How I think Bavadin sees Autonomy

[+asmodeus]

I want to provide an interpretation of what Autonomy is about, and/or how Bavadin may be interpreting it.

These are the events that are most associated with Autonomy - some more concretely than others.

1. Bavadin-Autonomy had some light role to play in the story of White Sand - source
2. Taldain entered into a long period of isolation because of Autonomy - sourced from the AU essay, where Khriss says "Autonomy’s policy of isolationism in recent times (in direct contrast to her interference with other planets, I might add) has prevented travel to and from Taldain for many, many years."
3. Autonomy is potentially the one attacking Scadrial - speculated from source
4. Patji is an avatar of Autonomy - source
   1. There are worshipped pantheons out there where every member is Autonomy. - source

It's hard to come up with a coherent nature from these disparate elements. But I think we have enough to start making guesses.

---

The Isolation of Taldain - Why?

The easiest place to begin is point #2: Autonomy caused Taldain to enter into a millennia long period of isolation, during which the planet was cut off from the outside in almost every way. So we can ask this - Why would Autonomy have needed to do this? If indeed this was a decision made consciously, then what would've happened if Autonomy hadn't done this? What about Taldain required it to be isolated from the greater Cosmere, even as Autonomy was itself looking outward in seeking out places to seed Avatars? Was it done to keep someone/something in, or to keep someone/something out?

The only thing we really know about Taldain is that it was technologically further ahead than any of the other planets in the cosmere, and that it was on track to become the first planet to get to space. source. Then, in this intervening period of isolation, Taldain got "frozen." And here we can speculate. Technological progress is exponential, so the farther ahead someone is, the faster they progress.

A consequence of not isolating Taldain then, is that it gets unfettered access to space, including the capability to get to other planets with civilisation on them, like Sel, Ashyn, First of the Sun, and whatever the other Shards/Shardworlds/worlds are out there. And because of human nature, we can probably guess how well this would've gone for any of those other civilisations. Imagine what happens when a space age civilization - unopposed in any way - manages to land on First of the Sun a thousand years before the events of Sixth of the Dusk. Before Patji the Avatar was there, and when the natives were even less advanced. Subjugation and conquest and exploitation is a very likely result.

The loss of Autonomy of some peoples in the Cosmere is a very likely result.

---

Autonomy in White Sand

That thought gives us a good starting point in trying to intuit what Autonomy is all about. With that context, the next place which will give us any idea is this: Autonomy, through the Sand Lord, kicked off the events of White Sand.

And it makes so much sense. At the beginning of the story, the Diem under Lord Mastrell Praxton, is a dominating entity, over all the other professions. It's elitist, arrogant, and aloof. With that simple command, Autonomy allows events to unfold in such a way that the old Diem is destroyed, and people like Kenton and Khriss, and Ais (who are all very strong-willed and independent, and have a lot of self-agency but are also otherwise repressed in their natural environments) are enabled and given space to shine, and bring a certain balance to the world. Kenton's actions directly cause the Diem to start acting on an equal footing with the others, by creating situations where he either removes the Diem's advantage over someone else, like he does with the Merchant Guild's debt, or by offering to work with others, as opposed to over or under others, like he does with the Mason's Guild.

Notice how Autonomy doesn't balance things herself in this. She doesn't take away others' capability to act, others' Agency, others' Autonomy. For example, she doesn't tell the traitor how to go about attacking the Diem, or even compel him to do so. She just tells him to. To accept to do this, and to then plan, and go and actually do it, are all things the Traitor himself does. She doesn't take decisions for him or force/control him. She just creates certain circumstances around certain people, and leaves it to the individuals to make their own decisions and come to their own solutions.

She only puts the right people in the right positions, and then they act to restore Autonomy.

Maybe other arguments can also be made.

---

You get Autonomy, and you get Autonomy, everybody gets Autonomy!

There is a little bit of a problem in being the very force of Autonomy in the Universe - you have to choose what Autonomy is, to you. And you can approach this question from many directions.

From the perspective of resolution, you have to ask - whose Autonomy do I represent? Do I represent the Autonomy of a person? A state? A nation? A continent? A planet? All life, everywhere? Should one person be completely autonomous, or should I try and work for optimum autonomy of state, at the cost of individual Autonomies?

Do I go down to the absolute tiniest level, and represent the Autonomy of every individual quanta of investiture/matter/energy in the Cosmere? Because if so, the existence of anything and everything is impinging on it. Molecules impinge on the Autonomy of the individual atom, by binding them.

Let's say I represent the Autonomy of every individual person in the cosmere. If so, should I try and come up with a perfect system where every individual is perfectly Autonomous? If I do manage to come up with such a system, and I go about imposing this everywhere, am I not taking away the ability to choose one's own definition of Autonomy, by giving them mine?

And I'm only really skimming the surface with these question, and very quickly at that. But I think Bavadin came up with a beautiful solution to such... conundrums. What I think Bavadin is doing, in seeding Avatars across the Cosmere, is letting others choose their own take on Autonomy. Bavadin will then go and give life to their culture, their expression of Autonomy, and it will be instilled with their beliefs and act in their interest.

Take Patji, for example. The island Patji was always revered by the people of First of the Sun. They associated with it a personality, one stemming from their own beliefs of what a greater god should be like. Autonomy, then, came along and gave it life. Patji's beliefs and personality, in this case, will be mostly what the people of First of the Sun gave him, and his task would to guard and represent their Autonomy, their way of life, their culture and civilisation. And you can see this, in Sixth of the Dusk. Patji the island communicates with and channels Sixth onto a path that teaches him what The Ones Above really want and represent. And he does this in a way very inline with the personality associated to him by Sixth's people. He doesn't tell Sixth what to do when he leaves. He doesn't tell Sixth what he should be doing. He doesn't tell Sixthwhat the one's above are trying to do either. Sixth has to figure out the answer himself. Sixth, then, chooses the life he wants to live afterwards. Patji never controls him, nor does he compel him beyond putting him in particular situations. Patji fights, in that story, for the Autonomy of the people of First of the Sun, but without impinging on their own Autonomy to do so.

Each Avatar of Autonomy, then, could potentially be meant to represent the Autonomy of a separate group of people - sometime this can be a civilisation, sometimes a culture, whatever has similar beliefs. The Sand Lord is likely an early manifestation of the Autonomy of Dayside Taldain, just as Patji represents the Autonomy of the Drominad System.

It would be interesting to see whose Autonomy Trell represents. An easy answer is likely the Autonomy of Scadrial, but who knows?

---

Harmony, you egg!

Imagine you just ascended to Godhood along with 15 of your other compatriots, and you became the very force of Autonomy in the Cosmere. But you're new to the power, and you don't have much experience being a god yet, and you're excited to play god, so you go off and create your own little utopia. Over time, you become more and more compelled by your power to care about autonomy as a concept, and as you get more experienced as a God, you begin to understand the consequences of your own actions. Seeing firsthand what your own people could do, you now understand the consequences of technology and progress, and you have begun to grasp at the importance of cultures meeting each other on an equal footing so that they can all maintain their own Autonomy. You barely managed to check your own people, and correct for your earlier mistakes. So you start looking outward, and towards the far future.

You are Autonomy, and you want all peoples with their own origin to be Autonomous. So maybe you help Odium take care of Dominion, who was God's own Conquest, before it became a danger to the Autonomy of others. And now you look outward, finding other civilisations and seeding with them an expression of their own Autonomy. In your searches, you run across this weird planet that two of your compatriots created. They call it Scadrial. Maybe they came to you, asking if you want to seed your own worship there. However you found it, you keep an eye on those two and their merry little planet. You find out about their deal, where one would get to destroy the planet, and you become less concerned. You see that Preservation sacrificed his own mind, and for all you can tell, it was in vain, and Ruin will win, and get to destroy Scadrial eventually anyway, before it gets to be trouble. You check in periodically anyway, and see that it's been frozen too, by a sliver of Preservation. So you're not that concerned.

Then one day, the slow draining of Preservation's mind allows a freed Ruin to finally choke him to true death. But then, surprisingly Ruin dies without destroying Scadrial. And now Scadrial has a new, much more powerful god, one in which the destructiveness of Ruin is paired with the now proven Futuresight of Preservation. A god, who is just as inexperienced as you once were, but with double the range and a ton of emotional weightage. A god who, in his inexperience, and ironically, with good intentions and the want to improve things from how they were in a harsh, technologically frozen and repressed world, gives his people a fertile valley to grow and develop in, and progress quickly. A god who has no idea of there even being life out there when he does this, and is not experienced enough to have any idea of the consequences of this action of his on other civilisations in the future, at all.

Someone who just shattered your careful plans with the single act of giving his people conditions to grow fast, and one who is actively, and from your perspective recklessly, promoting growth. So you scramble to stop this as fast as possible, in the only way you can act anymore, after 10,000 years of being compelled to be Autonomy, and after millennia in which you've been splitting off parts of yourself for the betterment of all. You decide to go to war.

---

Conclusion

In the end, I think Autonomy has learnt to take the long view of things. It is looking forward to the time when all the different cultures and peoples, all the different "children of Adonalsium" intermingle, and is trying to push the Cosmere towards a future where all peoples interact with each other on an equal footing, and are able to maintain their own identity and Autonomy. Any one culture or God that has the potential to become a problem to this future, Autonomy wants gone.

So... yeah. What do you guys think?

Edited February 8, 2020 by asmodeus

[Honorless he/him]

I like it. The contradictory elements of most theories regarding Autonomy was solved quite neatly here. It makes sense with the info we have and it slots together what seemed contradictory quite well.