Choose Decision!
by Benjamin Tripp

Americans love choices, but they hate decisions. In some ways this is at the root of our current national dilemma. We have a choice of airlines, shopping malls, grocery stores, and political parties. But to avoid having to make decisions about them, dangerous factors come into play: first, the choices appear almost identical. At least on the superficial, instinctive plane where important decisions get made, they're more or less the same. Second, we forget there are other options not immediately apparent-- instead just shrugging and buying into the offered paradigm, whether it works or not.

Ford or Chevy? Honda or Toyota? The differences at the level of our interaction with these vehicles are slim. They all have the same arrangement of pedals and controls, they all have the same configuration of windows, seats, engines and so forth. We don't buy a vehicle based on the labor practices of its corporate maker, the factory's environmental record, or its marketing practices in the developing world. We buy it because it's painted red. Or because dad had one just like it back in the '60s. Democrat or Republican? Same general malaise. Dad was a Republican, so you're a Republican. After all, Democrats are barely distinguishable from Republicans: they all swill corporate money from the same trough, they're all liars, and they're all hollow, empty little people living on the public dime. It's only when you get below the superficial that you discover Republicans are demonstrably evil, while Democrats are merely disgusting. And beyond that, we could even go for a third party. Who knew?

So in fact our choices are not identical, they just appear to be identical. They've been dumbed-down. Why is that? If Southwest Airlines has far and away the best employee benefits package, one would imagine this might give them an edge, but it doesn't. The only factor is price. Delta's shoddy maintenance of its aircraft is legendary among pilots. Does the consumer give a damn? Not really, if Delta has the best deal on a ticket to St. Louis. United and American are understaffed, on the edge of bankruptcy, and the planes are falling apart. I usually fly United because that's where the most frequent flyer miles accumulate, even at the risk of plummeting out of the sky on a pillar of burning jet fuel. Why? Because in a superficial way, all the airlines seem more or less the same. I make a choice because it's easier than making a decision.

What's the difference? I'm parsing words, so I'd better define them. I'm using the word 'choice' in the sense of picking from among a group of like things, as choosing an orange from a bin full of oranges, or a Schwarzenegger movie instead of a Willis or a Stallone movie, for example. One way or another, you're going to end up with a bad action movie and an orange, regardless of your particular choice. By 'decision', on the other hand, I mean deciding if you want an apple, an orange, a carrot, or some lingonberries. Do you want an animated dinosaur musical, a 1980's office comedy, or a Japanese arterial spray movie (I recommend 'Ichi The Killer')? These are decisions. Maybe you don't want a movie at all, maybe you want to listen to music. Decisions. Any ex-advertising guy, such as myself, will tell you that the key to unlocking consumer's wallets is providing them with a wealth of identical choices. The minute they have to make a decision, the money doesn't get spent, because Americans have an incredibly hard time making up their tiny minds.

Religion benefits disproportionately from this quirk of the American psyche. Everybody stays with whatever church they grew up in, no matter how ridiculous the premise of that faith is. But --and this is what I was driving at, all this time, thanks for sticking with me-- being Americans, they pick and choose which bits of the religion they believe in. It doesn't work that way, not in reality. The entire agenda of the church moves forward, bolstered up by millions of semi-believers that more or less just go along to get along. A friend of mine related it to acupuncture.

Lots of people believe acupuncture works, and I'm told aspects of the treatment are effective. Perfectly reasonable people attend acupuncturists. Ask them if they believe in energy flows of various kinds called 'chi' shifting around the body that can be diverted and redirected by the application of needles, they will tend to try to redefine that as nervous energy, or electricity; this is a redefinition of acupuncture that puts it in modern terms. Right? Wrong. Acupuncture is very explicitly about chi energy, and its details were set down during the Bronze Age in China. You can't pick and choose. Acupuncture is what it is, and rationalizing it doesn't work. You've turned a decision --do I believe that the body contains an ethereal form of energy called chi, which is not electricity-- and made it into a choice, which is 'acupuncture has some good things about it'. We have a strong tendency as a nation to want to split absolutes into bite-sized morsels, then choose the morsels we like.

My point is not about the efficacy of acupuncture, but rather that people take the parts they like, leave the parts they don't agree with, and yet support the whole thing in such a way that the good and bad parts all get promoted equally. They do the same thing with politics. Many Republicans will say they are 'fiscal' or 'social' conservatives, and yet they support the entire agenda even though they abhor certain aspects of the party line. If you believe there should be no taxes on corporations, you must also support anti-choice legislation against women, regardless of your stance on the issue. You've made a choice (no taxes for corporations), but not a decision (the greater good of women trumps my tax position). The difference is important. A choice is picking between A or B, the options presented to you. A decision is understanding that A or B may not be the entire range of options, and that a more complex, self-guided solution may be required.