January 16, 2007 5:50 PM
Sometimes less is more
Dean Abbot at Inspired by a True Story has become one of my favorite writers, with such good insights and a winsome way of putting things. His writing resonates with me.
Especially when I've written on the same theme. I love his Wandering the Aisles, a commentary on overstimulation in our culture:
A secular society cut lose from its moral and religious moorings is a society that needs 76 kinds of peanut butter. We seek to submerge our suffering selves in the process of constant choosing. Though we share the same ache, we believe our pain is exclusively our own and so seek that product out of the millions available that will soothe our unique discomfort. This hunt rules our lives. It gives us a measure of meaning, a reason to hope."Maybe all this pain will go away," we unconsciously tell ourselves,"if I try those new razor blades. Or those teeth whitening strips I saw. Maybe I should try some Axe. The girls on TV seemed to like it." And so it goes.
Read Dean's entire entry here.
Three years ago the Christian Science Monitor published my article The American Sense of Freedom is Shifting from Rights to Choices. Here's an excerpt:
By contrast, today I feel ripped off, seeing how my most precious resource - time - is steadily stolen away with each meaningless decision I make. I'm remembering with fondness the '50s grocery where I chose between white bread and brown, red apples and green, American and Swiss, dill and sweet. Only two mustards graced the shelf then: the regular and its racy cousin. Today I grab the original like a lifeline, determined to negotiate the remaining aisles of this Vanity Fair with as much detachment as I can muster.And now, with extra minutes to ponder the things that matter, I'm seeing there's something even more maleficent than the moments we lose as our marketplace mushrooms. There's the deception by which our sense of freedom shifts from inalienable rights to economic choices - thus becoming largely an illusion, based on which car you drive, detergent you use, or hamburger you eat. Have it your way!
Read the entire article here.
And if you want to dig deeper, check out The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. From the summary at amazon:
Whether choosing a health-care plan, choosing a college class or even buying a pair of jeans, Schwartz, drawing extensively on his own work in the social sciences, shows that a bewildering array of choices floods our exhausted brains, ultimately restricting instead of freeing us. We normally assume in America that more options ("easy fit" or "relaxed fit"?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being.
This is why I like living in the country and ordering from Peapod whenever I can :)
And believe me, picking out the colors/wallpaper for two bathrooms, a laundry room, and a hallway so the boys could work while they were home (they finished everything beautifully today) exhausted my decorating decision quotient for probably quite some time.
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Comments
Barbara, Thanks for taking the time to tackle this post, the links, connecting a few dots, etc. I printed it out to do some work on the ideas in my journal. Pam
Posted by: pam | January 17, 2007 7:56 PM
Between needs and preferences, I usually have no problem skimming through a large selection to the few things I actually want to choose between. If I shopped at a small store where someone else had done that skimming for me, there's no telling if I would like their selection or not. I'd rather spend the time up front choosing than having to "make do" with someone else's decisions. I will say that this is more of an issue with prepared foods than basic ingredients, yet another reason to try and cook from scratch more often.
Posted by: Liz | January 17, 2007 11:27 PM
