The Tyranny of Choice

I was talking with my wise friend today about all of the options I have. Because I am a single man with no children, the world is still wide open to me in a way that is not open to him. I would like to say this is liberating, but it isn't.

I feel paralyzed in my life because I am unable to choose from the many options I have available to me. I'm not sure if this is a bad thing because I think choosing is better than not being able to choose. But I am faced with the fear of making the wrong choices and the opportunity costs and all that. It is debilitating.

A long time ago, I made a decision to stay in South Carolina and not move all around the country. I spent five years in Florida, so I know what it is like to live somewhere else. In the end, I am happiest in the state of my birth. I like living in South Carolina.

By choosing to live here, I have forfeited some opportunities that I could have taken abroad. But I do not regret them. By choosing to stay here, I feel a greater degree of freedom. I might be persuaded to leave by a beautiful woman in the future, but I like limiting my options to this state. It frees me to make other decisions.

In the realm of dating, there are always other women. But I like the one I am with now, and I ignore the others. Each woman rises and falls according to her own merits with me. Comparison shopping ends, and you settle in with the one you love. The rest fade into oblivion.

Then, there is the realm of hobbies. We have so many choices and options when it comes to our leisure time. But I find that I can live my whole life without ever having gone scuba diving off of Aruba. I'm not going to regret that shit. I like what I do now which is mostly reading and writing and trying to get some exercise. I have yet to exhaust these humble hobbies, so I will leave the more spectacular ones to the people who like them.

While reflecting on the products of Apple, I am struck by the fact that what makes those products so cool is their simplicity. We have TVs and DVD players that take a Ph.D. to operate. But an Apple product like the iMac is very simple to operate. This is because it limits the options to the essential and eliminates the extraneous. This is the number one complaint of the things Steve Jobs gives us. They always lack some feature that some technogeek has to have.

Like I said, I am reflecting on all of this, and I know that leftwing fucknuts would like to limit our choices because of their inherent Bolshevism. But I do take it under consideration because there is some elemental truth to the fact that more is not necessarily better. Just some shit to think about.

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