You're Not Free, You've Just Learned To Blame Yourself
This is the result of almost two weeks of me thinking, talking, presenting and reading on the idea of “political hope”. it spiraled into the whole notion of hope, if we deserve it, if we need it, if it even exists in the first place, and how we should treat it. for me, it’s become a biological tool. I don’t believe in it, and I don’t keep it in my heart, I rather hold it in my hands so it can light the way, at least the next step of it. it’s an external painkiller that I intentionally consume, without attachment. the conversations did drift away, and the topic became how freedom is deprived from us, and is abused and exploited. just how our attention is robbed by media, hope is also used and monetized by authority. sometimes manifested as an internal monolgue(what’s “correct”), sometimes as a social norm(what’s “normal”), and sometimes as law(what’s “legal”). the thought process is as follows:
Modern Authority Doesn’t Tell You What to Do. It Makes You Feel Bad for Choosing Wrong
Old-fashioned authority was easy to recognize. It told you what to do, how to behave, and what would happen if you refused. A parent might say, “Go and visit your grandmother. It’s your duty.” A boss might order you to stay late. A religious authority might give you a clear list of rules and punishments.
This kind of authority was not necessarily fair or pleasant, but at least the pressure had a clear source. You knew who was giving the order. You could obey, lie, rebel, or leave. The conflict was outside you.
Modern authority works differently. It rarely says, “You must do this.” Instead, it tells you that you are free and that the choice is completely yours. But then it creates a situation where only one choice feels acceptable.
This may sound kinder, but the pressure can actually become stronger. You are not only expected to do the right thing. You are also expected to choose it freely, truly want it, and feel good about it. Authority no longer controls only your actions. It also tries to control your feelings.
The philosopher Slavoj Žižek explains this with the example of a child visiting his grandmother. A traditional father says, “Go and visit her. It is your duty.” A modern, more permissive father says, “You should go only if you really want to. Of course, your grandmother loves you and will be very sad if you don’t go, but the choice is yours.”
In the second example, the child is technically free. However, that freedom is a trap. If he refuses, he cannot say he was simply resisting an order. He has to accept that he freely chose to hurt someone who loves him.
And if he goes, simply being there is not enough. He is also expected to enjoy the visit. If he looks bored or unhappy, it shows that he did not really want to go.
The traditional father asks for one thing: the action. The modern father asks for the action, the desire, and the correct emotional reaction. You must do it, choose it freely, and convince yourself that you wanted to do it.
That is why modern authority can be so effective. It does not need to watch you all the time because it has already placed the supervisor inside your head.
You Are Free, So Everything Becomes Your Fault
This way of thinking is now common in work, education, relationships, health, and self-improvement. We are constantly told that we are free to build the life we want.
Choose your career. Follow your passion. Create your identity. Become financially independent. Leave unhealthy relationships. Work on yourself. Reach your full potential.
None of these possibilities are bad by themselves. The problem begins when possibility quietly becomes responsibility.
When you are told that you can become anything, failure starts to look like a personal choice. If you hate your job, maybe you failed to follow your passion. If you are exhausted, maybe you do not manage your time well enough. If you are lonely, maybe you have not worked hard enough on yourself.
If you are struggling financially, people may say that you did not learn the right skills, take enough risks, build the right network, or believe in yourself strongly enough.
Real social and economic problems still exist, but they become harder to discuss because everything is explained as an individual choice.
This is one of the smartest features of modern power: it encourages people to blame themselves for situations they did not create.
Old authority said, “You must work.” Modern authority says, “You are free to become successful.” The second message can lead to even more work because success has no clear end.
There is always another qualification, another promotion, another side project, another income stream, or another version of yourself that you are supposed to develop.
You become your own boss, but your internal boss may be worse than a real one. It never goes home. It knows all your insecurities. It watches you rest and asks whether you have earned it. It sees you enjoying a hobby and suggests turning it into a business.
Because the pressure seems to come from inside you, you may even call it ambition.
When Work Wants Your Personality
The same change can be seen in modern workplaces. A traditional employer mainly wanted your labour. A modern employer often wants your enthusiasm, personality, emotional energy, and belief in the company’s mission.
You are expected not only to complete your work but also to care deeply about it. The company becomes a “family,” the office has a “culture,” and the job becomes a “journey.” Working late is presented as a sign of passion rather than a sign of too much work.
This language makes exploitation feel personal.
When a boss directly orders you to stay late, you know where your anger should go. But when everyone is supposedly giving their best because they believe in the mission, leaving on time can make you feel selfish.
Nobody officially forced you to answer messages at midnight. Still, you know what dedication is supposed to look like. The command is hidden inside the culture.
Burnout is often treated in the same way. Instead of asking whether the workload is unreasonable, we treat burnout as a personal failure.
People are told to set better boundaries, meditate, drink more water, take breaks, and improve their morning routines. These things may help, but they do not solve the main problem when the amount of work itself is too high.
Even rest becomes another task. You are not simply lying down because you are tired. You are “recharging,” “protecting your energy,” or preparing yourself to be productive again.
Apparently, doing nothing is no longer acceptable unless it has a useful result.
You keep working because it feels like your own choice. Then, when you collapse, you blame yourself for making the wrong choices.
Guilt Is Cheaper Than Force
Older systems often depended on punishment. Modern systems have discovered that guilt can do the same job with less effort.
Punishment requires someone to enforce a rule. Guilt follows you even after the authority has left the room. It is private, portable, and easy to mistake for your own conscience.
Religion gives us a clear example. A person breaks a rule, feels guilty, confesses, receives forgiveness, and returns to the community. In this form, guilt can help correct behaviour and repair relationships.
But for some people, guilt becomes a permanent feeling of never being good enough.
They are not devoted enough, disciplined enough, grateful enough, or sincere enough. Even when they follow the rules, they worry that their intentions were wrong. Even when they ask for forgiveness, they question whether they were truly sorry.
The authority no longer needs to accuse them. They have learned to accuse themselves.
This does not happen only in religion. Modern secular culture has its own forms of confession. We admit that we have not been productive enough, healthy enough, emotionally mature enough, politically informed enough, or properly healed.
Then we announce a new routine and promise to become a better version of ourselves.
The vocabulary is different, but the basic structure is the same. There is an ideal version of you, your current self is failing to reach it, and guilt is used to close the distance.
Even Happiness Became a Duty
Modern authority does not only tell us to work. It also tells us to enjoy our lives.
We are expected to enjoy our jobs, relationships, bodies, freedom, personal growth, and the process of becoming ourselves. Unhappiness used to be seen as an unfortunate condition. Now it can feel like a personal failure.
We have therapy language, meditation apps, self-help books, podcasts, gratitude exercises, wellness products, and endless advice from people who claim to have transformed their lives.
Some of these things can be useful. But together, they can create an uncomfortable message: if so much help is available and you still feel terrible, perhaps the problem is you.
You are free to heal, so why are you still hurt?
You are free to leave, so why are you still there?
You are free to reinvent yourself, so why are you still the same person?
This creates a second layer of suffering. You are not only sad; you are ashamed of being sad. You are not only anxious; you are frustrated because you have not managed your anxiety correctly.
The command to enjoy is especially cruel because enjoyment cannot be created on demand. You can force yourself to attend a party, visit your family, complete a workout, or go on holiday. But you cannot force yourself to feel happy.
Still, the absence of enjoyment is often treated as proof that something is wrong with you. You are expected to perform happiness until it becomes real. If it does not, you are told to work on yourself even more.
Performing Freedom
Real choice is often quiet. You make a decision, accept the result, and continue with your life. You may not need to announce it or make it part of your identity.
Performing freedom is different because it needs an audience. The choice is not enough. It must also show that you are independent, confident, ambitious, healed, adventurous, or authentic.
This is why ordinary activities now often come with identities attached to them. You do not simply read; you become “a reader.” You do not just exercise; you become “a disciplined person.” You do not only travel; you become “adventurous.”
You do not simply leave a relationship. You turn the breakup into a public lesson about boundaries, healing, and self-respect.
The action becomes mixed with the image of the action. After a while, it becomes difficult to know whether you want the experience itself or the image of yourself having it.
Even rebellion can become another kind of obedience. Someone who works very hard to appear free may be more controlled by other people’s opinions than someone who quietly lives a conventional life.
The rebel still needs an audience to recognize the rebellion.
This connects to Žižek’s idea of the “Big Other.” The Big Other is not necessarily one person or institution. It is the imagined social audience that seems to watch and judge us.
It appears in thoughts such as, “People will think I am lazy,” “People will think I settled,” or “People will think I am wasting my life.”
Usually, these “people” are not clearly identified. They are a mixture of family expectations, professional standards, social media, class anxiety, cultural values, and comments we heard years ago.
Today, the Big Other also exists through follower counts, performance reviews, dating profiles, university rankings, credit scores, and professional networks.
You can be completely alone and still feel watched.
Hope Keeps Us Moving
Guilt pushes us from behind, but hope pulls us forward.
The next promotion, relationship, purchase, election, apartment, body, or improved version of ourselves always seems close enough to keep us moving.
Modern life does not need to satisfy us completely. It only needs to keep us believing that satisfaction may arrive after one more step.
Hope is important. It helps people continue when the present is painful or uncertain. Without the ability to imagine a better future, many people would simply give up.
But anything that keeps people moving can also be used to keep them running in circles.
Consumer culture understands this well. Products are rarely sold as simple objects. They are sold as access to a future version of yourself.
The new phone, outfit, course, supplement, or productivity system promises that you are getting closer to the person you should be. Buying it gives you a short feeling of progress, but the destination must remain out of reach so that you will keep buying.
Work culture uses the same idea. The next promotion will bring security. The next salary increase will create freedom. The next achievement will finally prove your value.
Politics often works this way too. The next election, leader, movement, or historical moment will supposedly repair everything and begin the real future.
This does not mean hope is false or useless. It means we should treat hope as a tool rather than as a guarantee.
The important question is not simply whether hope feels good. We should ask what it is helping us survive, what it is helping us ignore, and how long it has been asking us to wait.
The Authenticity Trap
When people notice these pressures, they often begin a new project: becoming authentic.
They want to stop performing, reject social expectations, discover their true desires, and finally live as the person they really are.
But authenticity can quickly become another difficult standard.
Now every choice must represent the “real you.” Every relationship must match your deepest values. Every job must feel meaningful. Every desire must be examined to see whether it is truly yours or secretly created by society.
You begin questioning normal choices as if they were part of a criminal investigation.
Do I really enjoy this? Am I doing it for myself? Is this what I truly want? Is this relationship part of my real path?
At some point, you were only trying to decide what to eat.
The idea of a completely original self is probably unrealistic. Nobody develops alone. We are shaped by language, family, culture, biology, memories, fear, advertising, imitation, and experiences we may not even remember.
Even our idea of “being authentic” comes from the society we are trying to escape.
This does not mean that real choice is impossible. It means that choice cannot depend on finding a pure inner self untouched by the outside world.
A more realistic kind of freedom begins when you recognize the influences around you without assuming that they completely control you.
Instead of asking, “Is this desire completely mine?” it may be more useful to ask, “What will happen if I act on it, and can I accept the result?”
Quiet Choice Is Less Impressive
Real agency often looks ordinary and emotionally imperfect.
You visit your grandmother because your presence matters to her, even though you are not excited about spending the afternoon there.
You send a good-morning message because care is sometimes repetitive, not because you feel a powerful wave of emotion every morning.
You complete a boring responsibility because it will make tomorrow easier. You leave a job because staying has become too damaging. You stay in a relationship because difficulty does not always mean the relationship is false.
These choices do not need to feel pure.
You can dislike a responsibility and still believe it is worth doing. You can love someone and dislike some of the things they expect from you. You can care about your work and still want to go home on time.
Having mixed feelings does not make you dishonest. It simply means that you are a normal person who can feel more than one thing at once.
The problem begins when authority asks us to hide these mixed feelings, even from ourselves.
The child must not only visit his grandmother. He must pretend the visit was completely his idea.
The worker must not only complete the task. She must call it her passion.
The exhausted person must not only continue. He must describe the struggle as personal growth.
Quiet agency allows the contradiction to remain. You can honestly say, “I did not feel like doing this, but I decided that it mattered.”
That sentence may not sound inspirational, but it is often more truthful than “Follow your heart.” It allows care and responsibility to exist without pretending that they are always enjoyable.
The Command Hidden Inside the Choice
Modern authority rarely presents itself as authority. It appears as encouragement, opportunity, ambition, self-care, personal growth, and freedom.
Sometimes these things are genuinely helpful. People do need discipline, responsibility, and the courage to change.
The problem begins when every possibility becomes an obligation.
You can improve, so you must improve.
You can travel, so staying home means wasting your life.
You can leave a relationship, so staying means you are weak.
You can stay and work through problems, so leaving means you are selfish.
You can build a business, heal your trauma, improve your body, create a personal brand, and reach your full potential. Because all these possibilities exist, not following them can begin to look like a moral failure.
The modern command is no longer simply “Obey.”
It is: choose freely, choose correctly, enjoy your choice, and take full responsibility if it goes wrong.
This command is difficult to resist because it often speaks in your own voice. It sounds like ambition, love, conscience, or self-respect.
There may be no complete escape from social influence. We are deeply shaped by our language, relationships, culture, history, and the expectations of other people.
The goal is not to find a place outside every system. It is to notice when a system has entered your thoughts and started presenting its demands as your own desires.
Sometimes the voice saying, “This is what I want,” is telling the truth. Sometimes it belongs to your parents, your employer, your religion, your social class, or an algorithm that knows which insecurity will keep you scrolling.
Sometimes it is simply fear pretending to be motivation.
Real freedom may be much less dramatic than we imagine. It may mean doing something without turning it into your identity, refusing something without writing a public statement, resting without proving that it will make you more productive, and caring for someone without pretending that every act of care feels natural and enjoyable.
There is no perfect feeling, no audience, and no guarantee that you made the correct decision.
There is only the choice, its consequences, and the question of whether you can live with both.