Four Spheres of Personal Autonomy

Existential philosophy suggests that there are four spheres of personal autonomy where we access our meaning-making agency-our true power.

By understanding, even cultivating a uniquely masculine or dynamic sense of these areas, men can work with the magnetic to embody solutions and not just give them lip service. Understanding these four spheres of relationship is not only the key to developing a new masculine ethos but also calibrating it for our friends and children. We must start somewhere, so we start with our views of the four spheres we interact in every day.

I’ve listed each sphere of interrelation with a corresponding “credo” that reinforces the notion of individuality autonomy.

Physical

Most of us have hard and fast rules about how we wish for our physical body to be accessed, touched, and treated. If we extend this knowledge as an axiom of truth, we can assert that everyone possesses the fundamental right to control their own body, and for that body to be nourished and sustained. In even simpler terms, everyone has the right to simply exist and not be interfered with.

I have a right to my own body, to make the choices about what I wish to do with my body and how I grant access to it. I am responsible for how my actions (my body) affect others. No one has the right to violate or infringe on my physical being.

Psychological

We have the same prerogative and right to think what we wish and to control our thoughts; the brain is in the body after all. Most importantly, we wish to retain our individuality, right to free speech, and freedom of thought. People in the workplace should feel inspired to creative thought, not stifled by “joiners”. When I was a corporate strategist, I’d look for the guy or gal who didn’t agree to get a completely different point of view. Don’t stifle alternative or contrarian viewpoints to appear unified.

I have a right to my thoughts, to my opinions and judgments. I have a right to make choices about what I wish to think about, and I am responsible for how these thoughts affect others. No one has the right to violate or infringe on my freedom of thought.

Psychodynamic/Emotional

First it’s important to realize that thoughts and feelings are different. We are accustomed a very wide range of thoughts but often we forget that emotions emanate from the physical body, not the mind. Our nervous systems are a complex array of connections to the gut, the lumbar area in the spine and the brain.

I have a right to my feelings. I have the right to encounter and acknowledge not just what I am thinking, but what I am feeling matter what it is. I am responsible for how my emotions affect others. No one has the right to violate or infringe on my emotional autonomy.

Transcendent or Mythopoeic

This last category is enormously important-perhaps the most important, because it contains the notion that we have a right and responsibility to own not only our bodies and what is within us-our thoughts and emotions-but to own the cultural and archetypal places we come from and our own personal understanding of what the bigger picture means to us. In the very least, by encountering those in the workplace whose worldview differs from our own, we become a more intrinsically accepting workplace.

I have a right to that which transcends me and to however I uniquely and personally understand it. I have a right to my own personal, archetypal and cultural mythology as it allows me to make full meaning of my world and myself. I take responsibility about how I create, interact and share this category of experience with others-and I am careful that I do not violate any of the other three categories of ethos.

*The Oxford dictionary defines ethos as originally meaning “accustomed place” (for instance: ἤθεα ἵππων “the habitat of horses”, Iliad 6.511), but also as: “custom or habit”, equivalent to Latin mores. In other words-ethos pertains directly to the character of a place and how people behave there.