Page - 12 - in Limina - Grazer theologische Perspektiven, Volume 2:2

13 | www.limina-graz.eu The collapse of traditional societal institutions, bonds and frameworks over the last decades forces people predominantly in the Western world – but through globalisation also worldwide – to act independently and make their own decisions. According to Ulrich Beck, this process of individu- alisation opens up immense possibilities for global citizens to shape their lives but also creates new anxieties, insecurities and burdens the “sub- ject” has to face “without the collective”. The liberation of the individual in Western societies to make their own decisions is accompanied by the “disenchantment of the world” through “thinning traditions” and forces the subject to constantly rewrite its own biography “without protection”. Commandments, prohibitions and boundaries of a disciplinary society are supplanted by projects, initiatives and motivations: This new sense of en- trepreneurism, which challenges the potential of the individual through the paradigm of performance, maximises production but also risks to ex- haust the freedom of the ever more burdened subject. Further, it seems that the principle purpose of consumer society now is to control and influence emotions, tastes, feelings, and thus opinions and decisions : a specific way to affect “souls” in order to re-enchant the post- capitalist West (a re-enchantment following the rules of marketing and sales). The ideal of “negative liberty” as the emancipation from the other – the law, state, party, religious community, God, etc. – which has been increas- ingly realised in the modern era presents the free individual with more and more options in creating their own identity, which can become an unbear- able burden. In a late capitalist society, this new freedom is put in juxtapo- sition with new risks and challenges permeating all areas of life and con- stantly requiring renewed personal psychological and spiritual efforts. The “discourse of the capitalist” (Jacques Lacan) exploits such psychosocial constellations by offering a new model of freedom based on the paradigm of the object or consumption. Moreover, freedom in this context relates to the individualistic and narcissistic ideal of individual self-realisation, where the consummation of the ego is achieved as a totalisation of the ego (inde- pendent of the other). Here, a liberal, unfettered economy (we are part of the first and probably also the last generation of “non-repentant consum- LIMINA 2:2 | The spectre of freedom | Editorial “Subject without the collective” in a disenchanted world