Freedom from choice? (page 2)

jwfacts

Will we next be longing for freedom from choice? Will we rediscover necessity and reinvent destiny?

People do not seem to cope with the excessive "freedom" and information overloads they now have. Depression etc are as high if not higher than in the past. However, I cannot seem society wanting to limit these freedoms. Communism was a good example, and failed. People do not want 1 party, 1 brand of baked beans, even if choice causes stress. What I imagine will happen is we will evolve mentally/emotionally to learn to cope with the choices that we have.

Slightly off topic, I have wondered about countries with arranged marriages having a lower divorce rate. Do choice in partner lead to less happy marriages? Yet people I have spoken to from such backgrounds unilaterally say they would rather have choice. They have no choice in partner, but also no choice in divorce - the statistics do not reveal less choice means happier people.

BurnTheShips

I heard this on NPR radio this morning. It reminded me of Narkissos thread. It directly addresses the issue of choice and happiness.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93261726

"The 1960s was a symbolic turning point," Meyer said, citing the decade as a time when personal choice became more important than following tradition.
"It became much more important to make all these choices as a witting, conscious consumer of life," Meyer said of formerly tradition-bound elements like religion, where people live, whether they decide to get married.
"And deeper than that, there was a sense that if you did follow a traditional route," Meyer said, "you were an existential weakling."
The realm of personal choice has only expanded since then.
"Now, it means choosing your breast size. It might mean choosing the way your nose looks. Almost every discrete element of our lives now can be looked at as a consumer choice," Meyer said.
It's enough to make Meyer nostalgic for the days when a sense of community and belonging, he says, were not so rare as they are now.
"We accepted, naively, a bill of goods about how one forges an identity and happiness in life. And it doesn't come in a vacuum — it comes in a community with the help of others."

Interesting, no?

BTS

jwfacts

"We accepted, naively, a bill of goods about how one forges an identity and happiness in life. And it doesn't come in a vacuum — it comes in a community with the help of others."

interesting. to some extent community=happiness and community=conformity

jgnat

to some extent community=happiness and community=conformity

Based on Vanier's book, "Becoming Human" I would rather suggest that the need for individuality conflicts with the need to be included. Both are necessary but opposite. Too much individuality and you have anarchy. Too much conformity and you have oppression. Vanier suggests that people are happiest in an environment where they are fairly independent but are also accepted and welcomed in the community.

In the "Seven Habits...", Covey suggests that people's misery doesn't come from a lack of independence but rather the separation of their core values from how they really live. The Joneses have the great stainless steel barbecue but what they really want is significant interactions with each other, their children and their neighbours. The yawning chasm between who they want to be and how they really live is (inadequately) filled by the barbecue.

My latest thought is if somehow suburbia killed community in the United States. The houses are too far apart, and families spend most of their time in other places (work, school, sports).

quietlyleaving

quietlyleaving,
Thank you for understanding and expressing better the point I was trying to make, that "freedom" doesn't need to be construed as the opposite of outer and inner determination. Perhaps, indeed, that thought can only be approached through metaphor (as in "free fall," for instance?).

I have been reading Deleuze's Spinoza and Nietzsche in English (I guess some of it is lost in translation). Tough going but worth it

ql

jaguarbass

What is freedom?

Winning 20 million in the lottery.

How long can you keep your freedom?

Rapunzel

As is my wont, I consulted a dictionary as to the etymological meaning of the word free/freedom. Curiously [and ironically?], the word, freedom, is closely linked or associated with the concept/idea of love or beloved.

The word free is a Germanic one that has been in the English language since its [the language's] "birth." The word free has its origins in Old English; and it designated the idea of "loving" or "setting free." Could it possibly [and paradoxically] be that the "bonds" that are associated with love are the very things that set us free? In any case, the word "free" meant both "love" and "set free" in Old English. Then again, etymology is not everything after all.

jgnat

What is freedom? Winning 20 million in the lottery.

jaguarbass, I would disagree. From what I read, people feel most free when they are free from debt, fear of losing their home, wondering if they will have enough to eat. One doesn't need 20 million to do that.

At a certain point, money becomes a burden. How to invest it? How much to spend? How do you reduce the tax burden? A staff of financiers, accountants, and tax consultants ADD to your burden, not diminish. Also, multiple homes and excessive assets demand greater protection, security, maintenance. They are WORK.

How long can you keep your freedom?

Oprah tried it with a homeless person and found out he could keep his million for about a year. Despite the best efforts and advisors and suchlike, he squandered it and gave the rest away. He had a lot of fun doing it, though.

This makes me think that people will seek out their own level and it is very hard to get them to shift. It also seems to me when people reach a natural level of comfort (and perhaps this is much lower than what this consumer-driven society has led us to believe), it's best to give the rest away on a trustworthy charity.

Blueblades

We are all captive to any number of things. Death is the great equalizer. With death, there is no freedom, no choice. While living, it depends where on this earth we are born, that plays a role in our not having freedom from choice.

I believe that we begin that captivity from the moment of birth and are thrust into this world. We are a thinking product of what we have learned from years of experiences. We are taught, we are read, we see and feel life all around us. Who has knowledge of this or that, what is right or wrong, who do we follow, who do we read, who can explain all these things in it's simpliest terms?

Ultimately we make a choice, even when we let others make that choice for us. There is only one freedom from choice, and that is , we cannot choose not to die. Other than that, there is no freedom from choice. Choice is forced upon us, even when we give it to others.

Blueblades

Rapunzel

A quote from Terry Eagleton's, The Meaning of Life - A Very Short Introduction: "Besides, to be conscious of our limits, which death throws into unforgiving relief, is also to be conscious of the way we are dependent on and constrained by others. When St. Paul comments that we die every moment, part of what he has in mind is perhaps the fact that we can only live well by buckling the self to the needs of others, in a kind of little death...In doing so, we rehearse and prefigure that final self-abnegation which is death. In this way, death in the sense of ceaseless dying to self is the source of the good life. If this sounds unpleasantly slavish and self-denying, it is only because we forget that if others do this as well, the result is a reciprocal form of self-service which provides the context for each to flourish. The traditional name for this reciprocity is love."

I think that Eagleton's words correspond, at least to some extent, to my prior post on this thread linking the notion of freedom to that of love.

Freedom from choice?

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