An abrupt ending to a worthy if lomg setup. The final paragrpah hints at what I thought would be the meat of the article, but ultimately nneded more to demonstrate how limiting choice can lead to freedom.
In practice, we all restrain our choices in ways that we hope narrow our focus and abilities towards things that matter. It would be nice to read a piece that explores how this can be true collectively.
I’m trying to engage with the author here and maybe I’ll read the book that this refers to, but I think the author has this backwards.
It’s that when you little to no choice we say you aren’t free. It doesn’t follow that having more choices makes you free, but it is a prerequisite. Serfs tied to the land were not free, they had a choice to stay and struggle or leave and risk wandering and starving. Not much of a choice.
Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad decisions with their choices, and this seems not like freedom to the author.
This piece makes me uneasy, it’s like there’s this effort to justify limiting our choices and calling that freedom. I’m wondering where this is going.
> It’s only in recent history that freedom has come to mean having a huge array of choices in life. Did we take a wrong turn?
Said who? This is an argument from invented opposition. I’m not sure anyone actually defines freedom as "a huge array of choices". The author seems to invent a mainstream narrative just to dismantle it(arguing against a straw man)
Abundance of choice and freedom are orthogonal. Having the right choice and being free are not.
Freedom isn't about the number of choices. It's about:
- Comprehensiveness: instead of pork or beef, you can choose from meat, fish, tofu or egg as your protein source.
- Non-commitment: choosing one of them doesn't prevent you from choosing another for the next meal.
- Safety: none of them shouldn't be so expensive that it hurts you financially, or poisoned it hurts you physiologically beyond its nutritional nature.
I'm not talking about meals but elections, by the way.
The first freedom of course is freedom from fear (e.g. from fear of being snatched from the street just because you are brown and speak with an accent)
I find this topic wild, and it makes me wonder a lot of things
- is an abundance of choice not freedom, or is freedom not strictly speaking “good”
- is there a freedom to be able to have a life on rails? Maybe 50 years ago you grow up in a small town with a coal mine, and you get married to someone from that town and work in that mine for the rest of your life. That choice or lifestyle is not available to a lot of people anymore.
- non-compatible choices —- some people say about work from home is always good, because each person has a choice, some can work from home, some in the office, but these choices just aren’t compatible. Having a work from home policy generally means that people who want to work in the office don’t get the experience they were hoping for.
- super markets. consolidation means there’s only a few brands of supermarkets left. But those super markets have more choice than ever before - but they also tend to have a pretty narrow selection of raw ingredients / produce. What is freedom here?
* the loss of special experiences. My city had a great authentic Thai restaurant. It was great! I could go whenever I wanted, but when I actually went to Thailand, I was a bit disappointed that nothing really felt new there.
* the loss of human connection. I think the world was a better place when Tv during the day sucked. We’ve fundamentally lost the need to rely on each other for entertainment, and I think this has impacts in community formation, friendship and dating.
* Adaptation to self vs self-adaptation. When there was less choices you had to change yourself to appreciate new things. Now one can probably almost precisely do the opposite, only find the things that match who you currently are.
The article brings up some interesting points but doesn’t really go anywhere with them. I came into the article with a mindset of “freedom of choice is objectively better, explain to me why I’m wrong,” and only came away with the caveat of “if public health and safety demands less choice.” Which is fair, and essentially how (the majority of) people reason politically, at least in the US; on paper, your choice of political party affiliation rests on how much individual choice you believe people should have on individual issues, such as the choice to have an abortion or the choice the manufacture a product that harms the environment. The debate is essentially: does giving people this choice have a significant enough negative impact on public health and safety to warrant limiting the freedom to make this choice?
However, I still think that, in general, more freedom of choice is only a good thing.
> Is there any real difference between the scores of toothpastes or breakfast cereals in contemporary supermarkets?
That depends. Do you have a preference for one flavor of toothpaste or cereal over another? Do you have dental issues that require a toothpaste with whitening effects, or without fluoride, or with baking soda? In a cereal, do you value health concerns over taste, or vice versa? If so, then yes, there is a real difference between different choices in these cases. Making one choice over another can have a direct impact on quality of life, if often a minor one. And this is what makes freedom of choice so important for me: it’s the freedom to strive to improve quality of life—synonymous with the pursuit of happiness.
Of course, as the article briefly touches on, freedom of choice isn’t the only kind of freedom, and arguably isn’t the most important one, either. I think this is the point the author was trying to make, but she doesn’t go into much detail. Freedom from oppression is a prerequisite for freedom of choice, and freedom from suffering is (on paper) the ultimate goal of it. Therein lies the debate: when does increased freedom of choice impede on these other two freedoms? Which should be prioritized in these cases? The line is different for everyone. I would’ve liked to see the article add more nuance to the discussion.
When you had therapy for several years there are very wise therapists and authors that teach you that the opposite iOS true despite sounding paradox: Freedom is the limitation of choices.
They say that choice is freedom
I'm so free it drives me to the brink
...
They say that choice is freedom
I'm so free it's driving me insane
...
They say that choice is freedom
I'm so free I'm stuck in therapy
There is a really good book that touches on some of these topics:
“Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants,' while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (or The Fear of Freedom in another translation)
It’s not the same thing as freedom, but it does correlate. Correlation does not equal causation all the time, but sometimes it does and it’s often impractical to prove it doesn’t if the correlation is high enough.
Having a lot of choices is often a strong indicator that you also have freedom.
Equating freedom with choice is strange. Often choices comes hand in hand with commitments which removes initial options from the table while other options appear. Whether the lost options produces regret is a matter of one’s evolving values that perceives the available options at the given time. Hence absence of regret seems the real freedom, but we don’t have a Time Machine or a Crystal Ball. The next best option is approaching regret with humility of the past and agency to align current values with future options. If the values don’t need to be forced on oneself to align with available options then we get freedom.
If you have many choices that are within a small range, it's the opposite of freedom. It's more about control. But it works extremely well to give the illusion of freedom.
You see that in our political discourse. Debates over things like gay marriage, immigration or abortion are encouraged because they don't cost the oligarchy any money. Discussion about things like income inequality that may reduce the power and wealth of the upper class is discouraged.
> Behavioural economists point out that most people are actually pretty bad at making decisions of this kind
That's okay because those choices are their own. I think most people would rather make their own choices and live with the consequences than have the ability to choose taken from them even if that'd mean being forced into something that would be better for them than alternatives. Personally, I don't equate an abundance of choice with freedom, but a lack of choice or unnecessary constraints on avilable choices aren't going to make people more free either.
Consumer freedom is a real kind of freedom that goes hand in hand with the freedom to choose more meaningful lifestyle and career choices. The reason those choices are meaningful is precisely because the stakes are higher than what you buy at the store. If you go back two hundred years, the ability for a family to offer their children such an abundance of food with so many options was extremely meaningful because poor people really did have to struggle to put food on the table and almost nobody had access to so many different kinds of food. Now we take it for granted because it’s easy and anybody can do it, not because we stopped enjoying it.
When people decry that nobody else will pay them to be an artist or to follow their passions they’re really decrying that they’re unwilling or unable to follow their passions without either giving up something or without offering enough back to other people to justify their use of their resources. Reality doesn’t give a shit whether or not you’re free, neither does the guy that built your house or grew your food, or the nurse that wipes your ass when you get sick.
You either have to be the change you want to see or stop whining that other people won’t adjust their lives to conform to the way you want them to be, without subjecting yourself to any discomfort beyond jeering from the sidelines. It’s really easy to imagine a world in which you’re free to benefit from everybody else’s lack thereof, children do it all the time.
I never really connected the modern idea of "freedom of choice" with today’s loneliness epidemic until reading this. The author makes a compelling case that our obsession with individual choice has quietly eroded the social fabric that makes freedom meaningful, turning independence into isolation.
28 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 29.4 ms ] threadIn practice, we all restrain our choices in ways that we hope narrow our focus and abilities towards things that matter. It would be nice to read a piece that explores how this can be true collectively.
Art thou one ENTITLED to escape from a yoke? Many a one hath cast away his final worth when he hath cast away his servitude.
Free from what? What doth that matter to Zarathustra! Clearly, however, shall thine eye show unto me: free FOR WHAT?
Nietzsche, ~1889
It’s that when you little to no choice we say you aren’t free. It doesn’t follow that having more choices makes you free, but it is a prerequisite. Serfs tied to the land were not free, they had a choice to stay and struggle or leave and risk wandering and starving. Not much of a choice.
Also the author seems to be worried that people will make bad decisions with their choices, and this seems not like freedom to the author.
This piece makes me uneasy, it’s like there’s this effort to justify limiting our choices and calling that freedom. I’m wondering where this is going.
Said who? This is an argument from invented opposition. I’m not sure anyone actually defines freedom as "a huge array of choices". The author seems to invent a mainstream narrative just to dismantle it(arguing against a straw man)
Abundance of choice and freedom are orthogonal. Having the right choice and being free are not.
- Comprehensiveness: instead of pork or beef, you can choose from meat, fish, tofu or egg as your protein source.
- Non-commitment: choosing one of them doesn't prevent you from choosing another for the next meal.
- Safety: none of them shouldn't be so expensive that it hurts you financially, or poisoned it hurts you physiologically beyond its nutritional nature.
I'm not talking about meals but elections, by the way.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
The first freedom of course is freedom from fear (e.g. from fear of being snatched from the street just because you are brown and speak with an accent)
- is an abundance of choice not freedom, or is freedom not strictly speaking “good”
- is there a freedom to be able to have a life on rails? Maybe 50 years ago you grow up in a small town with a coal mine, and you get married to someone from that town and work in that mine for the rest of your life. That choice or lifestyle is not available to a lot of people anymore.
- non-compatible choices —- some people say about work from home is always good, because each person has a choice, some can work from home, some in the office, but these choices just aren’t compatible. Having a work from home policy generally means that people who want to work in the office don’t get the experience they were hoping for.
- super markets. consolidation means there’s only a few brands of supermarkets left. But those super markets have more choice than ever before - but they also tend to have a pretty narrow selection of raw ingredients / produce. What is freedom here?
* the loss of special experiences. My city had a great authentic Thai restaurant. It was great! I could go whenever I wanted, but when I actually went to Thailand, I was a bit disappointed that nothing really felt new there.
* the loss of human connection. I think the world was a better place when Tv during the day sucked. We’ve fundamentally lost the need to rely on each other for entertainment, and I think this has impacts in community formation, friendship and dating.
* Adaptation to self vs self-adaptation. When there was less choices you had to change yourself to appreciate new things. Now one can probably almost precisely do the opposite, only find the things that match who you currently are.
Perhaps the contemporary fight back against 'woke' is really about the important and empowering choices in life being denied to too many?
However, I still think that, in general, more freedom of choice is only a good thing.
> Is there any real difference between the scores of toothpastes or breakfast cereals in contemporary supermarkets?
That depends. Do you have a preference for one flavor of toothpaste or cereal over another? Do you have dental issues that require a toothpaste with whitening effects, or without fluoride, or with baking soda? In a cereal, do you value health concerns over taste, or vice versa? If so, then yes, there is a real difference between different choices in these cases. Making one choice over another can have a direct impact on quality of life, if often a minor one. And this is what makes freedom of choice so important for me: it’s the freedom to strive to improve quality of life—synonymous with the pursuit of happiness.
Of course, as the article briefly touches on, freedom of choice isn’t the only kind of freedom, and arguably isn’t the most important one, either. I think this is the point the author was trying to make, but she doesn’t go into much detail. Freedom from oppression is a prerequisite for freedom of choice, and freedom from suffering is (on paper) the ultimate goal of it. Therein lies the debate: when does increased freedom of choice impede on these other two freedoms? Which should be prioritized in these cases? The line is different for everyone. I would’ve liked to see the article add more nuance to the discussion.
“Modern man lives under the illusion that he knows 'what he wants,' while he actually wants what he is supposed to want. In order to accept this it is necessary to realize that to know what one really wants is not comparatively easy, as most people think, but one of the most difficult problems any human being has to solve. It is a task we frantically try to avoid by accepting ready-made goals as though they were our own.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom (or The Fear of Freedom in another translation)
Having a lot of choices is often a strong indicator that you also have freedom.
You see that in our political discourse. Debates over things like gay marriage, immigration or abortion are encouraged because they don't cost the oligarchy any money. Discussion about things like income inequality that may reduce the power and wealth of the upper class is discouraged.
That's okay because those choices are their own. I think most people would rather make their own choices and live with the consequences than have the ability to choose taken from them even if that'd mean being forced into something that would be better for them than alternatives. Personally, I don't equate an abundance of choice with freedom, but a lack of choice or unnecessary constraints on avilable choices aren't going to make people more free either.
When people decry that nobody else will pay them to be an artist or to follow their passions they’re really decrying that they’re unwilling or unable to follow their passions without either giving up something or without offering enough back to other people to justify their use of their resources. Reality doesn’t give a shit whether or not you’re free, neither does the guy that built your house or grew your food, or the nurse that wipes your ass when you get sick.
You either have to be the change you want to see or stop whining that other people won’t adjust their lives to conform to the way you want them to be, without subjecting yourself to any discomfort beyond jeering from the sidelines. It’s really easy to imagine a world in which you’re free to benefit from everybody else’s lack thereof, children do it all the time.