(Contemporary culture) exacerbates the role of the individual and overstates their capacity for action, granting the individual absolute autonomy and inculcating false values according to which each person is solely responsible for their own success or failure. — Leonardo Díaz, Dominican philosopher
At first glance, this idea feels empowering. You are in control. You are responsible. Your future is yours to shape. And in many ways, that remains true. But something begins to fracture when this principle becomes absolute.
When autonomy becomes pressure
In today’s professional and social environments, we are constantly encouraged to optimize ourselves:
- Build your personal brand
- Upskill continuously
- Make better decisions
- Adapt faster than change
The illusion of control in a mediated world
Recent research on algorithmic decision-making suggests that the autonomy we feel may not always be as real as it seems. (Sources available upon request.)
Personalized systems—recommendation engines, digital platforms, AI assistants—do not simply reflect our preferences. They actively shape them. They create feedback loops that reinforce past behaviors, narrow our exposure to alternatives, and subtly guide our decisions .
In this environment, autonomy becomes paradoxical: we feel more in control… while being increasingly influenced. Over time, these systems can even reduce our capacity for independent judgment, creating what researchers describe as a form of decision-making inertia and gradual deskilling .
The question then becomes, how responsible are we, really, for outcomes shaped within systems we barely perceive?
From autonomy to self-blame
This is where Leonardo Díaz’s insight becomes especially relevant: when autonomy is overstated, responsibility can quietly turn into self-blame.
In neoliberal environments, individuals are often encouraged to interpret their circumstances—success or failure—as the direct result of personal choices. Even when external conditions play a decisive role, the burden is internalized.
Research on contemporary culture (see S. E. Howden, 2021) describes this as a form of “perverse individualism”: a mindset in which people assume full responsibility for outcomes shaped by complex social and economic systems . The results are clear, including increased anxiety, reduced capacity for collective thinking, and a weakened sense of shared responsibility
And perhaps most importantly, a diminished ability to imagine alternatives, including alternative futures. Therefore, the future is forgotten.
The erosion of trust—and of freedom
There is yet another dimension to this problem. When individuals are told they are fully responsible and simultaneously experience limits they cannot control, trust begins to erode, including trust in institutions, in systems, and even trust in oneself. Freedom, in this context, becomes ambiguous.
Freedom is no longer the ability to act meaningfully within a shared world, but it becomes the obligation to succeed alone within it.
Reframing responsibility
None of this implies that individual agency disappears. But it does suggest that agency is relational, not isolated. We make decisions within social structures, technological systems, cultural narratives, and economic constraints.
Increasingly, within algorithmically mediated environments that shape both our options and our perceptions. True autonomy, then, may not lie in total independence—but in awareness of the systems that influence us, the limits of individual control, and the importance of collective conditions.
A different question for our time
Therefore, instead of asking, “Am I fully responsible for my success or failure?”, we might begin to ask:
- What conditions make success possible?
- What systems shape my decisions?
- What responsibilities are shared, not individual?
Because in a world defined by complexity, interdependence, and invisible infrastructures, the idea of absolute autonomy may not be a strength. It may be a simplification.
If we continue to interpret every outcome as purely individual, what realities are we no longer able to see?