Transitioning to Autotelism

I haven’t written in a while, for reasons that include a renewed cycling career, spontaneous trips with friends, and busier-than-normal design work, but which really begin and end with an attempt to live my autotelic new year (yes, I realize it’s August). Somehow it just seemed disingenuous to be writing long essays about becoming a “man of action”.

I’ve still been writing–parts of long pieces mostly, justifying autotelism, exploring post-desktop computing, and following up on the importance of being incredible–but haven’t spent the time to collect and finish them all. Instead I am developing discipline and strategies for living in an autotelic way.

It’s hard–even a stubborn individualist like myself has trouble putting aside the immediate, societally-supported gratification of pursuing heterotelic goals. “The Machine”–my cute nickname for the educational, governmental, and societal structures and conventions that define the status quo for an individual–does an effective job of keeping us busy, and for those so inclined, autotelic, as we grow up. Most of the autotelic people you see are children, and they remain that way for a long time growing older despite circumstances that might seem limiting. It is really only when they are allowed to make their own choices that the decision to become auto- or heterotelic is presented.

That’s what I’ve experienced since graduating college, with every option imaginable available to me. I’ve certainly made choices to blend in, and also some driven only by desire. I’m not sure that every decision could be one or the other, but for me the challenge remains to push personal and societal boundaries in the practice of autotelism. Society’s goals, especially those dealing with money and power, are well-documented, and Christ’s goals for us are similarly shared (though often enigmatic and requiring interpretation–one argument for autotelism, search for “heterotelic”). Whenever I decide to reference those goals, they will be there. But autotelic goals can come only from experience.