So man created God in his own image: the science of happiness

Par Romain Gagnon

Does the Creator of the Universe resemble the anthropomorphic description of God as depicted by the main religions? And does such a supreme being really care about the fate of mankind? If life senselessly ends at death, what purpose does a human strive for during his brief passage on Earth? Shouldn’t he strive to contribute to mankind’s collective well-being, and incidentally his own, rather than dogmatically obeying commands from a bygone era? In short, is it possible to be both realistic and happy? And what is true happiness beyond what religion or capitalism tries to sell us? With the exponential increase in the use of anti-depressants, we sadly cannot claim that all is well in society. But in order to repair a watch, one must first understand how it works. Fortunately, recent scientific discoveries decisively unveil the biological mechanisms underneath the hood of happiness.

• Langue: Français
• Éditeur: Option Santé, Productions-Éditions
• Date de sortie: 26 nov. 2019
• ISBN: 9782981793898

Aperçu du livre

SO MAN CREATED GOD

IN HIS OWN IMAGE

______________________

The Science of Happiness

ROMAIN GAGNON

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and Library and Archives Canada cataloguing in publication

Title: So man created God in his own image: the science of happiness / Romain Gagnon; Foreword: Yvon Dallaire; English translation: Danielle San Marco.

Other titles: Et l'homme créa Dieu à son image. English

Names: Gagnon, Romain, 1963- author. | Dallaire, Yvon, author.

Description: Translation of: Et l'homme créa Dieu à son image. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190032189 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190032197 | ISBN 9782981793850 (softcover) | ISBN 9782981793843 (MOBI) | ISBN 9782981793898 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Religion—Controversial literature. | LCSH: Life.

Classification: LCC BL2775.3 G3413 2019 | DDC 200—dc23

Layout: Word-2-Kindle

Cover page: Josiane Roy, Alejandro Natan

Photograph of the author: Marc Dussault

© 2019 Éditions Stratégikus

All Rights Reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

FOREWORD

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

1. The sordid reality

2. Our relative insignificance

3. This psychosis, affectionately called faith

4. A brief history of time

5. From the origin of life to free will

6. The evolutionist strategy of love

7. The decline of the human race

8. The return of the Dark Ages

9. Our fragile planet

10. Veganism, or the new face of asceticism

11. Finding earthly happiness rather than heavenly happiness

12. Hedonic adaptation

13. The hierarchy of needs

14. Morality is immoral

15. The wisdom of philosophers

16. Yin and Yang

17. For a utilitarian and ecological ethic

Strange is our situation here upon earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to a divine purpose. From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: That we are here for the sake of other men - above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends.

Albert EINSTEIN¹

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Even for such modest work, I would not have arrived at the final result alone. I would like to thank here the 25 people who have all made a contribution, particularly when challenging my arguments or suggesting additional reading. Among them are Muslims, devote Catholics, feminists and even a vegan.

These people know who they are, and to avoid them potential trouble, I will keep them anonymous. It's sad, but that's how it is in 2019.

And all of you, readers, I thank you for giving me the privilege of reading my book and recommending it to others that may find it of interest.

For Mélanie…

FOREWORD

Romain Gagnon is a perfectionist and a realist, and certainly not a coward to dare to write everything he wrote in this book. It takes balls to write reality as he sees it and go against so many religious, social, scientific, and even philosophical prejudices. He demonstrates with an extraordinary art all the paradoxes experienced by humans.

To say that it is man who created God (and not the other way around) and to add that the human is the least pragmatic of all living beings - while believing himself to be the most reasonable and the most intelligent - is really taking the risk of having a fatwā declared against him.

Religion is the opium of the people, said Karl Marx. Romain Gagnon shows us how right he was. He is one of the few people to say and write what many people believe but do not dare to share out loud: that religious beliefs control the populace in a state of fear, in a refusal to accept their smallness and finiteness. This is the strict reality; we are only a speck of dust in the universe. Planet Earth is just the tip of a needle compared to Betelgeuse.

The author constantly brings us back to our contradictions and particularly to our belief in, or illusion of, free will. We are much more instinctive beings than we dare to admit, always in search of pleasure and shying from pain, like all animal and plant species that exist on Earth (and probably elsewhere). Whether in love or sexuality, we are fragile creature who are not as strong as we wish to be.

Paradoxically, Romain also talks about happiness and the means to achieve it. As he says so well, From chaos came life. It empowers us in the state and evolution of humanity. For this, man must find meaning in life and free himself from the imaginary friend whom he has created and whom he calls Jehovah, Allah, or otherwise. Religion may have allowed a social framework to be built from spirituality in the past, but at the same time it was at the source of the worst atrocities, barbarities, and discriminations that history has experienced. Romain gives us many examples… examples that make us shudder.

Achieving happiness (according to the author) must be based on ethics… ethics far beyond any religious belief and illusion, a spiritual, non-materialistic, non-capitalist, atheistic ethic. Ethics based on our scientific knowledge and human values ​​of compassion, empathy, respect, pro-choice and justice. Ethics he calls utilitarian.

In his last chapter, he even dares to suggest many avenues - realistic and achievable - for a real humanity, a humanity freed from all its shackles; avenues that politicians should dare to put forward as soon as possible. We may not agree with all his proposals, but at least Romain Gagnon has the courage to write them and make us think.

Yvon Dallaire, M. Ps.

Author

http://yvondallaire.com

PREFACE

Like many others before me, I deal with the uncertainties that all human beings feel about life, whether poor or rich, believer or atheist, scholar, or Philistine. I'm talking about the common denominator of all human beings: death, but more so the relevance of the life that precedes it.

Our contemporary era obsessed with cybernetics and globalization leaves little room for spiritual reflection. We are constantly stimulated intellectually, making inner peace (which is the peremptory to such reflection) hard to achieve. As much on a personal level as a professional one, we are continually solicited by phone calls, emails, text messages, messages, news, and notifications. Our electronic agenda sets our daily schedule². Our young people are even more affected by this unrestrained life and have even developed an unhealthy dependence on it.

While many countries are secularizing, others are radicalizing. With the dizzying life we ​​lead today, it's tempting to numb our pain of living rather than find a real meaning to life. Whether one is a believer or not, the spiritual quest remains no less an essential ingredient of serenity. While religion may rely on fanciful beliefs, the need for spirituality is very real.

Those who read this book might think that it is another ring-winged manifesto, but this is not so. However, be warned that the text is not politically correct; far from it. Today, in this unequaled era of political correctness, it's hard to find a politician or public administrator who will reveal the true substance of his thought, but being neither I do not have to restrain myself to this type of censorship.

Happy reading.

Romain Gagnon

2019-10-01

INTRODUCTION

Humans are the most intellectually gifted creatures, but also the most presumptuous. Indeed, man is the only animal to claim to be conceived in the image of God. Being at the top of the food chain ostensibly flatters the ego!

Although smarter than other species in the animal world, humans are paradoxically also the least pragmatic. Indeed, man is the only animal who believes in resurrection, who wastes his time praying, who imposes unhealthy fasts and who prides himself on his chastity! It is plausible that Christians believed, in another day and age, that small, plump angels were laying around on comfortable clouds, playing the harp. However, I am astounded when I meet today with intelligent people (at least in the logical, mathematical sense) and even scholars who are believers.

Religion is often harmless. This is the case when a Jehovah's Witness rings the doorbell, trying to scare us with end-of-the-world claims. However, it can also prove murderous. We only have to think about the Catholic crusades of yesteryear and the Islamic jihad, which today is the Muslim version.

Humans are distinguished from beasts sometimes by an unrivaled greatness of soul, sometimes by unparalleled cruelty. Man has excelled by improving his living conditions, particularly with the invention of the wheel or later with hygiene. Paradoxically, man is just as good at making life miserable through pollution or war.

Admittedly, humans are very different from beasts, but we must not confuse human with humanity. A big part of what we are is in actuality a product of our civilization. A baby abandoned in the wild will not develop great knowledge. The superiority of mankind is probably more due to his social sense than his mathematical skills.

Our emotions do not differentiate us from animals, at least not from mammals. You must only observe animals to realize that they share nearly everything. In my opinion, the most important and noble difference in man and beast is man's ability to intellectualize. It's what you are doing now by reading this book. Only man tortures himself trying to understand how the universe works and in finding a meaning to life.

The same great existentialist questions have haunted the human conscience since the beginning of time. Of course, religion offers comfortable prevarications to escape the harsh reality of life, but as science continues to evolve, these seem less and less credible.

While every human being shares, secretly or not, a common goal of happiness, it's true that no one has yet found an infallible recipe to achieve it. I myself do not pretend to, either. However, I have detected a recent convergence from different branches of science towards a perhaps less ambitious but more accessible goal of serenity, and this is the personal reflection that I wish to share with you in this book.

Therefore, get ready for an expedition through cosmology, quantum mechanics, neurobiology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, ecology, history, philosophy, and politics in search of a more pragmatic sense of life. I hope that this cynical adventure will be at least entertaining, if not illuminating.

1. The sordid reality

The Efil disease is a fatal and incurable disease. The scientific community spends huge sums of money on research every year in order to find a cure for this dreadful disease, but to no avail; at best, modern medicine manages to repel the fatal outcome in some patients. Death can happen suddenly, but also after a long agony. Most of the time, this disease causes a slow degeneration of the immune system, physical abilities, and sometimes also cognitive abilities before death. It is a disease that is transmitted genetically; if parents carry this deadly gene, then their child is 100% likely to carry it, and no blood test is required to confirm it. Generally, medicine can estimate the life expectancy of a child within a 10-year margin based on the age of death of his or her parents. However, the child can also die much younger than their parents. In fact, many patients do not even reach adulthood. The best cure known to date remains a good diet coupled with a healthy lifestyle and regular physical activity, but even this is not always successful.

A positive diagnosis of Efil Disease results in reactions that vary greatly from one patient to another. Some adopt a healthy lifestyle in order to postpone the fateful deadline. Others take advantage of their last moments to travel the world or to devote themselves to their loved ones. Finally, some patients, realizing that they have nothing left to lose, will risk their lives with extreme sports or dangerous drugs.

And you, how would you react if you found out you were a carrier of this deadly gene? How would you live your last days? Would you change your lifestyle? Take a moment to think about it before continuing reading.

Strangely, the majority of people who have been diagnosed with the Efil Disease gene are in complete denial. As implausible as it may seem, they contradict science and reassure themselves that they will survive the disease. Would you react that way too?

The Efil Disease is much more widespread than you may think. In fact, all humans carry the gene, including yourself. Invert the letters. This disease is called Life. It is a deadly sexually transmitted disease.

Death may be a certainty for all, but the moment when it occurs remains an uncertainty. The behaviors I described earlier in the face of the mysterious illness of Eiv are actually found in everyday life, including denial; that is, believing in resurrection.

How did you respond to the previous paragraphs? If you would plan to spend your last days differently, it's time to get started… because your next days are already your last days.

Is reality really so sordid? What good is it to suffer a lifetime and struggle to survive when you inevitably end up dying? Who is the author of this cruel joke? Is there even an author? How can we find ourselves in such a grotesque situation? Today, science provides us with some explanations. Here they are.

A planet revolves around a star, which we call the Earth and the Sun, respectively. No, the Earth is neither flat nor in the center of the Universe. A multitude of other stars and even more planets exist, too. We do not know where the Universe stops or even if it stops.

On Earth there are interesting creatures which are said to be alive. We find a broad spectrum of such creatures, from bacteria to humans to trees. Such creatures probably live on other planets as well. This we don't know, and consequentially we cannot know if these other living creatures look like us or not.

Defining a living being is a challenge. Let's attempt a scientific definition here: a living being is one who is born, grows, reproduces, collapses, and then dies. Meanwhile, it feeds and eliminates. These living beings also have a common faculty: intelligence. However, the latter varies considerably from one species to another and even from one individual to another within the same species.

In common language, the word intelligence is sometimes used synonymously with wisdom. Rather, here we mean the individual intelligence that is defined as the ability to solve complex problems, measured by an IQ test. It is also about the social intelligence that we find for instance in ants. Individually, an ant is insignificant. However, the achievements of a colony of ants are impressive. The justice system is another example of social intelligence on a human scale.

According to Descartes, to be is precisely to think. Intelligence would allow us to be, hence the famous quote: Cogito, ergo sum.³ However, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio⁴ suggests rather, I feel, therefore I am. According to him, it is the feelings and not the intelligence that determine being.

Living beings all have one goal in common: they struggle to survive, not to die, and to multiply. This struggle for survival explains the evolution of the species. According to Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection⁵, reproduction randomly creates mutations, some that are favorable but most of which are unfavorable. Favored individuals have a better chance of survival, thus to reproduce and, incidentally, to propagate the genes of favorable mutations. For example, five million years ago, the giraffe's ancestors, the Giraffokeryx, who were lucky enough to have a slightly longer neck were favored because they could reach the fruits out of reach of other animals. As a result, they ate better, lived longer, and reproduced more. From one generation to another, the neck has thus lengthened to the giraffe of today. It is interesting to note that the giraffe has seven cervical vertebrae, just like a human. If a creator had conceived the giraffe (with a notion of intelligent design), one would have expected him to add vertebrae instead of lengthening them, so that the simple act of bending over to drink water would not be such a feat for the giraffe, as is the case today.

All animals, including humans, come from the same genetic foundation. It is no coincidence that most share the same organs: two eyes, a liver, a heart with four ventricles, a spinal cord, and a medulla oblongata. In addition (unlike plants and cyanobacteria) all animals and even fungi are heterotrophic; that is, they feed on organic constituents from other animals beneath them in the food chain.

Figure 1 Giraffokeryx, ancestor of the modern giraffe

Darwin's theory may leave something to be desired in explaining the complexity of human anatomy, the mysteries of DNA, and all the tricks of plants and animals to ensure their survival, but we must remember that natural selection has had plenty of time; more precisely, life took 3.5 billion years to develop on Earth. In the case of bacteria that reproduce much faster than animals, the effects of natural selection are observed on a human scale; this explains the current phenomenon of the acquired resistance of bacteria to antibiotics. Darwin's theory revolutionizes not only biology, but also cosmology, theology, and philosophy. Indeed, contrary to what humanity has always believed until recently, complexity can arise from simplicity; there is no need for an architect to orchestrate the whole thing. This is the most powerful objection to the theory of intelligent design that is at the base of Genesis. This theory also questions the notion of a soul that survives death. Indeed, if Homo sapiens gradually evolved from ancestors without a soul, when would this famed soul appear? And supposing that this soul appeared at a precise moment of the evolution, does this mean that the previous generation had no soul? Such reasoning does not hold up, so it is not surprising that the religious lobby has always combatted the theory of evolution since it is the number-one enemy of monotheism. However, this lobby does not care about the theory of relativity that has equally upset our assumptions, but that does not challenge faith, at least in appearance.

Intelligence is certainly a determining factor in the struggle for survival. Actually, the ability to survive is often the most objective way to measure intelligence. This is why this ability has developed so much more in complex animals over the millennia.

From Homo habilis to Homo sapiens, intelligence has increased considerably thanks to natural selection. Greater intelligence necessarily requires more neurons and, incidentally, a larger skull to accommodate them. In fact, the volume of the brain has increased from 775 to 900 and finally to 1325 cubic centimeters (compared to a maximum of 500 cubic centimeters for the chimpanzee). Not only was Homo erectus now in control of fire, but he was a bipedal. Until then, the size and shape of the female hominid's pelvis had always adapted to the growing volume of the baby's head. However, with a volume of 800 cubic centimeters, the offspring's head had reached the size limit for a female biped⁶. In order for the hominid's intelligence to continue to develop, Nature had to opt for a different strategy from other mammals, namely to give birth to a much less autonomous baby whose development continues thereafter. In comparison, elephants (who remained quadrupeds) did not meet this evolutionary problem. Elephants are among the smartest animals, and yet newborns walk from birth. In contrast, pregnancy in elephants lasts twenty-one months. The relatively short pregnancy of a human being, in light of his superior intelligence, explains its lack of autonomy at birth. Humans only begin to walk around eleven months. If we add nine months of gestation to these eleven months, we get twenty months, a number quite close to the duration of pregnancy in the elephant. As we will see in Chapter 6, this phenomenon is at the base of the monogamous regime of humans.

At the individual level, a human accomplishes little. Isaac Newton was one of the most illustrious scientists in history and yet his theory of gravity, to which he devoted his entire career, is now taught to youngsters in high school. Learning Newton's theory certainly has less merit than discovering it, but knowing it is just as useful as discovering it when you have to put it into practice. The superiority of the human comes as much from his intelligence as his education. This education is in fact the fruit of the collective knowledge that has developed over several millennia. Moreover, the Cro-Magnon Man was on average more intelligent than humans of today not only because of a larger brain, but also since the struggle for survival was ruthless at that time for those individuals with low IQs, whereas today's society now assumes responsibility for them⁷. It is the collective knowledge that has grown in the meantime and not individual intelligence.

Figure 2 The Cro-Magnon Man was taller and smarter than today's human. Longevity was the same as it is today even though life expectancy was lower because of the dangers inherent to that period and the lack of medical care.

If we draw a parallel with computers, the human brain has more memory and more processing power than other animals. On the other hand, animals are born with a complete database of ready-to-use software, whereas the only application preinstalled in humans is nearly limited to suckling the breast of our mothers.

For example, within seconds of being born, a colt is able to stand up. Another example is the marine iguana that is born in an egg buried in the sand on a Pacific island. The moment he emerges from his egg in the sand, he has to run to join the other adult iguanas perched on the rocks. Along the way, many snakes are prepared to hunt him and have been waiting for this moment to devour him. Not only must the iguana be able to run, recognize snakes and find its way to the iguana community, but it must also use strategy to out-run its predators; all this only a few seconds after birth. Obviously, all these skills were not taught by its parents, they are part of the pre-installed software. Now, try to imagine a human baby coming into the world among hungry hyenas. Not only will he be devoured in minutes, but he will not even be aware of being preyed upon by a predator.

In contrast, the human brain is more flexible and has unparalleled learning ability than any other animal on Earth. Humans also control their emotions better than other mammals. Indeed, try to convince your dog to bungee jump! You won't succeed either in making a rat eat a piece of spicy curry; it would prefer to die of hunger.

That said, the human brain at birth is not a blank page (or empty memory as in the computer analogy). If a young baby is able to quickly recognize faces or to learn language, it is because he is born preprogrammed with a sophisticated computer library that natural selection has perfected for hundreds of thousands of years. This library includes an intuitive understanding of basic physics, facial recognition algorithms, moral notions, socio-economic skills, as well as conceptual diagrams (a person, an animal, a plant, a tool, an artifact) to house the concepts learned later and an ability to make inferences. So a young child easily differentiates an animal from a person or a rock, already knows that the objects fall to the surface of the Earth, and understands the notions of good and evil even before he is taught⁸.

In the 13th century, King Frederick II⁹, who spoke nine languages, crafted a curious experiment to find out what was the natural language of humans. He put six babies in a nursery and ordered their nurses to feed them, to put them to sleep, to bathe them, but above all to never talk to them. This way, Frederick II hoped to discover what language these babies would naturally choose without external influence, in other words, which language was preprogrammed in their brains. The experiment had a fatal result. Not only did no baby begin to speak any language, but all six of them withered and died. Learning and communicating is not just a human ability, it is also a necessity.

The human brain is a sophisticated computer with numerous specialized parallel processors and a powerful software development platform, but a computer without applications and data is of little value. But these applications and data come with education, which itself comes from collective knowledge. Essentially, the greatness of humanity resides as much in its collective knowledge as in the individual intelligence of one of its representatives.

Take the example of a modern deer hunter. He uses a special soap to hide his scent and to not alert the prey, a scented bait that simulates a doe in heat, and an electronic call that mimics the moaning of a female in heat to attract a male deer. Once the beast is within sight, he shoots it with his rifle equipped with a scope. Deer have small odds against modern hunting tools and techniques. Developing these tools has taken humanity many centuries. For example, black powder, an ancient component of modern ammunition, was invented by the Chinese in the ninth century. Now, imagine this hunter hunting without tools (modern or not); deer would be at little risk.

If one measures the individual intelligence of a sole creature at his most simple form by his chances of survival in the forest, a wolf and bear will be far superior to a human. In fact, a city dweller today who was abandoned naked in the forest of Abitibi in May without insect repellent would not survive even a day to the attack of mosquitoes. However, we see that the early Algonquin community developed their own survival strategies in the wild.

Intelligence generates another very interesting capability: consciousness. Like emotions, consciousness is not exclusive to humans, although the degree of consciousness varies considerably from one living being to another. Scientists have recently discovered that even plants are conscious¹⁰. For example, a sunflower is aware of the position of the sun in order to orient itself accordingly, unlike an automatic gesture of a robot.

Humans are notably aware of temporality, therefore of the past and the future, while animals live more in immediacy. Once again, man's superior consciousness of the passing of time is conditioned by his education. Indeed, an abandoned human child on a desert island would develop a consciousness not far superior to that of a bonobo, and that's if he manages to survive¹¹.

In the end, mammals and even several birds are not just aware, but largely share the same emotions as humans and sometimes also the same feelings: love, jealousy, joy, sadness, surprise, suspicion, gratitude, generosity, wonder, curiosity, fear, anger, shyness, disgust, and empathy. The Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal has also observed that our close cousins, chimpanzees, are capable of empathy, feel pain, joy, and remorse, can comfort themselves in a difficult situation, feel guilt, perceive the feelings of others, adopt orphans, forgive, are aware of death and experience grief when a loved one dies¹². In addition, other primates and bird species transmit cultural information from one generation to another¹³.

Hominids with superior social and communication skills survived better and thus procreated more. From generation to generation, Homo sapiens have become the most social of animals¹⁴ over the millennia. Man could encode and decode more and more complex messages with his peers and eventually developed language 200,000 years ago¹⁵. These faculties have enabled humans to build a larger and more sophisticated social network than other animals. But it is precisely this networking capacity that has led to the development of the collective knowledge of the human and eventually to his hegemony on Earth. As Nicolas Boileau¹⁶ said, Whatever we conceive well, we express clearly. But the opposite is also true; the act of stating one's thought helps to better understand it. That is why, with equal intelligences, language provides much greater intellectual prowess.

The ability to communicate has fostered the ability to socialize, and vice versa. These two faculties in turn enabled the development of a third faculty that has propelled the human race: commerce. As a matter of fact, a group that exchanges products and services survives more easily than a single individual. In archaeological sites that are tens of thousands of years old, there are pretty shells and sharp flints hundreds of kilometers from their sources, which suggests that they arrived there through trade networks¹⁷. As we will see in Chapter 14, the brain is born preprogrammed with a series of emotions in order to manage this exchange of good practices fairly. Virtues such as sympathy, trust, gratitude, and loyalty are the fruits of natural selection and have nothing to do with God.

However, as long as Homo sapiens were hunter-gatherers and belonged to a small tribe of no more than 100 members, his survival skills were comparable to those of other predators. Moreover, in nature, predators are always fewer in number than their prey, that is hence the principle of the food chain. For example, in Africa, there have always been fewer lions than antelopes. In America, there have always been fewer cougars than bison. Homo sapiens were no exception; indeed, Homo sapiens weren't less ferocious nor more ecological than other predators.

Moreover, as we have seen, the ease of human brain programming comes at the expense of preinstalled software. Therefore, a long training period is required before a human becomes functional. In the Stone Age, this characteristic was not always a competitive advantage -- far from it -- which probably explains why Homo sapiens took nearly 60,000 years before dominating the other species.

Finally, a big brain also has another disadvantage in the struggle for survival. Even though the human brain accounts for only 2% of body mass, it consumes 25% of the energy required to keep the body at rest (basic metabolism). While a reptile has low caloric requirements and can multiply in an arid desert, human survival in the Paleolithic era was limited to places where food abounded. Moreover, anthropologists believe that it was the invention of fire 1.5 million years ago that allowed the human brain to continue its growth, unlike that of the chimpanzee¹⁸. Cooked foods provide more calories and nutrients than raw foods¹⁹. While the chimpanzee had to forage all day long to feed, the use of fire provided free time for Homo erectus to develop his social skills and also tools. It is therefore legitimate to question the relevance of the current craze for raw foods.

Until 10,000 BC, Homo sapiens were therefore predators like any other, with advantages such as intelligence, but also disadvantages including weak physical strength and no autonomy at