| Sometimes it's just hard to choose.
You're in a restaurant and the waiter has his pen at the ready. As you hesitate,
he gradually begins to take a close interest in the ceiling, his fingernails,
then in your dining partner. Each dish on the menu becomes a blur as you roll
your eyes up and down in a growing panic. Finally, you desperately opt for
something that turns out to be what you hate. It seems that we need devices to protect us from our hopelessness at deciding between 57 barely differentiated varieties of stuff—be they TV channels, gourmet coffee, downloadable ring tones, or perhaps, ultimately even interchangeable lovers. This thought is opposed to our government's philosophy, which suggests that greater choice over railways, electricity suppliers and education will make us happy. In my experience, they do anything but. Perhaps the happiest people are those who do not have much choice and aren't confronted by the misery of endless choice. True, that misery may not be obvious to people who don't have a variety of luxuries. If you live in Madagascar, say, where average life expectancy is below 40 and they don't have digital TV or Starbucks, you might not be impressed by the anxiety and perpetual stress our decision-making paralysis causes. Choice wasn't supposed to make people miserable. It was supposed to be the hallmark of self-determination that we so cherish in capitalist western society. But it obviously isn't: ever more choice increases the feeling of missed opportunities, and this leads to self-blame when choices fail to meet expectations. What is to be done? A new book by an American social scientist, Barry Schwartz, called The Paradox of Choice, suggests that reducing choices can limit anxiety. Schwartz offers a self-help guide to good decision making that helps us to limit our choices to a manageable number, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices we make. This is a capitalist response to a capitalist problem. But once you realize that your Schwartzian filters are depriving you of something you might have found enjoyable, you will experience the same anxiety as before, worrying that you made the wrong decision in drawing up your choice-limiting filters. Arguably, we will always be doomed to buyers' remorse and the misery it entails. The problem of choice is perhaps more difficult than Schwartz allows. |