The paradox is that the more individuals are liberated from the restraints
imposed on them by others (e.g. relational bonds, communal duties, morals and
norms) and by themselves (moral conscience and self-discipline), the more
directionless and atomized they become; and the more atomized they become, the
more vulnerable and reliant they are on the safety offered by some greater
collective. Alone in his “independence,” the individual finds himself dependent
on a larger power to protect his safety and the equality of his proliferating
“rights” (desires) from the impositions of others, and today it is the state
that answers this demand. Yet the more the state protects his right to consume
and “be himself” without restraint, the less independently capable and
differentiated he becomes, even as his private affairs increasingly become the
business of the expanding state.
Subject to the impersonal regulations of mechanistic processes and procedures
rather than his own judgement or that of the people in close communion with him,
the individual is molded into a more and more uniform cog to fit into the
machine: a mere passive “consumer” and easily manipulated and programmed puppet
– an automaton – rather than a true individual actor. In the effort to maximize
his autonomy, his real autonomy has been lost.
