Challenging Choices—Part 1

One could describe life as a continual process of choices. All people and all creatures face interminable choices—every moment of every day. Should I go this way or that? Should I believe this person or that one? Should I eat this food or that one? Should I mate with this individual or another one? We inherently know that we face choices which will have a major influence on our future well-being, so it behooves us to make intelligent choices, if we want to happily inhabit that future.

Animals don't possess the cognitive capabilities of humans, and thus face simpler choices than we do, for which evolution has often provided them with fairly clear options. They are not burdened with a mind that complicates the alternatives—either from convoluted thinking or from the double-think indecisiveness that we often experience, when faced with choices.

As we humans weigh our choices, we often encounter a variety of questions. What future consequences might I face, when I select a given option? Which choice will be best for me or someone else whom I care for? Do I have enough information to make an intelligent choice, and if not, how do I get more facts? Do the alternatives placed before me make sense, or might there be a better way? What choice is the more moral one?

That last question can be a crucial one to ask. A source of hesitation we can feel when choosing is that none of the options is a clear winner—let alone even a moral one. For example, when we enter the voting booth today we frequently know that neither candidate would really do an honest or ethical job. So the challenge we encounter in a case like this is, which choice is the least immoral? We too often are faced with selecting the lesser of two evils.

When we're shopping we're often faced with a similar dilemma: Aside from quality, which product is more principled (if either one actually is)? Do I buy organic potatoes or factory farmed ones? Do I buy commercial or cage-free eggs? Can I trust the seller that his claim of organic is true? Do I buy a product made in the US or select a Chinese-manufactured one? Which news source can I rely on to give me honest coverage?

Many times it can help, in sorting through all the complex aspects surrounding a choice—especially when it's not clear which one is actually honorable—to ask which is the least immoral.

But there's another way to deal with the challenge of making a choice, when none of them feel right: to ask myself, do I need to make a choice—particularly, right now? What's the rush? It may sometimes be imperative to decide quickly, but often we don't have to choose right now—especially if the choices all appear questionable. If I can delay making a choice, as I ponder the situation, I may find that a better choice soon enters the picture. Maybe, if I pause to reconsider, I can figure out a better way. Maybe I will even find that, by careful consideration, other options can be found—options that may have been there all along. 

It's one thing to ponder a choice that I've presented to myself, such as, Do I ask a favor of Fred or Joe? It's quite another, when society has presented me a choice. Do I vote for Fred or Joe? Which movie will I select tonight? Which brand of cell phone should I buy? Maybe neither Fred nor Joe would make a good representative. Maybe both movies are excessively violent. Maybe my current cell phone does a fine job, and if I think about it, it might make ecological sense not to get another phone. Even if I try to recycle my old phone, I may discover that it can get sent to Malaysia, where someone becomes exposed to toxic fumes, when they try to recover its useful materials.

In many situations like these, the most moral choice for me could be a refusal—a decision not to make a choice at all. I often wonder what would happen if they held an election that offered two unethical candidates, and nobody voted for either one? What would happen if we consumers opted not to consume in certain situations—especially when none of the options are moral? What if two outrageous websites that offered equally shallow and false information, had no one visiting them? We do not have to compliantly go along with corrupt alternatives. We can say no.

More choices next time…