“Our system of education turns young people out of schools able to read, but for the most part unable to weigh evidence or to form an independent opinion. They are then assailed, throughout the rest of their lives, by statements designed to make them believe all sorts of absurd propositions…”

-Bertrand Russell

Introduction

Part of our common fate as Americans in the 21st century is to live in yet another era that has no shortage of information and thus, no shortage of choice. As internet scholar Clay Shirky has noted, following Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in the 1500’s, the vast majority of people have had access to more information than they could possibly sift through in an entire lifetime. As social theorist Barry Schwartz notes, abundance of information and choice has been the official dogma of all western industrial societies for some time. Individual freedom is seen as a primary good and it is assumed that the way to secure individual welfare is through more and more choice. We will see that this assumption may need to be qualified. What have disappeared in this generation, according to Shirky, are the economic barriers to the creation of public information. We may add this complication to the collapse of the old personal, social, and political filters that has been a long time in coming. To the extent that we can sort and process information effectively (filter it), can we make well-grounded choices. Without these filters, the likelihood that we will make well-grounded choices becomes less and less. Currently, a very small percentage of the American population seems adequately prepared to sort and process all this information effectively[1]. I propose that when properly educated about what means the most in life and how to create the proper filters, we may once again derive satisfaction from life by living authentically.

Mythologist and social critic Michael Meade argues that it is only in coming to terms with one’s fate that one can shape an effective and fulfilling destiny, to embody a meaningful identity that is uniquely one’s own. In order to come to terms with our individual and collective fate of dealing with an overabundance of choice and a lack of effective filters, we must first understand a bit more about the concept of fate. In order to determine in what ways we can actually influence our individual and collective destinies, we must first dissect the notion of destiny. For both of these tasks, I will utilize Meade’s illuminating work, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul.

As Meade explains, the concept of fate is a very old idea, one often mistaken to mean total predestination and the absence of choice. What it really describes, he says, are those aspects of life that one is born into and cannot change, things like genetics, personality, social class, time period, and all that goes along with these circumstances. He elaborates:

Each family has its own inheritance of fateful themes and inner woven stories that are passed down along with the DNA of the cells and shared body shapes…For the past is never quite over; it clings to us and secretly asks us to solve and resolve the essential questions of life as well as the particular issues that pull our families together when they aren’t driving us all apart (19).

Another aspect of fate concerns those strange occurrences that some dismiss as coincidence, some see as the hand of a god at work in their lives, and others just accept, not knowing from whence they originate. I will leave this aspect of fate untouched because, quite frankly, I am in the latter camp – I do not understand it, but acknowledge its existence and am grateful for the ways it has shaped my life.

Fate at the societal level is the accumulation of results of the ways individuals come to interact with their particular fates. How we come to think about our collective fate, if we think of it at all, is often manipulated by outside forces (i.e. public education or advertising) and will be dealt with later in this paper. Meade points out that to run from one’s fate, no matter what reason, is merely postponing the inevitable. As he clarifies, “Fate involves aspects of life that are not freely chosen and plot lines that were well underway before each child came on the scene” (23). Through understanding our own individual fate, we come to better understand our collective fate. Once we understand both of these, we intimately know the context in which we live and intimately know ourselves. Then we are better prepared to know in what ways we may shape our destinies and form authentic identities.

Destiny is also a very old idea, one which Americans have sometimes alluded to through concepts like “manifest destiny”, but seldom seen and dissected for what it is. As Meade says, “Fate is the shell of the inner seed of one’s life that must be cracked open to reveal the destiny hidden within it” (37). If we use this metaphor to understand the way fate and destiny are weaved together, we come to a much more complete understanding of who we are and in what aspects of our lives we really have control. Each of us is gifted with certain talents and abilities. Each of us tends to struggle with certain things more than others. Contrary to popular dogma, our lives are not clean slates on which anything can be written. Each of us, with our very specific genes, personalities, talents, abilities and struggles, is born into a very specific family context which is situated in a very specific social and temporal context. It is only by coming to know in what ways we are constrained (the shell of our fate) that we may come to fully understand in what ways we may fashion a fulfilling destiny (the unique life within).

As Meade cautions us, there is no “normal” condition when it comes to matters of the human soul. In a culture obsessed with statistical averages, we tend to forget that each individual is unique, that each brings something altogether different to the metaphorical table. Meade says that this lost knowledge was of primary importance to our ancestors because it is fundamental to human happiness. He elaborates:

Unfortunately, when one’s fate in life is not found and faced and struggled with, a person tends to invent or adopt outer values unsuited to their soul. When a majority of people seek to outflank or cheat the hand that fate has dealt to them, mere cleverness and untutored will power become dominant cultural values. Secretly, the loss of inner value and individual meaning becomes a depression within the soul and a collective blindness within the culture. The underlying problem is that in refusing fate, we lose our destiny and we fail to find coherence in ourselves and in the world (48).

Fated to live in a time when the dominant scientific opinion preaches an “accidental universe”, we largely come to see ourselves and our culture as accidental too. This gospel effectively robs us of the values and meaning inherent in ourselves, our families, our culture, and our world. Why fashion a destiny at all if everything about our fate is seen to be accidental? From this, would it not follow that our destiny is accidental too? But we know that this does not jive with our experience, so we use it to abolish moral constraints and preach the unfettered will. Even Nietzsche, the celebrated father of “the will to power”, preached that the will be used in very specific ways in very specific contexts. The will did not go untutored, but had a very specific connection with the world.

As a starting point to address the chief problem of the information age: the abundance of choice and its implications, I consult social theorist Barry Schwartz’s work on American culture and the psychological effects of too much information and too much choice, The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. In this work he offers an in-depth look at the problem of too much choice and suggests some very practical solutions to this concern. Having laid the groundwork for a case of too much choice on the individual level, Schwartz then extrapolates from this knowledge to look at the issue as a broader social phenomenon. To aid me in extending and fine-tuning Schwartz’s argument, I internet scholar Clay Shirky’s work on the role of filters in dealing with too much information. When all is said and done, I hope to have laid out clearly the nature of the fateful problem to be confronted – ineffective filters for dealing with too much choice/information overload – and described a two-pronged approach for coming to terms with this fate – one on the individual level of destiny, and one on the level of society at large. Obviously these findings will carry much weight regarding both levels of American Identity.

Body of Theory and Research

Schwartz notes that he first became interested in the problem of choice when, after many years, he set out to purchase some new jeans. He recounts how he quickly discovered that what used to be a fairly easy process, buying a pair of pants, had become almost a day-long process and that although his new pants fit much better than the old, he ended up feeling worse in the end. Schwartz begins his inquiry by looking at new areas of expanded choice. Some of these are as follows: utilities, insurance, retirement, medical care, beauty, work, love, prayer, and finally identity. He notes that it is not one, but the “cumulative effect” of these expanded choices which cause “substantial distress” (44).

Though all the new areas of expanded choice Schwartz lists carry much force in our lives, I wish to challenge Schwartz on two points. First, Clay Shirky argues that it is not the fact that all this new choice exists which is the problem, but that we are no longer taught effective strategies to sort and filter these ever-increasing options. I tend to agree with Shirky. If we were taught to be able to make rules and guidelines for ourselves, all this expanded choice would not be so stressful. Schwartz, in his discussion of ways to deal with all of this choice, seems inclined to agree with Shirky, though he is not as clear and concise as Shirky about the issue. Secondly, it seems to me that none of these areas carries as much force as identity, as it shapes the way almost every other decision is made.

Schwartz points out that all this “baggage” of identity that can now be cast aside (if chosen to do so) used to tell the world a lot about who we are. It used to shape us in very specific ways. He notes that this no longer has to be the case, and that this is both good and bad. It is good because it has done away with much oppression, but bad because it now burdens us with that much more from which to choose. This expanded notion of identity (a product of the times in which we live, thus an aspect of fate) fails to acknowledge the more grounding elements of fate and preaches literally that we can be anyone we want to be. With the belief that we are in total control of every aspect of our lives, automatically comes the belief that we are responsible for not living up to the ideal, whatever that may be. In his research, LeBouf actually shows that people will make conflicting choices based on which aspects of identity are salient at any particular time. While each individual must certainly navigate the many fateful labels assigned to he or she, what this seems to indicate to me is the need for one dominant aspect of personal identity (fate) to be brought to the surface. It is upon this dominant aspect of identity that consistently healthy decisions may be made.

Meade suggests this very thing. He argues that, while we do need to understand aspects of our fate such as race, ethnicity, milieu, and family origins – and come to terms with them (seconds agreements), what is most important and what will help filter out much unneeded information in the healthiest way possible is that we listen to one particular aspect of our fate – our own psyche, our soul, our own unique personality. He calls this the first agreement of life, the one that will keep tugging us toward our innate desires despite our decision to give in to its pull or not. We will not be truly happy unless we live in alignment with this agreement. He says that, “it is the agreement that must be kept and all other agreements must be renegotiated in order that we keep it” (129). It is the built-in pattern of our personality and contains our own individual requirements for happiness. He continues: “Regardless of outer appearances and contrary notions, each soul has its inner imagination that tries to return to full awareness through dreams and visions, through sudden insights and strange revelations” (125). This may sound somewhat mystical, and admittedly it is. The fact is that, as much as we try to assign formulas to life, by and large we still do not understand it. Embracing this aspect of one’s identity – the personality, though it is not one that we fully understand, automatically constrains a person in healthy ways which limits choice in all other areas and therefore reduces anxiety over who we are. It seems that what we come to believe about our identity has implications for all the other areas of life. It determines in large part whether or not we will acknowledge the most meaningful aspect of our fate – our personality – and move on to form a unique destiny.

Regardless of whether we decide to live in alignment with our personality, there are a few fateful things we should know about before undertaking any decision. These are things which, in my opinion, should be included in any general education curriculum if we are to learn to properly filter the choices available. Schwartz says that in making any decision, we must weigh three different types of utility against each other to determine what choices we will make over others. He explains that experienced utility is the range of feelings we experience when living out the choice we have made, expected utility is how we expect that any decision will make us feel, and remembered utility is how we remember any given choice making us feel. He explains that rarely do these three line up in any given choice or situation. Usually what we expected to feel by making a certain choice is far higher than what is actually felt in the situation. Using Daniel Kahneman’s research, he shows that how we remember a situation depends more on how we felt at the peak and end of the situation rather than the experience as a whole. What this boils down to is that, because we are fairly inaccurate at predicting both how we will feel and remembering how something actually felt, we often set ourselves up for disappointment on the front end by not creating adequate filters. This disappointment is only further complicated with each layer of choice we add.

When making any choice, in addition to our past experiences and expectations for the future, we depend upon accurate information about aspects of the decision in question. This is where Russell’s quote about the inadequacy of the education system becomes most relevant. If we do not learn to weigh evidence effectively and sort information properly (filter it), we are easily persuaded by the first suggestion that comes our way, regardless of its source and the weight that source should be given in the decision-making process. As Schwartz notes, “more than anything else, we get information from advertising” (53). Corporations regularly spend millions of dollars to make sure their information or misinformation is the default source for most Americans.

It has often been noted that five corporations own and control the flow of information on all of the dominant mass media: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Viacom, and Bertelsmann (Bagdikian, 27-54). These corporations know and operate under the assumption that the average American does not have time to do proper research and effectively sort through the flood of information available online. This is why they hire psychologists to analyze which words and phrases resonate with which groups of people. This “target-marketing”, as they call it, assures that their message will be heard and adopted by the desired audience. While the internet seems a bit more slippery in terms of information control, it seems that the sheer amount of information works to the advantage of corporations, sort of a divide and conquer strategy where people end up going with what is familiar. As Schwartz points out, “The Internet can give us information that is absolutely up-to-the-minute, but as a resource, it is democratic to a fault – everyone with a computer and an Internet hookup can express their opinion, whether they know anything or not” (55). Both of these issues could be guarded against with the proper education – one which promotes critical thinking and the creation of the necessary filters.

Given the extent of this corporate control of information, the American dedication to unqualified freedom of speech, and an ineffective education apparatus, it becomes increasingly difficult for people to accurately sort through all the bad information and get down to the more objective information which should govern the realm of their decision-making. As Schwartz asks, “Even if we can accurately determine what we want and then find good information, in a quantity we can handle, do we really know how to analyze, sift, weigh, and evaluate it to arrive at the right conclusions and make the right choices? Not Always” (56). Schwartz once again uses research by Daniel Kahneman to demonstrate yet another aspect of fate – that we give more credence to some types of information over others. Kahneman calls this availability heuristic, our ability to create mental shortcuts based on information that is more salient or vivid in our mind than other information. What this means is that we are hard-wired to value a personal discussion with our neighbor about a certain model of car over an objective analysis made up of thousands of tests and interviews. This is yet another fateful aspect of our psychology that is manipulated by advertising, “…whose main objective is to make products appear salient and vivid” (59). Of course, when one becomes aware of this tendency, one can act to mediate its affects.

Yet another handicap we must understand about our decision-making process is how we compare the option in question to other options. If we set our anchor, or standard of comparison, at one point, something might seem incredibly appealing, whereas if we set it at another, something may not seem so appealing. One example of this phenomenon is the following: “In a store displaying suits that cost over $1500, an $800 pinstripe may seem like a good buy. But in a store in which most of the suits cost $500, that same $800 suit might seem like an extravagance” (62). This same phenomenon is the reason some stores seem to have sales all of the time. By manipulating where we set our anchor points (regular price), they make us feel like we are getting a good deal even though they are still turning a great profit.

Any context that we place a given option into may also be manipulated through language. Kahneman and associates noted that people will choose entirely different options based on how questions are framed. They explain, “…based on one presentation, people chose risk, and based on the other, certainty… it is the framing of the choice that affects our perception of it, and in turn affects what we choose” (66). This led them to the realization that our minds do assess risk differently than a guaranteed option. In further researching this phenomenon, Kahneman developed what he calls prospect theory.

He combines the many factors influencing our decision-making skills into this one concise theory. In this theoretical explanation about how we evaluate options and make decisions, he addresses how satisfied we are with regard to where we set our reference point and how that reference point is affected by the way the choice is framed. He takes into account the fact that we experience losses more intensely than gains. He also takes note of what he calls the “law of diminishing marginal utility”, the fact that after the subsistence level, each additional unit of wealth satisfies less than the previous and each unit of loss after a certain point is felt less intensely. This compelling theory is a remarkably clear illustration of the complicated nature of our decision-making processes, one that makes clear how there is much more involved psychologically than simply having access to information.

Based on Kahneman’s research, Schwartz draws some conclusions about choice. He says, “As options increase, the effort involved in making decisions increases, so mistakes hurt even more” (74). Mistakes are not only more likely, but we feel them more deeply and are more likely to take responsibility for these mistakes. Schwartz makes a couple of helpful distinctions. He differentiates between “pickers” and “choosers”, the first only being able to grasp for one of the options presented and the second making a more conscious effort to weigh consequences and choose or create the right option. He also makes a distinction between what he calls “maximizers” and “satisficers”. He says that maximizers aspire to “seek and accept only the best” (77), while satisficers “settle for something that is good enough and [do] not worry about the possibility that there might be something better” (78). Schwartz says that satisficers may still have high standards, but the point is that they do not have the impossibly high standards that much advertising suggests we should have. They are able to create effective filters. He further clarifies the distinction: “Nobody is a maximizer in every decision, and probably everybody is in some. Perhaps what distinguishes maximizers from satisficers is the range and number of decisions in which the individual operates as one or the other”(92). In other words, it is our overall approach to decision-making that is most important in determining how satisfied we are with the decisions we make. Through their research, Schwartz and colleagues show the tendency to satisfice to be much healthier than the tendency to maximize, and even suggests a causal connection between expanded choice and the tendency to maximize. If the causal nature of this relationship is true, it shows that our culture (by constantly expanding choice) actually promotes unhealthy approaches to decision-making and in turn less overall life satisfaction.

Another way of describing how we come to cope with too much choice, concerns what Schwartz calls “second order decisions”. These are “rules, presumptions, standards, and routines [that] constrain ourselves and limit the decisions we face” (114). They are yet another form of filtering. One illustration of such second order decisions is given by Todd Gitlin in his work, Media Unlimited. Gitlin lays out several “navigation styles” that we employ when coming to terms with the barrage of information we experience on a daily basis. These navigation styles focus the individual’s energy in such a way as to automatically eschew extraneous information and choice. The first is what he calls the fan, a primarily emotional stance that one takes toward any number of things (a genre, style, sport, team, show, game, etc). He says that, “Fandom is a form of love, which is finally incomprehensible… (129). It seems to be a social language or connection which has specific emotional payoffs for us. Gitlin continues: “The most discriminating fan is the connoisseur, seeking the high ground” (129). So it seems that a fan can either maximize or satisfice, but that this maximizing or satisficing is highly targeted. It seems that the same is true of the other navigations styles (or second order decisions) as well. The second navigation style is the critic, who it is noted, is a chooser not a picker. As Gitlin says, “Everyone must be not only a fan but a critic…Everyone makes aesthetic judgments, sorting the good from the bad, distinguishing oneself from others through such judgments” (135). As he points out, our consumer society makes room for every type of critic on the spectrum of satisficing to maximizing in any number of areas.

A third example of a navigation style is that of the paranoid, who through their irrational fears, are able to sizably limit the amount of information relevant to them and predetermine choice in a variety of circumstances. As Gitlin explains, “With the gift of paranoia, the mind spies out the agents of darkness, seeing through the big lie to the big truth that bamboozled creatures are blind to. Paranoia mobilizes not only shared ideology but emotions – terror along with smugness, pity for the naïve” (144). He describes paranoia as legitimate fear taken to the extreme. Obviously there is a whole range of how paranoia might play out, from the more educated to the less, from the more discriminating to the less. A fourth example Gitlin describes is the exhibitionist, someone who basks in the abundance of the information age and demands their fifteen minutes (or more) of fame. By setting themselves on the path of exhibiting themselves on screen, on air, or in print, they simultaneously narrow down the field of information relevant to them. They have made a choice which entails passing up other options. Other styles of navigation include the ironist, the jammer, the secessionist, and the abolitionist. What Gitlin essentially does, by pointing out all of these styles of navigating the media and information of our age, is to show how one aspect of each individual’s fate – their personality – interacts with other aspects of their fate – the social reality of too much information and too much choice, as well as education, or lack of education, on how to make effective and meaningful choices. His discussion illustrates some of the more broad, second-order filters we can create. It also describes, to some extent, ways in which we can choose to respond to both of these aspects of our fate in shaping an authentic destiny for ourselves.

Continuing with his discussion, Schwartz notes that, “The choice of when to be a chooser may be the most important choice we have to make” (104). This may be the most important filter we create. He moves on to make what is essentially a scientific case in defense of virtue, showing that some choices and objects of choice are inherently more meaningful than others. He shows that even though explanations of how this process works may be elusive, we can still determine scientifically what does work in terms of happiness and well-being. One method for gathering such information is the Satisfaction with Life Scale, which is often combined with other scientific measures of human happiness. One example finding from the information gathered is as follows: “Obviously money matters. But what these surveys also reveal is that money doesn’t matter as much as you might think. Once a society’s level of per capita wealth crosses a certain threshold from poverty to adequate subsistence, further increases in wealth have almost no effect on happiness” (106). Schwartz points out that the main difference in countries with comparable per capita wealth boils down to how much a society’s culture promotes the making and sustaining of social relationships. Of course, the specific nature of those specific relationships matters just as much, if not more than the fact that those deep social relationships are there. Nonetheless, healthy social relationships could be listed as a virtue, something to be sought for its own sake.

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, responding to the same ever-expanding sea of information, misinformation and choice as Schwartz and Gitlin, offers yet another perspective on filtering this overabundance of information effectively. He suggests that we take something we already employ in academia – the principle of selective academic intolerance – and expand this into a more general notion – the principle of selective rational intolerance – to be used in the public sphere, in education, politics, and the like. MacIntyre points out ways in which we are already rationally intolerant and shows how those are good things. He gets right down to the bones of the issue by stating the three political premises under which he approaches the issue:

In contemporary societies our common goods can only be determined in concrete and particular terms through widespread grassroots shared rational deliberation. Such deliberation should be organized so as to ensure any decision-making and consequent action. For such deliberation to be recognized as both rational and just, the possibility of access to it must be equally available to every adult member of our society.

His argument is simultaneously individual and sociological. He says that his argument allows one to ask what types of constraints need to be imposed on deliberation if political headway is to be made. It also allows one to ask what types of constraints are necessary to achieve personal well-being.

MacIntyre concedes that rational deliberation may be restricted by tolerating too little, as in China, Russia, India, and any number of examples from the past. With this concession made, he moves on toward his first point, that rational deliberation may be restricted also by tolerating too much. The first example he gives is “free flow of both information and misinformation”. This is, of course, exactly what Schwartz is referring to in his concern for gathering accurate information and the impact of expanded choice on the individual. MacIntyre explains how this free flow produces an information glut, which given insufficient education or instruction (Russell’s point) can prove quite debilitating and unpredictable. The second example given is that the nature of the distribution of education is such that many of those with compelling political concerns will never be able to develop the habits of rational deliberation. The third example relates to what he calls, “pseudo-democratic babble and current prejudice”. He says that grassroots groups, with no way of ordering agendas, will allow themselves to be distracted and diverted by these things. He argues that very often the agendas that do emerge remain weak due to their lack of order and thus inability to channel energies into pursuit of a common good. This is the failure of grassroots politics.

MacIntyre moves on to open his case in defense of a third political and personal option, a grassroots option between the extremes of tolerating too much and tolerating too little. He begins the discussion of this third way by recommending various ideas which, were all sides offered a more equal footing in terms of rational deliberation, no one should be allowed to entertain any longer. Examples of these ideas are as follows: Holocaust denial (bad history = bad politics), denial of well-founded scientific discoveries, such as the age of the earth (44 to 47 percent of Americans believe the world to be less than 10,000 years old), and denial of the rational principle of non-contradiction. Listing another example, MacIntyre makes the case that public insults, when published, should bring with them accountability for what is said. He says that by force of law, though depending on the situation, the parties concerned should be called to task and made to pursue rational deliberation on the subject.

To fine-tune his point, MacIntyre discusses the more general question of censorship, noting how it was implemented by the Catholic Church and Soviet Russia as their large populations of peasants learned to read. He seems to be on the right track when he says that what these institutions set up was a very bad response to a very good question. He says that they set up a system that was aimed at creating an individual who would practice self-censorship through negative reinforcement. He says that the main problem with these sorts of systems is that they tend toward the creation of mindlessness and memorized responses when what really should be developed is critical thinking.

As he notes, every good parent, every teacher, every successful person is a censor. He makes an excellent point: “The goods of reading are only achieved through having learned to select what to read, in what order to read it, and how to read it.” So not only do some things have more inherent meaning, as Schwartz suggests, but MacIntyre brings up yet another compelling point – that many of the ideals that shape American life and policy were drawn up under the assumption that these three academic criteria would be met. MacIntyre notes that political philosophers like Mill and Jefferson came out of a tradition that was perhaps too oppressive and too rigorous in its intolerance. In other words, they were responding to too many constraints by throwing off all constraints. What they failed to realize, as MacIntyre points out, was that the academic discrimination that they had learned in their early studies was fundamental to their sorting, filtering, and processing of information – that without learning these skills, people could be effectively crippled by too much information and misinformation.

MacIntyre notes that we should look at the censors of the past and learn the right lessons, not the wrong ones. He asserts that there is an overabundance of useless and distracting information out there and that a type of loose censorship (carried over from education) is necessary to help us sift through all this. He says that there is also a type of censorship that is admirable because it notes that reading (or listening or viewing) certain things can be dangerous to one’s soul/human flourishing, but that by taking the intellectual risks associated with reading these texts (when prepared properly), we enter the arena where we can really begin to grow. MacIntyre’s proposition seems plausible as it would help individuals learn healthy constraints on information which would aid in choosing not only what to choose, but when to choose as well. Undoubtedly we will still need room to make mistakes and have negative experiences, for these are the ultimate teachers, but I think the overall point to be taken away is that a very specific type of education is necessary to help us approach decision-making in a healthy way. In order to achieve such a goal, we would definitely have to restructure certain policies, especially in education, but in other areas as well.

Conclusion and Recommendations

If we come to realize that we are in fact constrained to a certain extent by fate, much unneeded stress goes by the wayside. For in coming to realize who we actually are (personality, gifts, talents, abilities, and struggles) and the specific familial and social contexts of our lives, we begin to realize that we do not come into this world empty handed. We see that we actually come quite well-equipped (personal strengths) to interact with the contexts into which we are born, but that our culture, in the name of individual freedom and unlimited choice, attempts to rob us of these things in order to make consumers out of us. Both Schwartz and Gitlin lay out some interesting and compelling descriptions of the ways in which we filter or fail to filter the information of our age and come to make choices based on that information. They suggest that some styles of filtering are healthier than others. Schwartz in particular gives us an in-depth description of our psychological predispositions and the impact that the manipulation of these has on our decision-making processes. A wide-spread education that took all this into account would go a long way in reducing the anxiety fueled by ever-increasing choice and the psychological manipulation by companies attempting to sell us things. Corporations advocate unlimited freedom of choice because they are hedging their bets that we will choose their products or services, often at the expense of our personal well-being. As MacIntyre reminds us, there is nothing inherently good about unlimited options if we do not know which options and which choices will lead to more healthy and satisfying lives. We need to aim at becoming a society which educates its young on how to become effective decision makers. Such a society would necessarily have to spend much time helping its citizens create proper filtering techniques.

Bibliography and Other Reading (*)

Bagdikian, Ben. The New Media Monopoly. Beacon Press, 2004.

Gitlin, Todd. Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives. Metropolitan Books, 2001.

Gostin, L.O. & Gostin, K.G. “A Broader Liberty: J.S. Mill, Paternalism, and the Public’s Health” in Public Health, December 2008. *

LeBouf, R.A., Shafir, E. & Bayuk, J.B. “The Conflicting Choices of Alternating Selves” in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, August 2009.

MacIntyre, Alasdair. Intolerance, Censorship, and Other Requirements for Rationality (lecture). University of Notre Dame, 2010.

Meade, Michael. Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul. Greenfire Press, 2010.

Roberts, Sam. Who We Are Now: The Changing Face of America in the 21st Century. Times Books, 2004.*

Russell, Bertrand. The Will to Doubt. Philosophical Library, 1958.

Schwartz, Barry. The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. Harper Perennial, 2004.

–The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less (lecture). TED Conference, 2007.

Shirky, Clay. It’s Not Information Overload. It’s Filter Failure (lecture). Web 2.0 Exposition NY, 2008.

[1] According to various health and well-being indices.