Paralyzed by Choice

I just watched a man named Barry Schwartz on The Colbert Report talking about how having too many choices is actually a bad thing for Americans, and it got me thinking. We have choices upon choices in just about everything in life, especially here in America where more competition is always welcomed. We clamor for choices because it seems synonymous with freedom. What is freedom if not the right to choose?

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If there aren't ten choices of chips and soda then we must be repressed. On the level of the greater population it makes perfect sense. Each person is going to make a different combination of choices to suit their needs. There has to be a lot of options out there because we are all snowflakes right? At some point I feel limited, in fact crippled, by too many choices, mainly because I get hung up on worrying about the wrong choice. Simply put, if I have two choices, I have a 50-50 chance of making the right choice. If I have ten choices then I am left wondering what the other nine could have been like. Does this benefit me as a consumer, or is this more beneficial to the company who puts out the other options? If I'm unhappy with my choice then I have nine other options that I have to try before I can decide on the right one. When it comes to consumable goods, these choices are inevitable and welcomed by most people. Food will get eaten and new products come out constantly to fill needs and cravings we didn't even know we had.

I think some companies fall in to this choice trap. Say you make great crackers, the best plain crackers in the world. But one day, a research guy in your company tells you that not everyone likes plain crackers. So you expand the line and start adding more and more flavors to meet the ever expanding tastes (and waste lines) of Americans. While doing so you must expand your factory, increase the shipping and distribution costs, and expand your advertising every time you add a new flavor of cracker. In doing so you have to cut costs, and all of a sudden the best plain cracker in the world doesn't taste so good. The point I'm trying to make here is that sometimes we lose the best things in a sacrifice to the choice gods. By adding quantity to a line, and trying to please everyone, you lose the quality that made it good in the first place. What many people lose sight of is the fact that although people want choices, they are really creatures of habit, and will go back to quality products every time. This seems to be the trap that creators of consumable goods fall in to, but what about the things that we here at the Big Kids Table care about the most. What about choice in media?

Music is booming to the point where it's difficult to sift through a constant stream of new bands. With internet distribution and promotion we are getting exposed to bands that would have never made it out of their home town in decades past (and some of them for very good reasons). For every one band I like, there may be ten or more bands that sound similar. They may be slightly better, slightly worse, or just not different enough to bother with. How can anyone take it all in? While iTunes might help sort out what they think is popular, it is done through some other persons ears, or by what gets sold the most. Music is so subjective that even if you assume that the best bands rise to the top, you have to consider that the larger the marketplace gets, the harder it is to rise. While I welcome new bands in to my collection constantly it seems like there must be a point of critical mass for the music industry. A point where it is so diluted, not even popular bands will be able to make enough money to stay afloat.

Television has been steadily expanding since cable became common place. While shows have to battle for good ratings in their time slot to stay afloat, I still feel like my limited time forces me to pick and choose what I watch. More channels are created all the time to fit every niche of the American experience. It seems like we lose quality to quantity as networks struggle to fill a 24 hour schedule. At some point even great shows get canceled early because there is only so much time for someone to watch television in a day. As networks slowly move to models that allow us to manage our viewing schedules, the idea of a time slot will melt away. With the rise of the DVR, Tivo and Hulu, our viewing choices are less dependent on the time slot it's in, and more on the quality of the show. When watching TV is all about the quality of the show it may not be the major networks that win in the end.

While every aspect of our lives includes a multitude of choices, it seems like our government is hell bent on taking our choices away. Instead of giving the choices to us through voting, they've limited the amount of choice we have, to the point that wars, health care, finances and many more important factors in our lives are left to a few powerful people (including lobbyists and so called special interest groups, who may not have our best interest in mind). While we are preoccupied with what snack food to eat today, we have little time to think about what we would want our health care to look like. Maybe we have choices, but are they the important choices we should be making? We have allowed ourselves to be limited to two political parties. We let the media tell us who the best political candidates should be, so the choice is whittled down to one or two people who may not represent our beliefs at all. If choice is freedom, and we live in the land of the free, why are we allowing the truly important choices to be taken away? We have let ourselves be distracted by unimportant choices and we have forgotten why this country began in the first place. Our forefathers wanted choice and we too should be demanding the same for ourselves. I hope we realize this before it's too late. These are the hard decisions, but the important ones usually are.

I could go on and talk about movies, clothing, cars, electronics, and pretty much everything in our lives, but you get the idea. The problem with choices isn't a problem, but an inconvenience. At some point we start spending too much time deciding what to do, instead of enjoying the things we've decided on. We might be lost if it weren't for the internet giving a platform to thousands of opinions on what the best choices are. While you may not agree with every voice out there, it is still helpful to have a place where opinions can be collected to help you make a choice for yourself. Best of all if you disagree with the majority, you have the choice to make your own opinions heard.

Choice and freewill are huge topics that have been debated over the ages. My ramblings here are just the tip of an iceberg that could sink Avatar the Titanic. Life is the choices we make. Good or bad, even the small choices add up to shape the course of our lives. The trick is finding balance between choosing and living.