Our society is built on the inexorable logic of choice. If we didn’t choose it, then it’s probably not good.
As a result of our obsession with choice, we discovered, some time during the twentieth century, the equally inexorable pain of choice anxiety. Too many options and we can’t cope.
See the following video [thanks to Nick for recommending the link at a recent conversation evening]
I have been thinking recently about the consequences of how we are responding to the tension between the desirability of choice and the anxiety of choice.
How we are responding is exemplified by the Facebook Like button.
The Like button deliberately limits our response to two possibilities: to like, or not to like, that is the question.
The Like button then broadcasts our “choice” to all our friends.
But consider what we have just done. We have reduced the vast complexity of part of the world into a binary choice, and broadcast that choice as part of the identity that we project.
And Facebook asks us to expand that process of binary-selection and broadcasting to all of life: to comments made by friends, to the brands that we buy, to events, churches, political parties, even public personalities.
It’s as though we want the universe to be a simple matter of “yes or no” decision-making, and we’re trying very hard to project that kind of reality on everything. In our attempts to cope with the complexities of our self-created world of choices, we are destroying the very possibility of creating new possibilities. It is becoming harder and harder to respond with, “I think the issue is more nuanced, and I would like the time and space to reflect and articulate my opinion.”
We risk reducing the nuances and messiness of human conversation into something much less than it is and should be.
So, embrace the Like button if you must. But, recognise it for what it is – the cheapest, lowest and most-limiting of all possible linguistic responses. And, start to reclaim the nuances of human conversation by asking more of yourself and others.
