THE AUTONOMOUS ENTITY

With the last posting of this blog, I began what will be a series of postings that will review and explain the attributes of entities that make up a federated association. That posting defined an entity as being the basic unit within an association – its individual members. That is, federated entities are individuals or groups that have decided to become parties of an association with other entities and agree to the provisions contained within the instrument, a covenant or compact, that formulates the association. This posting focuses on the autonomous nature of federated entities.

First, an entity is either a human individual or a group of humans. Animals or any other organism cannot make up an association. This is so because those who decide to join a federated union do so upon reflection. This is a reflection motivated by the fact that those who join are accountable for the consequences of their decisions. Each entity is held responsible for meeting the obligations and duties that are integral to such a union or that are spelled out in the compacted agreement. A simple example of such an obligation would be that since our constitution gives the government the authority to issue taxes, American citizens are expected to pay taxes. Americans can also be drafted into the military even though that duty is not being called for at present. They might have to serve on a jury; they must drive their cars according to traffic laws, and the like. Beyond these more formal obligations, a truly federated union counts on its citizens to be good neighbors, be helpful to those in need, and to take part in the governmental processes that hold the union together. In general, one is expected to bolster the common good. Most of us just accept all of these types of obligations and duties as a given – part of being alive. For the great majority of us, we are simply born into this social reality – a nation founded on federalist principles – with all of its laws, norms, and whatnot and we, by and large, accept this whole system of expectations and responsibilities without much thought.

But given the theoretical assumptions of a federated system, at some point in time, we individuals, as autonomous beings, should reflect on all of it and there is no better place than in a civics or government class to do so. There, a teacher should seriously present to his or her students the very nature of the decision to be an entity in our federated union. Why not leave sleeping dogs lie? Why conjure up images that might suggest to some, “Hey, I don't need to play along with all these duties and obligations?” One should do so because the integrity and resulting dignity that such a position bestows on a purposeful entity, one who does reflect on his or her membership, is something a truly federated member can incorporate into his or her sense of self. A purposeful membership generates a sense of self worth based on a meaningful, consciously based choice.

One can be an autonomous person in the wilderness – where no one tells him or her what to do – but how meaningful would such a life be? “To each his own,” but for most of us a valued life calls on us to interact with others – not just some of the time, but most of the time. A social existence is a precondition for a life worth living. But one has few existing options when trying to decide under which type of system one is going to live. One can be a citizen of a federated system or a non-federated system. To be a citizen of a non-federated system, one's autonomy is already compromised as one is situated within a monarchical arrangement – a subject of a king or an emperor – a dictatorship (varying in its oppressiveness from an authoritarian regime to a totalitarian regime) – with little or no rights – or an aristocratic society where one is within a pecking order of some aristocratic hierarchy – to get a sense of this latter arrangement, watch Downton Abbey. Only in a federated system is one's autonomy so fully recognized.

As an autonomous member who decides to join or to remain a member of such a union, an individual should keep in mind that that status is the result of a decision. The whole theory is that the system is formulated by its individual members – or their representatives – coming together to form and maintain the system. As such, there is a moral dimension to this process. One's liberty within such a society is anchored within the foundation of a federated union. That is to say that liberty is defined in terms of the freedom one holds to do what is the moral thing to do – by upholding the duties and obligations of the federation not due to coercion, but through voluntary membership. One does his or her part in securing the welfare of the federation because one wants to.

Of course, all of this sounds a bit idealistic. But if one were to review the different elements of the US's governmental structure, one can find this type of theory in action – sometimes to our collective pride and sometimes to our collective frustration. For example, why do we call the law-making body of the central government a congress instead of a parliament? The term, congress, reflects this ideal of collective participation. Our congress is a place where we congregate to make our binding decisions; it is not where a ruling party jams its agenda down everyone's throat. As a consequence, we might at times be grateful that the likelihood of what we might consider highly odious or highly extreme is not likely to become law. On the other hand, we oftentimes become highly frustrated with the system's inability to get laws passed while demanding social conditions go unaddressed.

Is there another option? Is there the possibility of a union of citizens in which there are only minimal obligations – the possibility where the emphasis is on each person defining what even constitutes an obligation? I believe there is not. Under a libertarian utopia, for example, where everyone has an almost self-defined liberty with no social obligations other than what one individually adopts, there will arise an unrestricted, elite class. Our national history that has from time to time (the current period being one of them) approached such a system, has resulted in a skewed distribution of wealth and income. Such distributions undermine any sense of equality. Money is power and concentrated power renders our ability to see the majority of our fellow citizens as being autonomous in a real world as highly unlikely. And here the moral questions of how well our system allows for its citizens to live reasonable lives in terms of material well being become more than just philosophical wondering. Hungry children, families that cannot provide health care, people who live in areas of extreme crime and degradation are realities in which segments of the population lose any semblance of autonomy. Enough of this and the whole structure of freedom, liberty, and equality, based on the underlying principles of federation, becomes untenable.

And so a civics curriculum, based on the federation theory, would repeatedly emphasize the decisions citizens make and would treat little of our political and governmental lives as merely the expected or the traditional. Instead, politics and government would be presented as a “contact” sport in which all are expected to voluntarily “play.”