Decisions, Decisions

This morning, I sat down and read a book, which would be more impressive if it wasn't a piece of pop-academia called Predictably Irrational, but as much as I have a psycho-somatic reaction to social-psychology, this was a fun, well-structured addition to my morning.

Over the past six months of deciding "What To Do With My Life and How To Make the Right Choice," I've been obsessively "self-aware," trying to factor into my decisions not only the apparent utility and costs of each option, but also the various subconscious assumptions and social pressures that have led me to evaluate each pro as a pro and con as a con. All the time I have comforted myself with the behavoiral economic/social psycological/consumer ideological assumption that the more I struggle to make the choice, the more I will subconsciously justify it in the end, releasing endorphins, creating happy receptors, and probably moving me one step closer to the Buddha.

However, if I have learnt one thing over the last year or so since graduation, it's that the worst choice one can make is none. On days when I haven't left the house, I have spent hours being anxious about all of the things that I could/should/would otherwise be doing, while failing even to finish mundane tasks such as laundry or email-responding, for fear that they might keep me homebound. Wasn't I pleased to learn that this phenome-not is being throughly studied at MIT and, most particularly, the RSA:

"The Paradox of Choice" - Rene Salecl

If you don't have half an hour to burn, Salecl's basic premise is that when faced with an abundance of choices, we imagine the costs of each choice to be much higher, become anxious about choosing anything, and fall into a state of capitalism-induced passivity.

It seems to me the paradox goes one step further - we justify what we have chosen to self-satisfaction only if we do not recognize the other options. That is, we are comfortable having spent $300 on the X-box so long as we don't think about how many textbooks we could have bought with that money (4), or meals for starving orphans in Birundi (700). On the other hand, if someone challenges our choices by presenting such options (sorry), we will often over-justify (radicalize) or refuse to make a choice in the future, depending on...(if protons were people the Bomb would work only on sunny days ending with q).

Salecl continues: under Capitalist systems, people refuse to organize or take real action themselves, and are prone to leaders who seem unduly confident (which is usually a symptom of mild to acute psychosis).

Which brings me to Mr. Glenn Beck.

"In his interview with Newsmax, Beck reveals his worst fear: that a “Reichstag moment” — a catastrophic event may soon take place so that the powers that be in Washington can end the Republic and our cherished Constitution." (glowing book review here)

"First they went for the Tea Party Protestors, and I was silent..."

On better days, I believe that Beck actually sees the similarities between American Libertarians and the Communist Party before Hitler and Stalin. On the worst days, I fear he doesn't realize the difference.

The key irony of Soviet-style countries was that the state got stronger instead of dissolving. It could never dissolve. By teaming up with the Tea Party, the Libertarian movement (distinct from the Libertarian Party) found itself a strong, popular base. (Read Jane Mayer's account in the New Yorker - brilliant despite its air of conspiracy theory). However, this base demands social legislation (abortion and gay marriage being the most prominent) that conflicts with the very principle of an unregulated society. By supporting a vague social ideology, as opposed to an overwrought Socialist (economic) one, the Tea Partisans are following their vanguard back to a Gilded Age of poverty, horrible injustice, and classical economics.

I have to laugh (having considered the other options), and hope this all blows itself apart. If it weren't for all this Captialist-passivity, I'd be at the next Tea Party rally with the rest of the psycho-Patriots, waving my sign promoting kitchen abortions, bald eagle spearing and forced sodomy (privately funded, of course).