The Psychology of Self Sufficiency

For anyone who has contemplated what it means to truly exist in a state of freedom, a state of self-sufficiency often appears as the sine qua non, or the essential element for such a condition. Respected figures throughout the Western tradition have long grappled with the practical implications of such an ideal. Henry David Thoreau’s glorification of life “alone… in a house which I had built myself… earning my living by the labor of my hands only,” comes to mind here. Even more so does St. Augustine’s longing to “live at ease and separate from the turmoil of men” with a few friends, undisturbed by the cares of civil life and able to “contemplate serenely” philosophy and theology. The pursuit of freedom and independence from an incredibly incessant society is nothing if not a recurring theme throughout the reflections and desires of men past and present.

This ideal of a self-sufficient community is indeed a natural good in itself.The monastics bore St. Augustine’s idea to fruition, as did those medieval states which practiced a largely self-reliant or locally-sufficient form of subsidiarity. But in doing so, they also skirted a pitfall which many moderns seem unable to avoid: pursuing this end for its own sake.

Unlike certain contemporary figures, the Church Fathers and medieval monastics recognized that any community desiring to survive longer than a generation’s time must organize around a transcendent animating principle. As they knew keenly, this alleviated a secondary, more hidden problem latent in the nature of any polis, self-sufficient or otherwise: the threat that a lack of ‘meaning’ poses to even the most well-established community.