Autonomy for Whom? The Lie at the Center of Modern Society

Autonomy for Whom? The Lie at the Center of Modern Society is a canonical SignalRupture essay interrogating the foundational myth that autonomy is universal, evenly distributed, and accessible to all. While institutions insist that individuals possess full agency over their choices and outcomes, the material realities of scarcity, precarity, rising costs, and systemic constraint reveal autonomy as a privilege reserved for those insulated from structural harm. This essay maps how the illusion of autonomy is constructed, why institutions depend on it, and how lived experience exposes the gap between the rhetoric of freedom and the architecture of coercion. By reframing autonomy as a systemic condition rather than an individual attribute, the work deepens the SignalRupture framework for understanding inequality, institutional legitimacy, and the political function of social mythology in the post‑web era.