Questions

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” But what are these chains made of now? No longer forged in iron or law, they appear in the form of abundance — a thousand brands, a million products, each promising choice, each whispering freedom. Yet if most roads lead back to the same house — if the biscuit, the shampoo, the motorbike all trace their origins to a single boardroom — what kind of choice is this? What is the nature of a freedom where every decision is pre-inscribed by ownership? Are we choosing, or merely selecting from a menu written without us in mind? When Parle owns the illusion of every sweet taste and Volkswagen the illusion of movement, do we still own our appetites, our destinations?

Marcuse once warned of a society that integrates dissent by commodifying it, making rebellion a purchasable style. But have we moved beyond even that? Has the market so thoroughly absorbed the human that even desire itself is outsourced — manufactured, packaged, and sold back to the subject as if it were their own? Is the self still an origin, or has it become a terminal — a node where market signals arrive and depart? Foucault gestured toward this when he spoke of power not as repression but as production — of bodies, of behaviors, of truths. If power now produces our pleasures, our diets, our entertainment, then where does resistance begin? And more hauntingly: can it begin?

What is political choice in such a landscape, if the structures of power are embedded not in the party but in the platform, not in the manifesto but in the medium? If every alternative is framed within the logic of the same machinery, what is left that is outside? Is the void we feel — that silent echo beneath every decision — the residue of a freedom we were promised but never given? Or is it the trace of a freedom we’ve forgotten how to want?

Then what is this self that moves through aisles and timelines, clicking, swiping, selecting — if not an agent, then what? If we are shaped not only by what we consume but by how we are made to consume, has the self become a mirror turned inward, reflecting only what capital has already projected? The question, perhaps, is not merely whether we are free, but whether we still possess the capacity to even imagine freedom outside the coordinates of exchange. Heidegger warned of enframing — the transformation of the world into a standing-reserve, where everything, including the human, is ordered for utility. In such a world, does the self risk becoming a product of efficiency, stripped of mystery, reduced to predictable patterns of taste and trend? If every act of choice is mapped, studied, and anticipated by the systems we navigate, where then is the unpredictable — the human?

Is it possible that what we mistake for freedom is in fact a loop — a closed circuit of consumption whose endpoints are already owned, whose detours are already sponsored? When the image of rebellion is itself a brand, when critique becomes a curated aesthetic, what form can truth take that is not instantly co-opted? The void that pulses beneath each decision — is it a metaphysical cry, a recoil from the hyper-visibility of the self within systems that never sleep? Or is it the birth-pang of a deeper self, not yet realized, struggling to be more than a consumer of its own image?

And so the question returns: if freedom exists, where does it live now? Outside the supermarket? Beyond the touchscreen? Beneath the skin? Or has it become something to be remembered rather than lived — an echo from Rousseau’s time, haunting our perfectly optimized lives?