The choice is yours

Last week I sent out a link to an editorial by James Kunstler about the peak oil situation. One respondent, while discussing various lifestyle options said, "...most Americans don't want to live that way." Therein lies the rub. As The Rolling Stones so aptly put it, "You can't always get what you want." This is true whether the peak oil pundits are right, wrong, or in between; which brings up an important question. Is that always so bad?

As illogical as it seems at first, the answer is "No". I have two reasons for taking that position, one from current psychology and the other from Buddhism. They go by the terms "the paradox of choice" and "attachment". Let me start with the paradox of choice.

I have long believed that the reason so many of my generation were, and are, seriously screwed up is because we had too many choices. In fact, we were the first generation to have had very many choices at all. Before the baby boomers, most people just had to do whatever they could to get by. There were few options. A lucky few in the upper middle class might be able to attend college, but few choices existed even there. They, and even wealthier people, usually worked in the family business or in the business of a family friend.

But boomers grew up in a time of unprecedented prosperity and mobility. It seemed like we'd be able to live anywhere, study anything, take our pick of jobs, and buy any of the hundreds of new products that were being invented. Having so many choices drove us crazy, or so I believed. Recent research in psychology indicates I was correct.

The March 4, 2004 issue of Scientific American included an article by Barry Schwartz called "The Tyranny of Choice"*. It discussed research that indicated that too many choices could cause suffering, especially among people he called Maximizers. Maximizers are people who absolutely must make the best decision possible. Even simple decisions can require hours and hours of searching and many sleepless nights.

A maximizer's suffering continues even after a choice is made. Sometimes it gets worse after a decision is made because he constantly second-guesses himself. Maximizers need to be sure that every choice they ever made really was the best possible choice. God forbid the maximizer finds evidence that a better decision could have been made, because then the real torment and self-abuse begins. Maximizers are merciless and punish themselves relentlessly for mistakes.

Satificers, Schwartz's other category of decision-makers, fare better because they are content with "good enough". But even extremely low maintenance satisficers must spend too much time and energy when faced with a multitude choices. At the very least we must separate the absolutely inferior and absolutely too expensive (or difficult) choices so we can pick something in the middle. Even when there are no clear winners and losers, we often feel the need to do more than just close our eyes and point.

Take coffee for example. I'm not too fussy about coffee, but I at least think about whether I want organic, fair trade, or plain old pesticide-saturated-ruthless-capitalism coffee. If I decide I want organic coffee I end up in Whole Food looking at 37 bags of different coffees from all over the world. I seem to recall a time in the not too distant past when coffee choices were pretty much limited to two options, Folgers or Maxwell House. And if I wanted decaf I could choose between Sanka and Sanka. I didn't need to ask whether it was decaffeinated with solvents like ethyl acetate or by the natural Swiss water process.

Sometimes no choices make life easier still if. I remember a time in my late 30s when I was still living slightly below the poverty line. I was watching a commercial for new cars at 0% interest. I remember thinking that one nice thing about being so poor was that I didn't even need to think about whether I should take advantage of this great deal and replace my aging Pinto. It was one less thing to worry over.

I've found I'm not alone in this. I know several people who lived ten or more years in poverty before moving up to the middle or upper middle class. While we all agree we'd prefer not to be poor again, we all sometimes miss the simplicity of that lifestyle. We spent much less time and energy making decisions because our options were so severely limited.

The Voluntary Simplicity movement notwithstanding we humans, and Americans in particular, are not good at limiting our own options. Whether we're maximizers or satisficers we feel obligated to make everything bigger and better. That includes the number of options we have even when more is really less. It's much easier for us if external forces limit our options. At the very least it gives us someone else to blame for our perceived unhappiness caused by lack of control.

So if peak oil, deranged politicians, global warming, The Home Shopping Network, or your own bad habits put you in a situation where "you can't always get what you want", relax. Like The Rolling Stones "...you might just find, you get what you need." That being more time to enjoy your life and less fretting over decisions that are essentially meaningless.

Next time, when I discuss "attachment", I’ll explain how even getting what you want can make you miserable. In the meantime contemplate that old Buddhist koan, "What is the sound of too many options falling by the wayside?"


*Barry Schwartz has since published a book on the subject called The Paradox of Choice