Luckily, however, most of our actions are so automatic that we don’t really contemplate the alternatives. Not only that, but there are always alternatives to our choices. “Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?” asked the existentialist philosopher Albert Camus, making the point that in every area and every moment of our lives a choice is waiting to be made. So whether we are choosing utility provider or deciding on a career path, contemporary society presents us with a bounty of choices. In fact, it seems that no matter which aspect of everyday life we turn to, the amount of choices available to us has increased over the past decades. And we’re also now presented with a massive selection of different kinds of health insurance, retirement plans and medical care. Such abundance of choice also applies elsewhere – in utility providers, for example, where deregulation and competition in the telephone and power industries have introduced a dizzying array of options. In fact, in most modern colleges, students are free to pursue almost any of their interests. Even Swarthmore College, a small school with only 1,350 students, offers about 120 different courses to meet the general education requirement, from which students must select just nine. Today, for instance, colleges are like intellectual shopping malls, embodying a philosophy that celebrates freedom of choice above all else. We now face a demand to make choices that is unparalleled in human history. And when it came to choosing an education, colleges usually required all students to complete two years’ worth of general education, with only some, rather narrow choices available among the courses.īut as society has advanced, the array of choices in everyday life has increased enormously. Not more than a few decades ago, choice in most areas of daily life was actually rather limited.įor example, just one generation ago, all utilities were regulated by monopolies, so consumers didn’t need to make difficult decisions about who was going to provide their telephone or their electric service.

The paradox of choice book review