How can anyone feel empowered who does not believe that some significant portion of their destiny is within their control? And to be clear, for most of human history, most people were not free. For this reason people learned to control their experience by learning to manage their thoughts, actions, and feelings, and this equates, itself, to empowerment.
There is nothing more disempowering than to believe that your destiny–all of it–is out of your hands, particularly when tied to the idea that the world is in general hostile to you.
I seek clarity of thought daily, because I see so little of it out in our public domain.