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When people have no choice, life is
almost unbearable. As the number of available choices
increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy,
control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and
positive. But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative
aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As
the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate
until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer
liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to
tyrannize. -- Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice.
In general, I feel that choice is
not what we think, or feel.
Choice happens.
It's clear that we are choosing,
the question I raise, is how much is the choosing already
chosen, like in the absence of free will, we see free will, we
also see choice.
Yet, the ideas in The Feeling of
What Happens, by Damasio, call us to the notion that our
stimuli are already filtered before they get to our system of
rational cognition, and Khaneman won a Nobel Prize for showing
that most of our decision making is irrational... So how much
choice do we really think we have?
Or rather, how does choice manifest
itself in our lives?
People in general, do not like to
think or feel they are not in control. For instance, to the
extent that you feel in control, you feel ok, whatever being
in control is for you. (I suggest it's different for most
people.)
Schwartz says, "Choice is what
enables us to tell the world who we are and what we care
about."
And I agree with that, but what
BS
tries to overtly influence us to understand, even though it is
covert in its notions of influence, choosing in most cases to
appeal to our unconscious motivators, rather than what reason
we do have consciously, that we are in fact, the choice
masters, that we are the ones making the choices, even though
most likely we are merely participating, rather than
rationally choosing.
I do believe this particular notion
of choice is the most difficult, along with free will to
swallow in
FLOW... Yet, until we get to this point, we won't
stop falling victim to those influences that actually benefit
from our ignorance.
Things that will make you go
"hmmmmmmmmmmm" for sure.
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Action Step:
It's just going to take time to
work this TPOV, because it flies in the face of everything we
have been taught to value. We like to think we are the chosers
rather than the chosen--i suspect--and it's just difficult to
realize there is such great benefit in going upstream to look
at the 5Ws in the process. Noticing is big here, the activity
in choosing, especially for those of us who are active
experimenters in the Kolb Learning Model,
is actually improbable, if not impossible most times, and this
leaves us a victim of our upstream programming, as we are
anyway, if you catch the meaning here. However, if we can
visit this process of choice-making and view it with some
objectivity, we are more than likely going to be able for a
moment, if not a lifetime, step out of the rat race. |
