I have a long list of possible newsletter ideas which keeps getting longer. Sometimes, I go back to a topic I put on the list ten years ago and pick it. More often, it is something that popped up for me based on something I have seen or heard recently. When it does pop up, I try to make sure that I haven’t written about it recently. In this case, I thought it had been done within the last year and then I decided … not quite. I wrote about “Control” about a year ago. And control isn’t really the same as choice.
Control versus Choice
So, what’s the difference? Control says that your choices/decisions will lead to a determinate goal. Choice points out your ability to take a current situation and lead off from there to various potential destinations. Potential is the powerful word. We might subdefine it (in either a fully subjective way or in a “calculated” manner that probably has a lot more assumptions in it of which we are not aware) as likely, unlikely, good, bad, and so forth. Not only do we assign (consciously or not) a label to the choices but there are many. These always include the choice of not doing anything.
Limitation of Choices
There are a lot of situations that lead people to say “there is no choice”. Many of these have special names such as “Sophie’s Choice” or “Catch-22” or “Morton’s Fork”. The idea is that, because of our subjective analysis of the potential choices, many can/must be ruled out immediately and, therefore, is not a legitimate choice. But, they really are choices and it is unlikely that the choices are as limited as what we see.
The simplest of choices is a binary one. Do it or don’t do it. I don’t think it is ever really that simple but it can seem that way to us. Breathe and live for a bit longer or don’t breathe and die sooner. Although I tried to be accurate in my descriptions, I am sure that most of you immediately start seeing additional “sub-choices”. Do I place myself in a situation in which I cannot change my mind (throwing away my helmet while doing a space walk seems hard to change)? Or am I in a voluntary situation where, once the carbon dioxide level in my blood has built up enough, my body takes over and my diaphragm moves “all by itself”? (It is very hard to die via holding your breath if you are sitting in a chair and very easy if you are resting on the bottom of a pool.)
We are often presented with (or present ourselves with) a limitation of choices. This can be called a “false dilemma” because there are almost always other choices. Some may no longer be present because of waiting too long. Others will “pop up” when time elapses. If you ever find yourself saying “it’s either this or that” then sit back and take some time to comb through the possibilities. In other words, choices always exist but planning ahead can give a person better, more favorable, choices.
Elections and Apparent lack of choice
In life, we often are faced with choices where we don’t like any of the choices (remembering that not making a choice IS making a choice). Elections often evoke this irritation. What has really happened is that choice has been delayed past the primaries and other possibilities have been discarded. We will hope (probably without reason) that the best candidates have made it through the preliminary processes. But we don’t like either of them. What to do?
IF it is true that both candidates are “equally bad” then voting or not really makes no difference. But that is highly unlikely. Often, when someone says the choices are “all bad” (or “both bad”) it means that neither really speaks to them as a potential voter. Either a voter wasn’t active during the primaries or they have a specific issue, or set of issues, that don’t seem to be important to the candidates currently available to receive our vote.
Believe it or not, that one issue does not define a candidate. Maybe you don’t care whom they hate but maybe you do. Maybe you don’t care where they get their campaign money from or maybe you do. Maybe you don’t care how they treat their staff and family or maybe you do. There is very likely to be a candidate that really IS “worse” (according to your own preferences). Guess what!!!! If one candidate is worse than the other then that other candidate (according to your judgement) is BETTER. And that better candidate may lose if you don’t bother to vote just because they aren’t “perfect”. (Still, my opinion is that you should have gotten involved in the primaries and helped to put forth better candidates.)
Too many choices leads to choice paralysis
Yes, there can be a thing as too many choices. Both heading out of high school and between jobs as an adult, I went through career counseling and workbook procedures. They gave me lots of tests (I also went through tests with a Naval recruiter and he just would not leave me alone after testing) that were to tell me what I was, or could be, good at. They were supposed to narrow down my aptitude, skills, and direction such that I could consider from a small set of possibilities. All they did was to say “you can do whatever you want” which was of zero value.
Unless a specific choice “shines” for you and makes all other potential choices hard to consider, you will be trying to make a choice by making use of a process of elimination. As mentioned above, if given only two choices, one will almost always be better even if that choice is “not good enough” as far as your feelings go. When you have multiple choice, you have to rate each one and keep discarding the “worst” choice for each round.
When I have an election to choose among candidates, I go through the descriptions and, for each candidate, give them a “-” for each thing I don’t like and a “+” for each thing I do like. Adding them up after reviewing all (-1 for “=”, +1 for “+”) I hope to come to a number. Get rid of the lowest and leave either the single highest or the group with the same highest number. Multiple left, try to evaluate again, and be pickier. Although I think it happens MUCH less often than I hear from fellow voters, it IS possible you will be left with more than one with the same score. Pick according to your own subjective insight or use a dart board.
Sophie’s Choice
As in the book,or movie, a sadist may force you to choose one of two horrible fates. I have no advice to make such a situation less painful. May God, or the universe or whatever, guide you and console you.
Conclusion
Choices give you a chance to change the odds for your future. It may not be easy. You may have been provided a situation, from which to make that choice, that makes all options less visible and makes all options have more bad aspects. Choice is still your influence on the future. Blessed be.
No comments:
Post a Comment