Benefit for Yourself 1: Autonomy

Productivity Set

■ Autonomy is valued above Self-protection

  • Perspective-centredness provides an abstract mental autonomy. The person is principled, rejects conventional thinking and self-interested bias, and remains impartial and neutral in relation to others, without exception.

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  • Cause-centredness provides autonomy at the level of identity and emotion. The individual refuses to be other than who they are, gets involved only in what feels right to them, and fights for what they believe in.

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  • Market-centredness provides for autonomy at the physical or material level. Money enables practical independence because it can be spent, invested, or saved exactly as one wants. Wealthy individuals use money to be independent of governments and to handle bad luck and mistakes.

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Moving down the productivity diagonal, autonomy becomes ever more concrete and substantial until everything is about money: even though money is only a means to an end.

Market-centred individuals create wealth sufficient to be able, via donations and taxes, to support causes and enable dispassionate free-ranging inquiry. Cause-centred individuals in turn support the Perspective-centred, who must engage directly or indirectly with them in order to learn.

Well-Being Set

■ Self-protection is valued above Autonomy

On the well-being diagonal, submission rather than autonomy is required by all mentalities.

  • Kinship-centred individuals must submit to family needs and ethnic traditions.
  • Power-centred individuals must «bend the knee» to those higher-up the pecking order.
  • Community-centred individuals must submit to the will of the majority, even if foolish.
  • Reality-centred individuals must value a deep obedience: to identity requirements, to truth, to spiritual awareness.

Originally posted: July 2009