The Real Tyranny of Choice
The Ottawa Citizen - Apr 16, 2007
Don Sawyer
The word "choice" is rooted in the Greek verb "to enjoy," and indeed, having real choices is an essential part of happiness. But increasingly, it seems, the concept of choice is viewed largely as one of the legitimate benefits of privilege -- or trivialized into being able to vote for your favourite performer on Canadian Idol.
Having significant choices, whether in terms of career opportunities or menu items, has, of course, always been a function of privilege. But somehow the "democratization" of choice has descended into what some are calling "First World angst": Should we buy the chrome or brass hardware for our third bathroom? Should we go to the same all-inclusive resort we went to in Mexico last year or maybe try the all-inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic? Do I need to buy a new pair of shoes or do these pumps go OK with my new dress?
As painful as it is, we are beginning to face up to the reality that the party is over and we can no longer afford the key consumer precept that the choices we make are only limited by our incomes. We are also belatedly waking up to fact that our ability to consume voraciously comes at the expense of others' much more fundamental choices: deciding not to work in a dangerous or degrading factory, deciding not to live in a deteriorating environment, deciding not to drink water from a contaminated well, deciding to develop potential through education and training.
But in a society where freedom is equated with unrestricted consumer choices, the idea that we may have to consciously restrain ourselves still faces fierce resistance. I am involved in a community group fighting to keep our downtown vital and sustaining, and this has involved opposing some developments of big-box stores that would have devastated our commercial centre. One writer to our local paper angrily accused us of trying to limit her choice of places to shop. Any thoughtful appraisal of how or if a commercial development might fit into the community and its possible impact, it seems, is tantamount to treason.
But the diminution of choice is not limited to the realm of rampant consumerism. Besides the fact that more and more Canadians are "choosing" to stay away from voting booths entirely, their political choices seem to be getting more anemic all the time. Democracy has turned into casting (or not) a ballot every four or five years to "choose" between candidates we don't know running for parties whose platforms are so vague and undifferentiated that they seem almost interchangeable.
Perhaps the most pernicious manipulation of the concept of choice is to use it to blame the victim. Not long after the last federal election I was chatting with my MP. I mentioned that I thought the Conservative plan to provide the same child subsidy to all eligible families, whether requiring child care or not, didn't make a lot of sense to me. "This policy is about the family," he told me. "It gives women the choice to stay home to take care of their children."
When I pointed out that most of the single mothers I knew had little choice but to rely on child care if they were going to earn a living for their families, he made a comment that has since become a kind of conservative mantra: "Many of these people have made bad choices in their lives. We want to encourage people to make responsible choices."
It didn't seem to matter that the results of these presumed bad choices were real little girls and boys who were being shaped by the poverty, hopelessness and despair around them; nor did it seem to register that providing decent care and support just might result in these children making better choices as they grew up.
We have lost the understanding that meaningful choice only occurs when people have genuine alternatives to choose between -- and the confidence and means to make those choices. People in a small community might indeed prefer to take a bus instead of their car to the downtown, but if there is no efficient public transit system, do they truly have a choice? Others would dearly love to purchase a house, but if the prices are so high a mortgage would eat up two- thirds of their income, do they really have a choice? Many women caught in abusive relationships desperately want to escape, but with few marketable skills, low self-esteem, no support or shelter available, what sort of choice do they have?
And those people who have made "bad choices" in the past, why did they make them? What social and economic forces limited their sense of options, their capacity to make healthier decisions? What real choices did they have? What can we do to help them (or their kids) make better choices in the future?
It is time to reclaim the concept of choice from the hucksters, politicians and interest groups so anxious to delude us into believing that the term means selecting from three dozen watchbands, choosing between pale, insipid political parties, and penalizing those who have been the victims of the illusion that we all have the same life choices and ability to realize them.
Real choice recognizes the impact our decisions have on others. Real choice means providing the enabling climate and supports to help people truly understand they have decisions to make and the capacity to act on them.
Real choice is about extending the joy of hope and achievable aspirations beyond the trivial and tawdry, and to all members of society, regardless of privilege.
Don Sawyer is a writer, educator and aid worker. He lives in Salmon Arm, B.C.
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