What is choice and is it really something positive?
Firstly, the problem of predestination – is our future defined, unchangeable or is it ‘in flux’, it changes with every choice we make? I shall ignore the in-between option of multiple realities where every possible result of every single choice is played out in a reality that may or may not be the one we are consciously inhabiting. Unfortunately there is no real way of checking whether we have a choice or it is merely an illusion. What we can ponder about is the value of choice – is it something actually good?
The reason this topic crossed my mind is actually Saving Hope. They brought up arranged marriage as a plot point – yet another damsel in distress who loves someone that is not her husband-to-be. And that reminded me that the divorce rate for modern, ‘voluntary’ marriages is a lot higher than the divorce rate for arranged marriages. This is observed in countries where divorce is allowed. Sure, the difference may be accounted by cultural differences – sometimes divorce is morally unacceptable – or by the fact that as a rule you have up to one arranged marriage per life. That means chronic divorcers raise the rate of marriages where the significant other is picked by mutual attraction. Note that this holds true for absolute and relative numbers of divorce so there is no mucking about with foggy interpretation of statistics.
But the question remains, is choice good? We tend to have problems making big decisions: who we want to become, who to marry, who to trust; sometimes we have trouble with small decisions like what to wear, what to have for dinner, where to go on vacation… Without choice there would be no fretting or regret about making the wrong call, it would be set by ‘fate’. Life itself would be on autopilot, we would simply glide through it as if it were one of those fake-4D movies where when you see water being splashed at you, there actually is water being splashed at you. This question is especially intriguing because we don’t actually know whether or not we actually have any choice in controlling what happens to us. Therefore we might be merely seeing a movie with splashing water and we would not be the wiser about it. Having choice creates the possibility of error – the mistakes we see are supposed to happen, hence not actual errors.
This problem has similarities with other problems, most famous of which would be chaos theory – by doing something that is not ‘supposed’ to be done could cause a chain of events that ends with catastrophe – not always due to the direct consequences of the action but most likely due to the extra time used. By choosing we could be dooming the entire Universe. So, is choice worth the risk?
Let’s rebunk those arguments.
Some say that choice is what makes life worth living, the quote “to live is to risk” appropriately explains why risking is necessary. Without risking, without adrenaline, all we are is pretty much drones – emotionless machines simply doing our part, never reaching higher, never striving farther, never living. Perhaps this is the case, perhaps not. After all, this is based on current experience which may or may not be based on the ability to make choices. To explain, the life we live, the risks we take, might not be optional. In this case choice does not really give us anything extra.
The same is with the chaos problem – how do we know that the natural course of things won’t end up with complete obliteration of life, looking at how humans are currently going at it, extinction is not really far off. So in conclusion, it is all a matter of perspective. As long as we don’t know whether present status is choice-enabled or not, we cannot make any real claims about the perks of either possibility. What we can say, is that the illusion choice is often more frustrating and liberating than the lack of it.
Maybe you have already made your choice and now you just have to understand why you made that choice.
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