Choice Is Your Choice
Choice Is Your Choice How would you feel if you went to the store and you were told what to buy? What if you were told what to do? What if you had no choice in where to go or what to wear? How would you feel if these choices were limited to just two or three choices to choose from? In this day and age, the variety of choice has grown to almost limitless. This abundance of choice gives people the opportunity to be different. Individuality would mean nothing if we all wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and most of all had no choice in who we wanted to spend the rest of our lives with. Barry Schwartz wrote “When It’s All Too Much”, an article about the overabundance of choice, in 2004. In this article Schwartz explains how the increase in choice is pertinent in the aspect of society’s happiness or lack thereof. Schwartz states, “In the past 30 years – a great time of prosperity – the proportion of the population describing itself as ‘very happy’ has declined. The decline was about 5 %”( Schwartz 173). That 5% would calculate to be about 14 million Americans. A lot has happened in the past 30 years that has more to do with the happiness of not only Americans, but civilization on a global standpoint. With the passing of time there are more choices to make and more responsibility involved with these choices. For some people it is hard to deal with the responsibility of having to make difficult choices. Health care is one many people have a problem with and is one of Schwartz’s examples of hard to make choices as he states “people in one study were asked whether, if they got cancer, they would want to be in charge of their treatment decisions…People with cancer have experienced the awesome psychological consequence of being responsible for a life-and-death decision, and they don’t want that decision.”(Schwartz 173). This is a great point by Schwartz. I don’t think anyone could deal with making life or death decisions, I know it would be hard for me to do in
Cited: Schwartz, Barry. “When It’s All Too Much.” Perspectives on Arguments. Nancy Woods. Boston: Pearson, 2012 172-73. Print.