Four Spheres of Autonomy

Existential philosophy suggests 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, not just give them lip service. These four spheres of relationship are the key to developing a new masculine ethos — and to calibrating it for our friends and children. We must start somewhere, so we start with the four spheres we move through every day. Each comes with a credo reinforcing individual autonomy.

Physical. Most of us have hard and fast rules about how we want our bodies accessed, touched, and treated. Extend that as an axiom: everyone possesses the fundamental right to control their own body, and for that body to be nourished and sustained. In simpler terms, everyone has the right to simply exist and not be interfered with.

I have a right to my own body — to choose what I do with it and how I grant access to it. I am responsible for how my actions affect others. No one has the right to violate or infringe on my physical being.

Psychological. We have the same prerogative over our thoughts. The brain is in the body, after all. Most importantly, we want to retain our individuality, our free speech, our freedom of thought. People at work 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 contrarian viewpoints to appear unified.

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

Psychodynamic / Emotional. First, realize that thoughts and feelings are different. We're accustomed to a wide range of thoughts, but we forget that emotions emanate from the physical body, not the mind. Our nervous systems are a complex array of connections — gut, lumbar spine, brain.

I have a right to my feelings. I have the right to encounter and acknowledge not just what I'm thinking but what I'm feeling — whatever 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 / Mythopoeic. This last category is enormously important — perhaps the most important — because it holds that we have the right and responsibility to own not only our bodies and what is within us, our thoughts and emotions, but the cultural and archetypal places we come from, and our own personal understanding of what the bigger picture means. At the very least, encountering coworkers whose worldview differs from our own makes for 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 lets me make full meaning of my world and myself. I take responsibility for how I create, interact with, and share this category of experience — and I am careful not to violate any of the other three.

The Oxford dictionary traces "ethos" to a word meaning "accustomed place" — the habitat of horses, in the Iliad — and also "custom or habit," the Latin mores. Ethos, in other words, is about the character of a place and how people behave there. These four spheres are where we build ours.