While we think we are free

There is a quote attributed to Michel Foucault: “The most effective form of manipulation is to make people think they are deciding freely.” It may be debatable in which of Foucault’s texts this quote appears; however, the thought itself is extremely Foucauldian. Because Foucault showed us that power is not just a force that forbids, punishes, or coerces. Power often does not tell people what they cannot do; it teaches and dictates what they should want, what they should desire, and what they should consider normal. One should not fall into this misconception here: the structure we call power is not just a political community or organization that has come to power through elections.

In today’s world, the issue of freedom becomes complicated right here. A person thinks they are free. They think they are choosing, thinking, deciding, liking, getting angry, and loving. Yet, most of the time, there is an invisible mechanism of guidance behind these decisions. In the past, power worked with swords, chains, prisons, exile, and open oppression. Today, it often works with screens, notifications, algorithms, trend lists, cancel culture, and social media bullying.

Therefore, the fundamental question of our age is no longer just “Are we free?” We are facing a more difficult question: Could it be that our thinking we are free has also been taught to us?

Human beings like to see themselves as intelligent beings, even as the most perfect beings created by God. They think that when they make a decision, they act with common sense, weigh the pros and cons, and head toward the most correct option. But what we have learned, from daily life to the sciences of physics and astronomy, shows us that this is not quite the case.

Socrates’ wisdom begins exactly here. The phrase “The only thing I know is that I know nothing” is not a simple sentence of humility. This phrase is the realization of the limits of one’s own knowledge. Perhaps this is the greatest intellectual virtue in today’s world: to be able to accept that not everything we see is the truth, not everything we hear is knowledge, and most importantly, that not all of our opinions may belong to us.

Humans are also emotional beings. They make decisions with their fears, desires, dreams, ideals, anger, and need for belonging. And then, most of the time, they produce rational justifications for these decisions.

Plato’s allegory of the cave is still surprisingly relevant here. People in the cave think the shadows reflected on the wall are real. Because they have not seen any other reality. The situation is not much different in today’s digital cave. The images, news, comments, anger, slogans, videos, and short sentences flowing from our screens are presented to us as if they were reality itself. Yet, most of the time, what we see is not the whole of reality, but the sections that algorithms place in front of us.

We cannot see the back of a coin while looking at the front. We cannot fully know what is on someone’s mind while talking to them. And when making a decision about an event, we often do not have all the information. Despite this, we pass judgment. We like, exclude, support, blame, applaud, or lynch.

Aristotle defines man as “zoon politikon”, that is, a political/social being. A human is not just a being who thinks on their own; they think with the values, language, beliefs, fears, and expectations of the community they live in. For this reason, what we call a free decision never emerges in a vacuum. Family, school, media, politics, religion, the market, social circles, and now algorithms build an invisible frame around our decisions.

Every age produces its own myths. Ancient societies had gods, heroes, and epics. Modern societies had myths of progress, nation, science, development, and the market. The digital age, however, has invisible but powerful myths: “Be yourself,” “choose freely,” “watch what you want,” “share what you want,” “the algorithm knows what is best for you.” Thus, while a person thinks they are becoming free, they are actually placed into a more subtle system of guidance.

Heraclitus’s saying “You cannot step into the same river twice” also adds another dimension to the freedom debate. Because not only does the world change; we change too. Yesterday, freedom meant not being a slave. Then it meant being a free citizen, being able to travel, owning property, being able to speak, and being able to vote. Later, freedom of thought came to the fore. Today, even freedom of thought no longer seems sufficient. Because the issue is not just being able to say what we think; it is being able to realize which mechanisms shape what we think and how.

The phrase “freedom of thought” has always seemed a bit strange to me. How can a person be considered free just because they bring a thought to their mind? Or rather, can even our bringing a thought to our mind be prevented? At first glance, no. But in our age, the problem is not crude prohibition. The problem is that some thoughts are pushed out of our agenda in such a way that they never even come to our minds. It is that some questions become impossible to ask, some possibilities are made invisible, and some objections are labeled as “unreasonable.”

In the past, oppression told people what they could not do, while today it often whispers what they should desire. In the past, power would say “be silent.” Today, when an event occurs, all sides say “speak, share, react, take a side, decide immediately.” This is also why social media is popular. Because it offers people a media order designed not for them to think, but to react, encouraging them to react without thinking. Yet, as speed increases, reasoning weakens. As emotion rises, information retreats. As the crowd grows, individual responsibility decreases.

Therefore, one of the most important problems of our day is algorithmic perception management. Algorithms do not just decide what to show us; they also determine what is important, what is popular, what is worth getting angry about, and what is forgettable. This determination does not always operate in the form of open censorship. There is a more subtle regulation at play: some content becomes visible, some disappears. Some voices multiply, some are drowned out. Some facts turn into agendas, some are buried in silence.

In such an environment, making a free decision becomes increasingly difficult. Because the fundamental condition of a free decision is not just the existence of options. One must also know how those options were created, what information was hidden, which emotions were triggered, and which fears were magnified. In my opinion, the most important condition for making a free decision is to have the information necessary to make that decision as broadly as possible.

Of course, “full information” is most likely impossible. Like Plato’s forms, it is an intellectual horizon that is difficult to reach. None of us can fully know all the dimensions of an event, all the intentions of a person, or all the consequences of a decision. But this impossibility does not make the effort meaningless. On the contrary, the value of being human lies somewhat in this. To know that you do not know, to accept that you see incompletely, to wonder about the back side of the coin whose front side we see…

Socrates’ questioning, Plato’s search for truth, Aristotle’s emphasis on moderation and reason, and Heraclitus’s idea of change make it necessary to reread and reflect upon them in today’s digital age. Because the issue is no longer just an abstract freedom issue discussed in philosophy books. It is a concrete issue that reappears every day on our mobile phone screens, in news feeds, in social media debates, in electoral choices, in consumption habits, in social anger, and in personal dreams.

Let us not forget that a person does not become a slave only under oppression. Sometimes they become enslaved by thinking their own desires belong to them. Occasionally, they mistake someone else’s dream for their own ideal. They often think they are free because they choose from among the options presented to them. Yet, true freedom is not just choosing between options, but also being able to question how and by whom those options were constructed.

What falls to us is not only to not believe everything we see, but also to ask whether everything we think really belongs to us. Because freedom is not just the absence of chains. Freedom is the courage to be able to realize which invisible chains surround our minds. Even if a person knows they can never reach full information, they become free to the extent that they walk toward it. The curiosity we feel for the unknown is not just an intellectual thirst; it is also the beginning of freedom. Because as long as a person is curious, they preserve the possibility of going beyond the shadows shown to them.