Personal willpower cannot transform experience because no autonomous individual exists

Evidence

What people who suffer psychological distress tend to become aware of is that no matter how much they want to change, no matter how hard they try, no matter what mental gymnastics they put themselves through, their experiences of life stay much the same. This is because there is no such thing as an autonomous individual. What powers we have are acquired from and distributed within our social context, some of them (the most powerful) at unreachable distances from us. The very meaning of our actions is not something that we can autonomously determine, but is made intelligible (or otherwise) by orders of culture (proximal as well as distal) over which we have virtually no control. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1946

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Therapeutic self-transformation fails because no autonomous individual exists; Becoming an autonomous self requires others who refuse to be mirrors — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1446; Liberation-from-control paradoxically requires self-control by a prior autonomous self (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Therapeutic self-transformation fails because no autonomous individual exists #expands (0.94)
• Humans lack any predefined nature and create themselves through choices #contradicts (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 26
• Systemic complexity disperses responsibility so no individual is originator of an action #corroborates (0.86)
• Self-determination cannot precede the abolition of exploitation #corroborates (0.84) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 227
• Individual willpower cannot override implicit bias; institutional design must #exemplifies (0.83) — Joseph Avery, Jim Sidanius, Joel Cooper, Gregory Davis, Amanda N., Bias in the Law, 1354
• Becoming an autonomous self requires others who refuse to be mirrors #qualifies (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1446
• Liberation-from-control paradoxically requires self-control by a prior autonomous self #complicates (0.78)
• Massive socialization at home arrests consciousness and blocks autonomy’s hidden roots #complicates (0.76) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 851
• Experience is rendered involuntarily through ignorance and lack of alternatives #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 792