You chose your phone plan. You chose your career path. You chose where to live.
Except the choice was between options the system already selected.
Hunter-gatherers worked three hours a day. We work eight, ten, twelve, with tools that promised to save us time. The system didn't evolve to give us leisure. It evolved to extract more from us while making extraction feel like opportunity.
Your "choices" exist inside invisible boundaries. The algorithm shows you five jobs, not five hundred. The insurance company offers three plans, each designed to profit them, not protect you. Your calendar fills with meetings because the system values presence over output.
We call this freedom because we can't see the walls.
The rental market doesn't care if you're housed it cares that you're paying. The productivity software doesn't care if you're productive, it cares that you're subscribing.
Systems optimize for their own survival. You're the variable, not the equation.
What we mistake for free will is really just choosing which track to run on. The track was already laid. The destination was already set. The system just lets you pick your lane.
And the cleverest trick? Making those lanes feel like your idea.
The paths that don't serve the system the four-hour workday, the career that can't scale, the life that doesn't optimize they're not even on the menu. Not because they're impossible. Because they're unprofitable.
You can't choose what you can't see.
The question isn't whether you have free will. It's whether you can see the boundaries long enough to know what's outside them.