Alternate viewpoint is "Life is good, be careful not to screw it up".
Is there anyone here who is troubled by any of this? I have spent my life in America, where there is plenty of everything, and in recent years an abundance of choices. As far as I can see, neither I nor my parents nor my sibs nor my friends and acquaintances has every been anything but happy about this. Try a truly third world experience some time, especially if your job or roles puts you into contact with locals who are not trying to please you. Most of them would welcome some of this stressful choice you talk about.
Ha
I could not disagree with that, Ha... I was looking at the subject from a different angle. Not as a comparison, but as an old timer, looking back at a simpler time.
My avatar is a symbol of my arrogant ambition. To be a second last polymath. A goal that I see being ever more impossible for anyone.
As a child, many hours were spent in my back yard, lying on the grass and seeing figures in the clouds. Many more hours were spent in the public library... going through the stacks, aimlessly, and picking out books that were far beyond my knowledge... to browse and look for interesting things.
At age 10 my folks invested in the encyclopedia Americana... all 26 volumes in small print. It was the world, at my fingertips. My choice to read or not, to explore, at my own pace, whatever peaked my interest at that time.
What I see now, is the boy of 10, in between after-school soccer, play dates
and school courses pointed to the 6 year goal of passing the SAT's... and with the entire knowledge of all mankind... from all ages... at his fingertips on his smartphone...
Overwhelmed by choices and playing Sniper Team 2 or Stickman Badminton.
I see a populace, fighting for the American Dream, but unaware of politics... not only National, but International, and except for the local referendum on the proposed new school gymnasium, not even aware of where their taxes go.
I see news sources limited to the bias of NBC or Fox and newspapers mired in hot topic editorials. No time to explore in depth, and as background, the previous headline story which was also designed to shock and amaze.
I see a society where people are expected to have opinions... expected to "know"...
............................................
And at the same time,
-beset by a government frozen in anger and mistrust
-faced with a world where poverty and fear is the result of religious choices
-dealing with laws and regulations which are evermore being twisted from constitutional guarantees, to the needs of: the corporate community, interlocking directorates, and the policy-planning network.
and... by the same logic, countered by a philosophy that the "State" exists to serve, protect, and nurture the people... and that equality trumps the personal freedom (of choice).
.............................................
Back to the subject of "Tyranny of Choice".
I don't believe the article was written as a SOLUTION, but as an attempt to explain that the advances of the past 50 or 60 years are not without a downside. The simple codeword is "information overload"...
I feel very privileged to have had the years to see the difference.
When to the sessions of sweet silent thought
I summon up remembrance of things past,
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought
Onward and upward...