The core discipline of sociology emerged through its engagement with the social problems that surfaced in modernity. Not because prior social formations were closer to some ideal, but because human beings began to perceive themselves as subjects separated from their environment. This separation gave rise to ideals such as humanism and individualism, and enabled people to evaluate and reshape social formations and structures against these new standards. Sociology as a field of inquiry concerns itself with social structures and phenomena, but also with analysing and contextualising the emergence of new social ideals. Its primary focus remains modernity itself, or the objects of study from earlier epochs that were suggested to be foundational in shaping the social conditions of the modern world.
In one of my previous analyses, we examined in depth the social phenomenon of FOMO, which, put simply, results from the paradox inherent in the modern understanding of freedom. While people in modernity have largely freed themselves from external authorities, securing, in other words, freedom from something, these have been replaced by internal constraints that continue to obstruct the individual from genuine freedom: the freedom for something. Whereas that introductory analysis was primarily concerned with illuminating the sociogenetic dimension of this development, and from there attempted to explain a specific social phenomenon of our generation – one whose sphere encompasses the psychological disposition of modern humanity as such – this analysis turns to a particular fallacy that arises from that psychological condition: the flight into rationalisation and the mystical, namely, financial freedom as a life-defining ideal. This analysis examines, on the one hand, the social preconditions that lead individuals toward such an orientation by drawing on historical comparison; and on the other, why financial freedom is not a higher end in the devletist sense, but merely a rationalisation as a way of rendering one’s own powerlessness within the economic apparatus more bearable.
Negative and Positive Freedom
For the scope of this analysis, it is necessary to distinguish between negative and positive freedom. Negative freedom refers to being free from external constraints, obligations, authorities or forms of dependence. Positive freedom, by contrast, refers to the freedom to actively shape one’s life according to self-chosen values, purposes and aspirations. The central promise of modernity has been the expansion of freedom. Yet this promise has been realised primarily in its negative form. Throughout its development, modernity has continuously dismantled traditional structures, authorities and inherited forms of social organisation, thereby increasing the individual’s freedom from external constraints. What it has largely failed to provide, however, is a corresponding framework for positive freedom: a compelling vision of how this newly acquired freedom might be meaningfully exercised. This constitutes one of the central paradoxes of modernity. As negative freedom expands, individuals become progressively detached from traditional communities, shared narratives, religious worldviews and established social roles. While this liberation creates unprecedented opportunities for self-determination, it simultaneously removes many of the sources of orientation, belonging and meaning that previously structured human life. The result is that the individual becomes freer, yet often less certain about how to use that freedom.
The emergence of modern freedom did not simply consist in the removal of constraints. Rather, it involved the gradual replacement of one set of constraints with another. While medieval society restricted individual autonomy through rigid social hierarchies, inherited roles and religious authority, it also provided individuals with a clear sense of belonging, purpose and identity. One’s place in the world was largely predetermined. The transition to modernity dissolved many of these traditional structures. The Renaissance elevated the individual and emphasised humanity, while the Reformation weakened established religious authorities and placed greater responsibility on the individual conscience. In this sense, both movements contributed to the expansion of negative freedom. Individuals became less bound by inherited institutions and more responsible for their own lives. Yet this process unfolded alongside profound economic transformations. The growth of commerce, the rise of early capitalism and the gradual erosion of traditional economic relations increasingly undermined the position of the independent artisan, craftsman and small landowner. These groups found themselves caught between declining traditional certainties and economic forces over which they had little control. As a result, the expansion of freedom was accompanied by growing insecurity. Individuals were liberated from many traditional authorities, yet they became increasingly exposed to impersonal market forces, competition and economic uncertainty. The old constraints disappeared, but new constraints emerged in their place. Freedom from traditional authority did not necessarily translate into the freedom to shape one’s life autonomously. It was precisely this combination of liberation and insecurity that created fertile ground for the success of the Reformation. The religious doctrines of Luther and Calvin spoke directly to individuals who had lost traditional sources of certainty and sought new forms of orientation in an increasingly unstable world.
Asceticism as Rationalisation
To pursue this line of argument further, it is worth examining the role of the Reformation more closely, as it will serve, in what follows, as the historical equivalent to the modern ideal of financial freedom. The sense of powerlessness described above bore down most heavily on the bourgeoisie of the time. It arose from two converging pressures: on the one hand, the individualist currents of the period, most visibly embodied by the successful capitalists of the Renaissance, and on the other, the sweeping economic dislocations accompanying the rise of capitalism. Confronted with forces they could neither control nor fully comprehend, this social stratum proved particularly receptive to the new teachings of Luther, whose theology spoke directly to these emerging experiences of impotence and rationalised them into a coherent worldview. Crucially, Lutheran doctrine did not address the economic grievances of the bourgeoisie directly. Instead, it reoriented their traditional disposition toward the world, offering an ascetic sensibility more consonant with the spirit of the age. At its foundation lay the concept of placing the individual in direct relation to God, thereby circumventing the institutional authority of the Church.
This move, however, came at a price as the individual was now confronted with an unprecedented and inescapable form of personal accountability. Before a God who judged solely by one’s deeds, there was nowhere left to hide. Yet Luther’s theology simultaneously undermined the very effort it seemed to demand. In his account, the human being is by nature a creature prone to transgression, fundamentally incapable of meeting the expectations placed upon it. Salvation, therefore, could never be earned; it could only be granted. Since the individual could do nothing to alter their ultimate fate, the experience of powerlessness was rationalised through the doctrine of predetermination: life was ordained in advance, and the burden of agency was, in a sense, lifted. Individuals sought security by suppressing the isolated self, by becoming, as it were, an instrument in the hands of a power greater than themselves. The self had to be relinquished so as not to be crushed beneath its own weight. In its place, a life devoted to a higher purpose. This dynamic emerges with even greater force in Calvin. According to his doctrine, the fate of every individual is fixed before birth: God has determined from eternity who belongs to the elect and who does not. Since this decision can neither be influenced nor known with certainty, it generates a profound and irresolvable existential anxiety. In the absence of any direct access to divine intention, the individual turns inward, examining their own conduct for signs of grace. Discipline, diligence, economic success and an ascetic mode of life come to be interpreted as possible indications of divine favour. In this way, the original experience of powerlessness over one’s fate is not overcome but transformed: it becomes a relentless drive toward self-control and the maximisation of performance. The anxiety is not resolved; it is merely redirected.
Financial Freedom as a Fallacy
The structural parallel to the Reformation is not merely analogical; it is, this analysis argues, symptomatic of the same underlying psychological dynamic. To see why, it is necessary to first identify the contemporary equivalent of the existential threat that drove the bourgeoisie of the early modern period toward Lutheran and Calvinist doctrine. European and Neo-European societies today face a slow but unmistakable shift of power, which goes along with an erosion of the prosperity that defined the postwar social contract. The economic dominance that once seemed self-evident is increasingly contested. Less affluent economies are rising, median incomes have stagnated relative to the cost of housing, and inflation continues to hollow out the purchasing power of those who play by the established rules. A good life, in the sense of capitalistic measures (stable employment, home ownership and modest comfort) can no longer be assumed. It must be fought for, and even then, it is far from guaranteed. This is not merely an economic observation. It constitutes an existential threat to the self-understanding of individuals who have internalised the promise of modernity: that effort, discipline, and participation in the economic order will be rewarded. When that promise breaks down, the resulting experience is the same powerlessness that has been experienced by the middle class in modernity’s beginning.
It is precisely this powerlessness that the ideal of financial freedom steps in to rationalise. Unable to control or circumvent the broader economic forces that shape their lives, individuals seek an interpretive framework that renders their situation legible and, crucially, actionable. Financial freedom, the accumulation of sufficient capital to exit the cycle of wage dependence, presents itself as salvation in the secular sense: the one true path to a life beyond anxiety and compulsion. And like the Calvinist doctrine of election, it comes with its own moral economy. The Calvinist virtues of discipline, frugality, deferred gratification and relentless self-optimisation are reborn in the language of personal finance: track every expense, maximise every income stream, invest consistently and refuse the temptations of consumption. Social media provides the confessional infrastructure. Platforms dedicated to financial independence allow individuals to compare their progress, assess their proximity to election and measure their discipline against that of others. The question is no longer: “Am I among the saved?” — it is: “How close am I to financial freedom, and am I doing enough to get there?”
Yet this is precisely where the central paradox asserts itself. The anxiety driving the modern individual toward financial freedom does not, at its root, stem from an insufficiency of wealth. It stems from the felt powerlessness in the face of an economic apparatus that shapes one’s life in ways that cannot be anticipated, controlled or meaningfully resisted. What the individual is fleeing is not poverty; it is the condition of being subject to forces that exceed their agency. And the flight, as in the era of the Reformation, takes the form of submission to a higher authority. The individual does not overcome the apparatus; they internalise it completely, striving to become its most diligent instrument. Subjectively, the pursuit of financial freedom feels like self-determination, a radical act of personal sovereignty, but in reality, it represents the fullest possible submission to the logic of capital accumulation. The anxiety is not resolved. It is intensified, refined and redirected into a performance of control that leaves its underlying cause entirely untouched.
The psychological consequences of this dynamic unfold along two distinct directions, both of which foreclose the possibility of genuine self-development. For those who succeed, who accumulate sufficient capital and reach the threshold of financial independence, a different problem emerges. The character required to achieve financial freedom is not incidental to the process; it is formed by it. Years of compulsive optimisation, deferred living and the subordination of all experience to the logic of accumulation produce a psychological structure that does not dissolve upon arrival. Like any authoritarian attachment, the bond between the individual and the authority – in this case, capital – tends to become constitutive of identity itself. To release it is not a liberation but a loss of self. Genuine personality development, the cultivation of inner life beyond the imperatives of accumulation, becomes structurally inaccessible. Furthermore, rendering the whole world, and by extension myself, accessible and controllable, one fully prevents and blocks the ability to resonate with relationships.
For those who do not succeed, and given the structural conditions of contemporary capitalism, this is the majority, the consequences are no less damaging. Failure to achieve financial freedom is not interpreted as the outcome of systemic conditions or structural inequality. Within the moral framework of financial asceticism, it is experienced as a verdict: evidence of insufficient discipline, inadequate effort or fundamental unworthiness. The individual is not among the elect. This experience does not dissolve the original powerlessness; it deepens it considerably. And the paths available in response tend to reproduce the same logic: a further flight into another authoritarian framework, or a retreat into conformism, the passive adoption of socially prescribed roles and expectations. In either case, the space for genuine self-determination contracts further. The ideal of financial freedom thus does not offer a resolution to the condition it promises to overcome. It offers, instead, a rationalisation, a way of making the experience of powerlessness within the economic apparatus psychologically bearable, while ensuring that the individual remains firmly within its orbit.
Conclusion: Toward a Normative Reorientation
The ideal of financial freedom can, in summary, be diagnosed as a symptomatic expression of one of modernity’s most persistent dysfunctions. The expansion of negative freedom was and remains an indispensable condition for human development. But freedom from constraint does not constitute a normative orientation. It is a foundation, not a destination. And it is precisely the absence of a normative alternative that drives individuals toward the kind of rationalisation this analysis has traced: the substitution of genuine self-determination with the pseudo-sovereignty of financial asceticism. The transition toward a post-modern form of society is envisioned in a wide variety of ways across a diverse range of thinkers. Yet any such vision, to be credible, must confront the most fundamental problems of modernity rather than paper over them. Among these, the absence of normative direction stands out as particularly consequential. The diagnosis that most individuals are structurally prevented from developing genuine personality, from realising what positive freedom might actually mean in practice, is, however, only the first step. It is the necessary precondition for a more ambitious project. The approach developed at Essydo moves in this direction. With Devletism, a postmodern normative principle is taking shape, one that does not simply describe the dysfunction of modernity, but attempts to bring structural conditions into alignment with the possibility of genuine normative reorientation. The goal is not the management of powerlessness, but its overcoming: a form of society in which positive freedom is not the privilege of the few, but the structural possibility of the many.
