as I’ve portrayed it, but choice seldom is. And what is self-sufficiency at first may turn into reliance on a continuing selection as people became spoiled with choice. And we often disguise our decisions as appropriate since, say, our choice of a particular garment is framed as one which will likely outlast other garments on display; it is merely a different flavour of self-sufficiency we convince ourselves, and then forget about it until the next visit to the shop…

There seems to have been a time when the elite were content with not having to make choices about little things all the time; they had servants and advisors who could spring into action at the flick of a finger and spare the ruling class the effort of searching for it themselves. It was only the commoners who had to bear the burden of constant choosing in order to survive. They had to be self sufficient -well, sneaky at any rate. I think I just made that up…

Okay, I admit that’s not a particularly convincing argument in favour of autarky; still, it invokes the idea that values can be bent into different shapes for different functions -functions that are more beneficial for us. What could be more self-sufficient than that?

I suppose I have also convincingly demonstrated why I chose not to pursue a degree in Philosophy in university -well, actually the various professors were not particularly convinced by any of the arguments I tried on them in the seminars I attended before making that decision… It came as no surprise to anybody who knew me, though; to many of them I was still just the little autarkless kid sitting in the front seat in the grade 4 class in 1950ies Winnipeg who positioned himself there so he could read what the teacher was writing on the blackboard with her squeaky chalk.

Still, I’d like to think that it was me, not somebody else, who made that choice for me. I have agency, and sitting in the front row in grade school was the first rung on the ladder to real autarky, don’t you think? After all, it’s how I made it to university…

[i] https://aeon.co/essays/isolationism-isnt-new-and-is-fuelled-by-deep-human-desires

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