Autonomy can be the faculty to act by ourselves, giving ourselves our own laws; it can also be a spiritual freedom, a capacity to chose by ourselves without being dominated by our tendencies, nor to let ourselves being dominated in a servile way by an external authority. I believe that autonomy is built in education. The first step of autonomy could consist, for a child, of becoming able to behave from recognizing the environmental and social context in which he evolves.

Some life experiences have shown me that it is beneficial to promote man's autonomy, to keep him free. Knowledge, will and the pleasure of making/doing by oneself give a direction to the life, allow survival and help to avoid alienating situations in which we say, resigned: "I don't have a choice". To develop and maintain autonomy is a challenge of size, an enormous challenge.

To take it on, at a slow pace, we can use tools such as knowledge sharing and encouragement in the realization of personal dreams. In the section entitled Autonomy, I present some ways of living/practices which in my opinion contribute to increase the resourcefulness and to lower the dependence on the large suppliers of services and products.