The Illusion of Choice
Written by John Berling Hardy on September 3rd, 2009
Decades ago, when I was in high school, I remember studying China in Geography class. I distinctly recall having the impression of the Chinese living in some kind of Orwellian hell. One image which remained branded into my memory was that of vast roadways filled with throngs of Chinese all riding the same black bicycles.
Under capitalism the everyday man or woman is coerced into participating in the great Game by covert means. We are manipulated, not press-ganged. The pitch is that our society is free – that we entertain freedom of choice, and power to determine the outcomes of our own lives. The reality is that this supposed choice is illusory, but this reality is so cunningly veiled that it would be fair to say it is almost incomprehensible to us – as far as we are concerned, we do have choice, when it comes to where we live, what we read and who we spend our time with.
We are given daily choices between a seemingly huge variety of products in the shops. The deception only becomes apparent when we realise that most of these products are essentially the same. Quantity has come to supplant quality, and to conform is the new norm. Factors like pollution and the congestion which characterises our cities have reached the stage where they affect everyone, regardless of wealth. To give two examples of industries which illustrate this phenomenon, let us focus our attention on the food industry and the news media.
It used to be the case that news, as broadcast by the major networks, was covered in a half hour programme which went out every evening and was presented by journalists whose motivation was to describe, rather than discuss, the facts. The content of these programmes differed little across the networks, and they were remarkably uninfluenced by political bias. Newscasters were conduits for relaying information, not analysts intent on assessing it.
These days each of our many 24 hour channels exists only to fill time, and as a result there is an increasing amount of analysis, meaning that the news becomes biased. The time spent on the actual facts is relatively limited, and more and more of the programmes are devoted to sharing opinions. As a result the emphasis is on us, the viewers, to chose from a range of politically-influenced news broadcasts with different agendas. Theoretically, any individual put off by what one newscaster is saying is free to turn his attention to a different point of view being set forth on another channel.
The reality, of course, is rather different. Viewers will gravitate towards a news channel which shares their particular bias. Meanwhile for all the choices now on offer, the original option has been taken off the table. No longer can we sit down in the evening to watch an apolitical, unbiased news broadcast with the sole desire of finding out the facts about our world. That choice is gone.
Let’s turn now to the food industry, one of the most notable success stories of the capitalist epoch. Franchising has created a system in which we are faced with a vast array of cuisines to choose from, from all parts of the world, and all available at remarkably cheap prices. So comprehensive has been the takeover of fast food in recent decades that obesity has become a chronic problem for our society as a result.
The underlying facts of the food industry’s success, however, give some cause for concern. Food is now treated with so many chemicals that it often becomes completely unrecognisable upon closer inspection. Healthy, nutritious food is replaced with mass-produced junk, and our diet and lifestyle suffers as a consequence. Animals are mistreated by farmers keeping them in inhumane conditions, and the crops upon which we rely have been genetically modified, with who knows what lasting results? Again our need for quantity has replaced our desire to demand high quality. So extreme is the damage done by the food industry that it is impossible for scientists to accurately calculate the long-term toxic effects of the junk food we regularly shovel into our mouths.
We exist in an artificial reality, conditioned by other people. Within it, choice is simply an illusion – a way of keeping us in check while actually depriving us of options. Society now exerts so great a control over us that any choice with which we are presented has in effect been made for us already. We are conditioned to think in a particular way, and we therefore make the choice which will help us more easily to conform. It is as though we are children who love chocolate above all else. Faced with a choice of ice cream flavours it makes no difference whether there are five or five hundred flavour to choose from – we will always pick chocolate. As a result the other four – or four hundred and ninety-nine – options are obsolete: false choices discounted without thought. There is a deep-seated irony in this system, since it seems to us, the children, that we are getting exactly what we want and making a choice at the same time.
As simplistic and limited as this sounds, this is precisely the way in which we perceive the world. The infinite possibilities that the world presents us with literally every second of our lives are filtered to such an extent that we are blind to all but that infinitesimally small selection we have come to know.
Now the Chinese have their choice all the world’s bicycles. They can choose between racing bikes, trail bikes street bikes, you name it. They can have any of these in all the colors of the rainbow, and then some. I wonder how happy they are now?
John Berling Hardy is dedicated to exposing the real driver of events in our lives. For more of his writings please visit www.playingtheplayers.com
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 3rd, 2009 at 7:32 am and is filed under Online Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: authentic relationship, big lie, Competitive Edge, Economic Crisis, Freedom, Manipulation, manipulative selling, mind control, Online Business, organizational behavior, real secret, reclaiming your life, secret, winning in life
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