The Myth of Choice_ Personal Responsibility in a World of Limits - Kent Greenfield [0]
The
Myth
of
Choice
Personal Responsibility
in a World of Limits
Kent Greenfield
Published with assistance from the Louis Stern Memorial Fund.
Copyright © 2011 by Kent Greenfield.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.
Epigraph on p. vi: Isaac Bashevis Singer, as quoted in Stefan Kanfer, “Isaac Singer’s Promised City,” City Journal, Summer 1997 (available at http://www.city-journal.org).
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Designed by Sonia Shannon
Set in Fournier type by Newgen North America.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Greenfield, Kent.
The myth of choice: personal responsibility in a world of limits / Kent Greenfield.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-300-16950-8 (hb: perm paper) 1. Choice (Psychology) 2. Decision making. 3. Responsibility. I. Title.
BF448.G744 2011
153.8′3—dc22
2011013221
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Dana
We have to believe in free will; we have no choice.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer
Contents
Introduction
PART I: THE CENTRALITY OF CHOICE
1. Choices, Choices, Choices
2. In Love with Choice
PART II: LIMITS AND INFLUENCES
3. Our Choices, Our Brains
4. Choice and Culture
5. Choice and Power
6. Choice and the Free Market
PART III: WHAT TO DO
7. The Problem with Personal Responsibility
8. Umpires, Judges, and Bad Choices
9. Building Choice in a World of Limits
Acknowledgments
Notes
Credits
Index
Introduction
MOST OF US, MOST OF the time, like to think we are in control of our lives. We are the masters of our own fate. We make our own decisions. In the words of the cheesy poster that hung on my bedroom wall during high school, we “follow our own star.”
Whether politically liberal or conservative, we balk at government limitations on choice and fight those limits with legal arguments about rights and political rhetoric about freedom. Liberals demand access to abortions, want to be able to purchase “medical” marijuana, and don’t appreciate being patted down to get on a plane. Conservatives don’t like requirements to buy health insurance or pay taxes, bristle at limits on gun ownership and school prayer, and decry government regulation of everything from food to the environment. If you’re on the left, you’re called a civil libertarian; if you’re on the right, you may call yourself a Tea Partier. Civil libertarians want the government out of their bedrooms; Tea Partiers want the government out of their wallets.
Liberals and conservatives may disagree about the specifics of what they want to be free to choose, but both sides believe that Choice is Good. And of course they are both correct that freedom and individual decision making need to be protected, applauded, and engendered.
But there are a couple of big problems with this fixation on choice.
The first is that we face a host of choices that we’re unsure should “count” as choices. Examples abound. If your boss gives you a choice between losing your job and sleeping with him, that is not a choice that merits deference. In fact, he’s not allowed to give you that choice at all. But it hasn’t been this way for long. As we know from watching Mad Men, such understandings were long implicit in the workplace. What if you’re on a bus trip and a policeman stands over you and gives you a choice between getting off and allowing him to search your luggage? Courts have