[...]... burdens us with the responsibility of choice What It Means to Choose NOVELIST AND EXISTENTIALIST PHILOSOPHER ALBERT CAMUS POSED the question, “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” His point was that everything in life is choice Every second of every day, we are choosing, and there are always alternatives Existence, at least human existence, is defined by the choices people make If that’s true,... become less and less fringy, more and more regarded as reasonable options to be considered The combination of decision autonomy and a proliferation of treatment possibilities places an incredible burden on every person in a high-stakes area of decision making that did not exist twenty years ago The latest indication of the shift in responsibility for medical decisions from doctor to patient is the... was up to each person, as an individual, to pick her or his own values and make her or his own moral choices For people who have experienced religion more as a source of oppression than of comfort, guidance, and support, freedom of choice in this area is surely a blessing They can elect the denomination that is most compatible with their view of life, then select the particular institution that they... yourself.’” Is this good news or not? According to a survey conducted by Yankelovich Partners, a majority of people want more control over the details of their lives, but a majority of people also want to simplify their lives There you have it—the paradox of our times As evidence of this conflicted desire, it turns out that many people, though happy about the availability of telephone choices or electric choices,... consequences are severe But as with marriage, choice of identity has been moving from a state in which the default option was extremely powerful and the fact of choice had little psychological reality to a state in which choice is very real and salient As with all the issues I’ve been discussing in this chapter, this change in the status of personal identity is both good and bad news: good news because... overwhelming is not only that the decision is ours, but that the number of sources of information from which we are to make the decisions has exploded It’s not just a matter of listening to your doctor lay out the options and making a choice We now have encyclopedic lay-people’s guides to health, “better health” magazines, and, most dramatic of all, the Internet So now the prospect of a medical decision has... of having every activity be a matter of deliberate and conscious choice would be too much for any of us to bear The transformation of choice in modern life is that choice in many facets of life has gone from implicit and often psychologically unreal to explicit and psychologically very real So we now face a demand to make choices that is unparalleled in human history We probably would be deeply resentful... freedom of choice away in any part of life that we really cared about and really knew something about If it were up to us to choose whether or not to have choice, we would opt for choice almost every time But it is the cumulative effect of these added choices that I think is causing substantial distress As I mentioned in Chapter 1, we are trapped in what Fred Hirsch called “the tyranny of small decisions.”... this is true, fundamental aspects of appearance become a matter of choice How people look is yet another thing that they are now responsible for deciding for themselves As journalist Wendy Kaminer puts it, “Beauty used to be a gift bestowed upon the few for the rest of us to admire Today it’s an achievement, and homeliness is not just misfortune but a failure.” Choosing How to Work THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY,... they aren’t doing right by themselves There is certainly something to be said for this view, but my point here is that the retirement decision is only one among very many important decisions And most people may feel that they lack the expertise to make decisions about their money by themselves Once again, new choices demand more extensive research and create more individual responsibility for failure . class="bi x0 y0 w1 h0" alt="" The Paradox of Choice Why More Is Less Barry Schwartz For Ruby and Eliza, with love and hope Contents Prologue. The Paradox of Choice: A Road Map PART I WHEN WE. Only…”: The Problem of Regret Chapter 8. Why Decisions Disappoint: The Problem of Adaptation Chapter 9. Why Everything Suffers from Comparison Chapter 10. Whose Fault Is It? Choice, Disappointment,. it. In his book Development as Freedom he distinguishes the importance of choice, in and of itself, from the functional role it plays in our lives. He suggests that instead of being fetishistic