There were four of us in the garage for Barry Schwartz. At first the ideas seemed very familiar and consequently not very challenging. A psychological attack on capitalism and the free reign of individualism present in consumerism, the personal growth movement, more choice is more fun.
Then we started sharing stories of our frustrating forays into buying domestic items and how time consuming this could become when there were so many choices to make. We then got interested in “how” we choose and discovered a range of responses to the overwhelming aspects of choosing. Some made the first choice that looked like it might fit the bill in order to avoid the time-waste, others got very fine tuned into fitting their needs to the what was on offer, others used trusted friends or colleagues as a source of advice and just did what they did. Ask someone under 25 and a bit geeky to find out what virus protection you should put on your computer. A sort of delegation of the task of sorting the information in the ocean to someone who knows how to surf it.
We kept wondering how people choose and talked about desire and its infinite varieties and how connecting with our values helped limit the scope of our choosing, is this OK for me, for my family, for other humans, the species, the planet. One of us described how finding out about the lives of coffee-growers helped make it easy to buy coffee. She would always choose the fair trade variety and this made the process simpler.
I wondered about levels of choosing: a kind of reptilian response to our environment (if it looks good I'll eat it and as much of it as I can before someonelse gets there); a mammalian response (this is for my mate, me and our offspring, and possible the pack); a human response ( how can I best use this resource balancing the needs of myself, my loved ones and those I know who need it?); a change maker response ( how does this resource become sustainable managed and used to for the common good and to create systemic change in the whole system?)
Later I wondered if we could have thought about this more in relationship to Changemakers itself. How we choose our projects or the individuals and groups we support through financial encouragement.
We finished looking forward to our next meeting which is a 5-10-5-10 meeting.
