We are born free, even in an un-free world we are free in the sense that our minds, our decisions, our actions are our own choices, albeit, all come with consequences, of which some can be rather dire for us, or beneficial. Societies have gotten larger, as we are now far removed from simple tribal societies, along with the fact that the world has gotten a whole lot smaller, so that almost all of us, have common touchstones, which are actually there for a reason, of which, the most basic reason is to have commonality amongst people that aren't necessarily homogeneous to begin with.
The most important thing for any individual to recognize is that having the gift of a free will, is an awesome personal responsibility that we must constantly be cognitive of or we can find it compromised if we are not diligent in protecting it. That is to say, cooperation is very important in any society, for a lot of reasons, good or bad, so too is obedience in any of its many forms, but too often, people have a strong tendency to put their mind on "cruise control" and just do things to get along, or out of habit, or in accordance with what other people are doing, or out of fear of punishment, without actually consciously acknowledging that their actions are their actions, and hence ultimately that they must take responsibility for their actions and cannot, though they might, foist the ultimate responsibility of such, onto someone else's shoulders, especially when it appears by doing so, they have done that, successfully.
This means that most every day, most people suffer through situations in which someone or some situation is trying to control or manipulate our person so as to control our behavior or decisions in a manner that will better some entity: personal, corporate, governmental, or otherwise. There might not be a problem with any of this, if, the overall control or manipulation is done in conjunction with the general betterment of society, which is all to the good. However, mankind is a selfish creature, as well as there being corporate, governmental, and hierarchical entities, that have a need for general obedience and cooperation in order to accomplish their objectives. It is this selfishness, it is these entities, that purposely develop strategies that take advantage of basic human psychological traits and then utilizes them for the benefit of that selfishness, ideally done, with the person being manipulated, not really consciously recognizing such or choosing to suppress it.
Too many times we are trained by our parents, by our schooling, by our government, and by our employment, that in order to perform and to function correctly, we need to toe the company line, and that cooperation to directives from our superiors or those that are in power, which effectively makes them our superior, is the primary directive that we must follow. This, whether done in a subtle manner or not, is the very first and often fatal step to interpreting the world in a manner controlled or manipulated by another mindset, in which we consciously end up suppressing our opinions and viewpoints, in order to be in compliance to that specific authority, seldom recognizing that if we only thought it through, we would understand that actions accomplished by ourselves, under false pretenses or not, are still our actions, so that those that guide our behavior in a manner that we are compliant to, have essentially replaced our free will with a controlling mechanism, making us forgo that great gift of freedom and free will, by replacing it instead with a behavioral pattern in conformance with those that are our puppeteers.