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I think it's less that choice is the demon tormenting us and more that we don't know how to make reasonably detached decisions and call it "good enough". We compare ourselves too much with others, and wonder if our choices led to better outcomes than our peers' choices did for them.
I agree that having too many options isn't a good thing, but what makes it worse is people/media/professionals trying to convince us that making the WRONG choice is the absolute end of the world.
If you select the wrong deodorant, laundry soap, car, house, phone, vitamin, internet provider, salad ingredient, meat, dairy product, doctor, lawyer, electrician, babysitter, dog, fish, clothing, ad nauseum your life as you knew and loved it would be over. Making every minute decision one to feel anxious or guilty about.
Sure, these are ways businesses try to convince someone to buy this or that, but the resulting anxiety that gets imposed on people is ridiculous. Ordinary people become harridans and zealots over stuff that just isn't their business.
I agree that having too many options isn't a good thing, but what makes it worse is people/media/professionals trying to convince us that making the WRONG choice is the absolute end of the world.
If you select the wrong deodorant, laundry soap, car, house, phone, vitamin, internet provider, salad ingredient, meat, dairy product, doctor, lawyer, electrician, babysitter, dog, fish, clothing, ad nauseum your life as you knew and loved it would be over. Making every minute decision one to feel anxious or guilty about.
Sure, these are ways businesses try to convince someone to buy this or that, but the resulting anxiety that gets imposed on people is ridiculous. Ordinary people become harridans and zealots over stuff that just isn't their business.
hahah, yes! Makes me think of those click-bait headlines, "YOU'RE SLICING WATERMELON THE WRONG WAY!!!"
This thread is fascinating. Just imagine growing up in the former Soviet Union. Your a young kid, girl or boy. who is sent by mom to get toliet paper at the local store in their commune district. Oh JOY! the store
actually has TWO choices in TP.....a white one and a blue one! Too bad they have to wait a little over 3 hours to get their allotment of 4 rolls this week.
Ok, so that fantasy may be a bit blown out if reality, BUT my point is simple.....our incredible western society has allowed the majority of us to live in a level of comfort never imagined by ANY group of humans that has ever lived.
A part of our comfort relates to our endless set of choices. What school should we send our children to, what color to paint my house, what toothpaste to use or what 17 different brands of toliet paper should I buy! Just amazing to compare our lifestyle and endless choices with any civilization that ever existed.
I was born in the first year of the baby boomers, 1946. I have seen the world change. Everything from A to Z has gone through endless changes. Change has helped bring about those endless choices. Yes....somtimes it seems there are too many choices. However, in my life choice has brought about a bountiful, happy existence. Choice has benefited me a great deal. Get real folks, Do you really want just two choices in toliet paper?
I read a statement that happiness is determined by the size of the difference between expectations and reality.
s.
This is actually the correct answer.
The way choice plays into it is that if you are given a lot of choices and you choose what you obviously think is the best choice, then you wind up with a very raised expectations that can be dashed.
I agree that sometimes decision-making can be more difficult when too many choices are presented. I am retired from portrait photography and part of my job as a photographer was narrowing down the choices from 100 photos to 10 best choices, that's all most people can deal with, and as a professional I could easily review and eliminate blinks, odd expressions, etc. The hard part was choosing between the final 2 but it always worked out in the end if people trusted their gut feeling and it helped seeing them full size side-by-side.
I LOVE having 100 paint color choices because I'm really good at that kind of decision.
I HATE choosing between 4 different vacuum cleaners because even reading reviews has steered me wrong in the past. (I hate my current vacuum but it's working well so cannot justify a new one, and no idea which one to buy).
Even relying on friends recommendations (for dinner or a certain movie) can be bad. One of our past friends was infamous for always steering us to the worst restaurants. Doctors? Fuggedaboudit. Other people seem to have way lower standards in doctors than I do, maybe because I have had some really great ones but then moved and had to find new ones.
Too many people do not know when something is good, they need someone to tell them. We looked for a new (to us) house very intensively and couldn't find the right one. But then our agent found one that wasn't listed yet, we walked in and it was 95% perfect and made a full price offer. No one had to convince us, we knew. Too many choices? Nope.
I personally am overwhelmed and paralyzed by choices. The fewer I have, the better. I like everything simple and straightforward, so to have a lot of choices, I would die.
For your example of having a lot of different types of schools, my head would spin and my mind would freeze and then shut down. I wouldn't be able to make the choice. At all. I would sigh and then mentally walk away from the overwhelming amount of choices.
I would be much happier living in South Dakota were the only school available was public.
A former co-worker I had made a good point: Americans like choices. They just don't like to CHOOSE.
But this is just me. Some people are perfectly fine mentally with having a lot of choices.
I had a friend from highschool that moved to a small town in texas after inheriting a house from his great uncle that has almost a 2-1 ratio female to male, this guy never had much luck with women as he is kinda nerdy and very joe average, but after moving there he is very happy as he for the first time actually does have choices.
Where he lives now is one of those places out in the middle of nowhere that people want to raise their families in or retire in but no young single guy person would want to live as there are no jobs and nothing to do. so most young men move away soon as they grow up, but not before knocking up their highschool sweetheart.
You see that 2 - 1 ratio is not really accurate, the majority of the male population is over 65 or under 18 and most of the few men between 25 - 55 are married. while the female population is more evenly spread out. so for a single female from her 20's-40's the pickins are slim. so he is happy because he has plenty of choices but the women he has to choose from don't.
So basically his last 4 girlfriends were women who would not have given him the time of day in a larger city where he would be competing with a lot more guys in his age group.
But when I visited him there I noticed most of the single women in town were single mothers but it does not bother him so more power too him.
This thread is fascinating. Just imagine growing up in the former Soviet Union. Your a young kid, girl or boy. who is sent by mom to get toilet paper at the local store in their commune district. Oh JOY! the store actually has TWO choices in TP.....a white one and a blue one! Too bad they have to wait a little over 3 hours to get their allotment of 4 rolls this week.
Get real folks, do you really want just two choices in toilet paper?
I actually only ever need one - white. :-)
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