(no subject)
You know, when I don't have an internet connection, these thoughts stay in my head. Or I don't have them at all. Heh. ANYWAY.
If I'm interpreting Barry Schwartz correctly (see his TED talk here), we all need a fishbowl, a sense of limitations against which to strain and which alleviate us from unnecessary decision making. Is that not one of the most important things that ideologies contribute? A sense of right or wrong, a priorities list of values, any sort of framework that allows us to assign valence or magnitude to a choice. Siding with our best friend instead of our parents in the school yard. Sticking to our guns even when we know we've probably made the wrong decision. There is something satisfying about rigidity. Take me for example. I value treating others well. So even when I'm mad, or in a crappy mood, or being hopelessly arrogantly annoying, if I perceive I have a choice in behavior, I will always try to make the choice that allies with this value I have chosen. It has nothing to do with being a nice person - I'm intentionally making a choice for me, because I value treating others well. Altruism is great, but it bears a great toll on friendships and engages resent-o-meters. No, I do things for me. I've intentionally set up my own fishbowl, made of somewhat wavy lines and slopping over at the sides sometimes for sure, but nevertheless constraining me just as it liberates me.
I'd say in fact that is what differentiation is all about - deciding who I am, separately from others. Being different. But I wonder if this actually has some very severe limitations. Whether it's only a panacea for our current cultural crisis of emptiness and bravely medicated despair. Why are we paralyzed by choices, rather than liberated by them?
Think of the salad dressing example Schwartz uses. You buy a salad dressing, you taste it, it sucks, you try a different one. Making the choice is not that hard, because we are only minimally invested in the outcome. Put another way, the risk of something going horribly awry because of our choice in this matter is perceived as quite low. Change that to someone at the table having severe celiac problems and the salad dressing choice making suddenly matters very much, as it is quite possible to hospitalize someone with a tiny amount of the wrong type of vinegar. My choice of dressing now matters so much that I'd be inclined to throw out the whole commercially bought salad dressing idea all together, rather than risk making the wrong choice.
That then is where I think the paralysis comes in: our perception of risk, our investment in the outcome. A fishbowl does not require us to have a paradigm shift, it enables us to continue this fretful assignation of risk. In other words, in the potentially-lethal salad dressing example above, the risk remains just as high if there are only 2 salad dressings or 102 salad dressing to choose from. The wrong choice will still have severe consequences. And I don't know about you, but if I hospitalized one of my guests as a result of my cooking, I'd feel pretty bad on a variety of different levels! So what would a real paradigm shift be?
If I'm interpreting Barry Schwartz correctly (see his TED talk here), we all need a fishbowl, a sense of limitations against which to strain and which alleviate us from unnecessary decision making. Is that not one of the most important things that ideologies contribute? A sense of right or wrong, a priorities list of values, any sort of framework that allows us to assign valence or magnitude to a choice. Siding with our best friend instead of our parents in the school yard. Sticking to our guns even when we know we've probably made the wrong decision. There is something satisfying about rigidity. Take me for example. I value treating others well. So even when I'm mad, or in a crappy mood, or being hopelessly arrogantly annoying, if I perceive I have a choice in behavior, I will always try to make the choice that allies with this value I have chosen. It has nothing to do with being a nice person - I'm intentionally making a choice for me, because I value treating others well. Altruism is great, but it bears a great toll on friendships and engages resent-o-meters. No, I do things for me. I've intentionally set up my own fishbowl, made of somewhat wavy lines and slopping over at the sides sometimes for sure, but nevertheless constraining me just as it liberates me.
I'd say in fact that is what differentiation is all about - deciding who I am, separately from others. Being different. But I wonder if this actually has some very severe limitations. Whether it's only a panacea for our current cultural crisis of emptiness and bravely medicated despair. Why are we paralyzed by choices, rather than liberated by them?
Think of the salad dressing example Schwartz uses. You buy a salad dressing, you taste it, it sucks, you try a different one. Making the choice is not that hard, because we are only minimally invested in the outcome. Put another way, the risk of something going horribly awry because of our choice in this matter is perceived as quite low. Change that to someone at the table having severe celiac problems and the salad dressing choice making suddenly matters very much, as it is quite possible to hospitalize someone with a tiny amount of the wrong type of vinegar. My choice of dressing now matters so much that I'd be inclined to throw out the whole commercially bought salad dressing idea all together, rather than risk making the wrong choice.
That then is where I think the paralysis comes in: our perception of risk, our investment in the outcome. A fishbowl does not require us to have a paradigm shift, it enables us to continue this fretful assignation of risk. In other words, in the potentially-lethal salad dressing example above, the risk remains just as high if there are only 2 salad dressings or 102 salad dressing to choose from. The wrong choice will still have severe consequences. And I don't know about you, but if I hospitalized one of my guests as a result of my cooking, I'd feel pretty bad on a variety of different levels! So what would a real paradigm shift be?