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Posted on: September 24th, 2009Back in our grandfathers’ day, there weren’t as many choices about what do with one’s life. And in our great-grandfathers time, there were even fewer choices. You might take over the family farm or family business or choose to pursue one of the trades.
These days we’re faced with a veritable onslaught of choices. What college should we go to? Public or private? Which of dozens of majors should we choose? Should we go to grad school or law school? What law school should we choose?
And besides the myriad of life choices we must make, we are bombarded each day with the necessity of making an endless stream of little mundane decisions. We stand in the cereal aisle of the grocery store as shelves and shelves of different ways to eat corn and wheat stretch as far as the eye can see in either direction. The web gives us millions of different sites to read. Whereas our grandfathers had 5 channels on the TV to watch, we have 850.
On the face of it, more choices are an unmitigated good thing. Americans especially prize having as many choices as possible. Before the turn of the 19th century, freedom was defined as self-sufficiency, the freedom to own your own land and tools, and eke out a living with your own hands. As consumerism became a dominate force in the culture, freedom was redefined to mean the freedom to choose, to choose between different items and lifestyles, to choose things we believed fit out tastes and personality more than others. This was the beginning of defining ourselves by what we buy, instead of who we are and what we do, but that is another discussion for another day.
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