Freedom Under Social Pressure: Philosophy Regarding Autonomy and Control

In the Black Mirror episode “Nosedive,” everyone is assigned a rating out of 5 stars, and every human interaction is rated on a scale of 1 to 5, similar to goods and services. A smile, a compliment, or even a microexpression all contribute to a social score that determines one’s housing, job, and status. The main character, Lacie, who sat on a 4.2 rating, becomes obsessed with maintaining perfection in a world where reputation is equivalent to currency. Yet, in her pursuit of reputation and a 4.5-star rating, she loses the very thing that makes her human: free will. The story of Nosedive is especially uncanny as we delve deeper into the intentions of its authors and consider the similarities between it and our own world.Centuries ago, the American Bill of Rights enshrined freedom as the foundation of human dignity. The American Bill of Rights wasn’t the first human document to declare freedom, but it was the first to embed freedom as a legal and moral foundation of a nation. Yet, even as the law guaranteed our liberty, society quietly replaced one form of control with another: reputation. We have preserved our legal freedom, but surrendered much of our psychological freedom in exchange for societal approval. The highest level of punishment for regaining such freedom is what we call being “cancelled”. This, hence, raises a few questions: Are we truly free in a world where reputation dictates our choices?Are we allowed to be free?

What Does It Mean to Be Free?

Different philosophers have proposed various definitions of freedom in different contexts. For example, Rudolf Steiner believes that a human is only truly “free” when they perform a specific action, and satisfies that both the action springs from a moral intuition unique to the individual, and the action was translated from the individual’s connection of such intuition to a specific situation. While another philosopher, like Thomas Hobbes, believes that an individual acts “freely” if they can do what their will desires, regardless of whether that will is driven by base desire, fear, or social pressure. The origin of the motive is irrelevant. Freedom exists solely in the silence of the law and the absence of physical barriers that would block the translation of any desire into action.

Both views put together reveal a division between freedom in action and freedom in thought. For Hobbes, freedom ends where society begins, as one can not be free under societal pressure; for Steiner, freedom begins only when society becomes silent. Our main character in Nosedive, Lacie, ultimately had her choices dictated by her inner fear of judgment rather than her genuine intent. If freedom depends on the source of our motives, then perhaps what limits us most is not law or force, but approval itself.

Are We as Free as We Think We Are?

If you ask a man to imagine a colour he has never seen before, he will find it impossible. The human mind cannot create what it has never experienced. Our brains simply do not possess such cognitive function. Freedom operates the same way. An action considered lawful in one nation might not be in another. An experience in one nation might be deemed joyful, but in another, it may be socially unacceptable. If society and government never reveal the full range of what could be done for their people, our imagination of freedom shrinks to the limits of what is permitted as informed. Because we do not know otherwise. We live within invisible boundaries due to a lack of knowledge about free will, as we were taught to perceive them as the edge of possibility, or worse, being unaware that other options exist.

Even in nations that praise liberty, the boundaries of expression and action are quietly defined for us. We cannot desire what we do not know; we cannot fight for a freedom we cannot imagine. Thus, our greatest loss is not the restriction itself, but the illusion that we were never restricted at all.We are not just restricted from freedom, but also unaware of what opportunities we’ve lost, because we’ve never been shown the possibility of other possibilities.

What is the Cost of Being Free in Today’s Society?

The short answer is the segregation of one’s mind. In today’s world, those who dare to think differently, speak differently, or act differently compared to the majority or in line with social approval often find themselves alienated and labelled as difficult, radical, or offensive. They are therefore put into the state of being “cancelled” in modern terms. The existence of cancel culture, which can be summarised as discriminating against certain individual due to their incongruous behaviour to the masses, is detrimental to the true freedom discussed in this article. True freedom requires rejecting the comfort of belonging, yet modern society thrives on the illusion of collective harmony. We are encouraged to “be ourselves,” but only within acceptable limits, ironically. To step beyond that invisible barrier will result in death, not as an organism, but as a member of our society.

Still, perhaps this is the truest test of autonomy: to stand firm even knowing the consequences yet daring to confront them. The cost of freedom may be steep, but the cost of conformity is steeper — to lose the possibility of accomplishing greatness. 

The road towards true freedom is usually lonely, and history remembers those who bore that cost. Thinkers like Galileo, who defied the Church to speak of the scientific truth, or Socrates, who sacrificed his life in search of the philosophical truth. They remind us that freedom, though lonely, is the birthplace of progress and competence, and that freedom of the soul never meant freedom of the physical self.