The Choice Illusion

How many choices do we make in a day?

Standing in the cereal aisle, you decide on a box of raisin bran. You realize you need laundry detergent as you walk toward the register, so you peer at the choices, looking for something cheap. You grab the value brand and proceed to the check-out.

Is the grocery store the best place to buy laundry detergent? You have no idea what's in that stuff. The ingredients list takes up half of the back label and most of it you've never heard of. Will this stuff even clean your clothes? And even if it does, will it clog-up your washer? And if not, where does it go after you use it? Does it break down? Can animals eat it? Will it get in our water supply? Is it safe to breathe and touch?

You don't have time to think about all of that. Especially not when you buy at least 5 products every time you shop here. After all, you came here to get cereal, and you're walking away with raisin bran, laundry detergent (you needed that too), chips and salsa (it looked yummy), a bottle of water (you were thirsty), and some dish rags (your old ones are falling apart). Who knows what's in all of that stuff? You sure don't, and you definitely don't have time to read all those labels and look all that stuff up.

And look at all the choices! The cereal alone takes up an entire aisle. It took you one full minute to decide on the raisin bran and that wasn't even trying very hard. Can you imagine if you really looked at every choice on the shelf? No way do you have time for that. Not to mention the other items you're buying. Not to mention the other items you buy at other places of business, like clothes, or a car.

So what then? How do you make your choices? That looks good. That's pretty cheap. That's on sale. My friend said this works. I saw an ad for this.

Are you really making a choice if you're just buying what you see? There may be 100 kinds of cereal, but there are only dozens of brands. Those brands don't care what choice you make as long as it's one of the 15 varieties they produce. And your grocery store doesn't care what brand you buy as long as you buy it at their location. Or one of their 5 other locations in your city. And even if you go to another grocery store, you will only see a shelf full of the same brands as the store you're standing in. The huge farms supplying the ingredients (corn, for example) to the companies that make this cereal don't care where you buy it, as long as it's got their corn in it. And the corporations supplying the genetically modified seeds that the farmers are planting don't really have to care what cereal you buy or where you buy it from, at all, because their seeds are used to grow the ingredients that are in practically every cereal you could buy and in all the other products at your grocery store (or the other big name grocery store down the street).

So what choice do you have really? Raisin bran or that other brand of raisin bran? Or, raisin brand or that other cereal made by the same company? You'll just buy whatever looks best or cheapest here at the store you're currently in, rather than take the time to do literally hours of research for every product you purchase so that you can what, be healthier? Help the environment? Get educated? You seriously don't have time for that.

But I do. I plan to make time. I will try to examine everything from food and grocery stores to education and cultural values. You, as a fellow human, have the right to know what I find. So here it is:

The Choice Illusion: Looking Past the Shelf in Front of You

It's time to make some real choices.