Problem with Freedom and Choices: Critical Analysis

Freedom has always been a topic of endless discussion. Communism and socialism claim to have something defined as liberty for them because of their social equality ideals. Someone that has a consistent approach is John Stuart Mill, in his work, On Liberty, he recognizes the difference between liberty as the freedom to act and liberty as the absence of coercion (being forced to do something). Mill also sought to define the ‘nature and limits of the power which can be legitimately exercised by society over the individual” and as such, he describes an inherent and continuous antagonism between liberty and authority and thus, the prevailing question becomes ‘how to make the fitting adjustment between individual independence and social control.’ (‘Liberty—Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia’, n.d.) Barry Schwartz created the definition of freedom that says you need to maximize choice to maximize freedom. He assumes that choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied. (Schwartz, n.d.)

The problem that we are facing now is that we have so many choices, and we fear making a bad decision. The three basic concepts of freedom are considered as: freedom to act, freedom to elect, freedom to transcend. Aristotle is the forerunner of these three big concepts. He never explicitly mentions them but in his philosophical system they are implicit fundamentals. (Flórez R. & Restrepo, 2007).

One example that Barry makes is with cell phones; we have an unlimited variety of phones; this causes that when we want to buy a phone, we want the one that has the fewest features. Another example is with healthcare. You always have to choices A or B. A has benefits and risks. B also has benefits and risks. When you are a patient, you have a ¨patient autonomy this means that you can choose between A or B depending of your money, your culture, your religion, etc. Despite this sounds like a good thing it is shifting the responsibility for decision-making from somebody who knows something to somebody who knows nothing and is not in the best shape to be making decisions.

Another thing that is affected by freedom and choice is our identity. We don’t inherit an identity; we get to invent it. This means that every day you must decide what kind of person you want to be. The bad thing about freedom and choices is that it produces paralysis rather than liberation. With so many options people decide to make the fewest choices because they feel anxious and stress about making decisions. Another bad thing is that even if we manage to overcome the paralysis and make a choice, we end up less satisfied with the result of the choice than we would be if we had fewer options to choose from.

When you have a lot of choices, this makes you have high expectations. You get disappointed in comparison to what I expected. Adding options to people’s lives can’t help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be. And what that’s going to produce is less satisfaction with results, even when they’re good results.

To sum up, the more freedom and choices we have, the more expectation we have. Also, you are never going to be satisfied to with your decisions. The only way to know that you are making the best decisions is that you don’t have decisions, despite this means to be free with limits. Everything that we do and are is affected by this freedom.