Automatic life accepts what is given it and works within what is given to accomplish its ends. “Its” ends? — what is the antecedent for this possessive pronoun? The automatic life.

An automatic life can be active or reflective.

An automatic life can be resigned and mechanical, but many are ambitious and ingenious.

What is the alternative to automatic life? It begins with an earnest question: What is the alternative to this reality I live — which I live in and live out?

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A very vivid example of automatic life, obvious for having outside-in perspective is the Stanford Prison Experiment.

It is possible to take from this experiment a set of facts about human nature, and these facts will be true. They are sociological facts about a situation observed from a distance, that is, objectively.

However, objective truth is not true enough to help us break out of automatic life.

We must also consider the immediate experience of the participants, and ask how their own experience relates to the social dynamic we observe, which unconsciously dominates not only the participants’ behaviors, but also their attitudes, conceptions and their feelings. We must note, too, the plurality of perspectives on the same situation, and the part power distribution plays.

But this hybrid-truth synthesized from objective truth about the situation and the personal stories of “those who were there” — it is still not true enough to help us break out of automatic life.

We must link our own experience to that of each participant, so we can find with their subjective reports true subjective content (cautiously — staying aware that such connections are approximate at best, and often completely wrong).

Now we begin to enter the subjective realm. But even this is not true enough to help us break out of automatic life.

Now we must look for where we are a prisoner and guard. And we must look for where we missed moral choices, because we already knew what we were supposed to do, and just did it. We must experiment.

But even this is not true enough to help us break out of automatic life.

We must look at the worst situations in history, and recognize the probability that we might have been among the perpetrators, for the very reason that what they did was in accordance with “how things are” in past tense. Every one of these perpetrators were realists.

But even this is not enough. Now we must look at right now and ourselves, and ask ourselves: Is this order, which is working out for me, working out for those around me? Do I actually care, so long as it continues to work out for me? How are my own behaviors, attitudes, conceptions and feelings passively determined by this order? And what besides misery or sheer fear or direct force will wake me from blind incuriosity?

How do my deepest convictions on what is Real and what is Right make me a convict — and a guard?

What do I do about this? (It has no precedent!)

What ought I aim for? (There is no “going back” — it has never been!)

Now we have a beginning…

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The automatic life acts within passivity.

The automatic life does things (active tense), but what it does is determined by what is given (passive tense). Automatic responsibility means discharging the responsibilities it is given.

To take responsibility (active tense) means to replace what is given (passive tense) with what one makes (active tense) of things. That means taking responsibility for one’s own responsibilities — determining where one cooperates and where one resists the given.