The tyranny of the "Great ISA"

Abstract

The ongoing transformations in our contemporary societies constitute background mutations within the cultural system, originated by the predominance of the Individual-Subject-Actor (ISA), together with its basic precepts, in all areas of social life. We have gone from the tyranny of Reason to the tyranny of the Great ISA, which imposes on us a new "Table of the Law" which contains a series of rights-duties such as personal self-realization, free choice, and the search for immediate pleasure and security against external risks and threats. But as these rights-duties are partly contradictory and are strewn with traps, their fulfillment generates psychic tensions in individuals that affect the balance between the various areas of their personal identity.