A rich and flourishing research literature illuminates the antecedents, conditions, consequences, and challenges of human self-regulation as a universal need. The capacity for self-determination is understood as an essential foundation for many of the behaviors that we associate with critical capabilities such as empathy, volition, reflection, personal development, authenticity, integrity, learning, goal accomplishment, impulse control, creativity, and the sustenance of intimate enduring relationships. “Implicit in this process is a self that sets goals and standards, is aware of its own thoughts and behaviors, and has the capacity to change them,” write Ohio State University professor Dylan Wagner and Dartmouth professor Todd Heatherton in an essay about the centrality of self-awareness to self-determination: “Indeed, some theorists have suggested that the primary purpose of self awareness is to enable self-regulation.” Every threat to human autonomy begins with an assault on awareness, “tearing down our capacity to regulate our thoughts, emotions, and desires.”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 964