In situations of life choice, we are often tormented by uncertainty. But after all, choice is not torture at all, but a chance to reveal your own “I”! Professor Ruth Chang offers a new way of looking at making difficult decisions.
What is a hard choice and how is it different from a simple one? Ruth Chang, professor at Rutgers University (USA), believes that it’s all about the ratio of possible options. If one is clearly better than the other, it’s easy to choose. But often we are faced with a choice in which the categories “better/worse/same” simply do not work. It can be a change of profession, a choice between potential spouses, a decision to raise a child in a foreign religion … “With a difficult choice, one option wins in one respect, the other option in another, but in general, none is an absolute favorite.”
Ruth Chang is a philosopher and professor at Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA). The scope of her research interests lies in areas related to the “incompatibility of human values.” The author raises issues of rational choice, reason and ethics in numerous articles, as well as in the books Making Comparisons Count (Studies in Ethics) and Incommensurability, Incomparability and Practical Reason.
Faced with such a choice, we continue to look for the best option, which simply does not exist. A fruitless search gives rise to a feeling of fear, uncertainty, and even a sense of one’s own stupidity. A person mistakenly believes that there is a “correct answer” that he cannot find because of his ignorance. Therefore, in most cases, the scales tilt towards the safest solution.
Such was the story of Ruth Chang herself. Choosing between a career as a lawyer and a philosopher, she chose the former as a guarantee of a stable future. “I come from a humble immigrant family. So the idea of spending your whole life just sitting in an armchair and thinking seemed to me the height of extravagance and extravagance. But even after listing all the arguments “for” and “against”, I could not decide which is better. So I did what many people do in such a situation – I preferred the less risky option. Afraid of being an unemployed philosopher, I became a lawyer, and as it turned out, being a lawyer didn’t suit me. It wasn’t mine. And now I’m a philosopher studying hard choices.”
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- Accept the challenge – and become happier
But one should not think that a difficult choice awaits us only in global issues such as choosing a profession or changing a place of residence. A difficult choice is not necessarily an important choice, and in everyday life we encounter it very often. “You are going to have breakfast. It is important for you that the food is both healthy and tasty. You can eat fiber-rich bran, or you can eat a chocolate donut. Bran is healthier, and the donut is much tastier. But neither option is a winner – that’s the hard choice.” And a truly important decision no longer seems so desperately difficult after realizing this simple fact: even small things like choosing breakfast can be a difficult task.
Faced with a difficult choice, you need to abandon the usual rating scale. After all, such human values as love, friendship and kindness cannot be measured using the characteristics “better”, “worse” or “equal”. Instead of this three-part scale, Ruth Chang proposes a new ratio of alternatives – “on an equal footing.” In this case, each of the options is understood as a set of unique values of different types.
The choice between them is not based on external factors, but on the basis of internal arguments, which everyone knows how to form. “When we create internal arguments, … we create our own life.” Without their own rules, choosing the safe out of fear, people begin to go with the flow. Then their life instead of themselves is formed by those very external rational conditions. “I was carried away into the legal profession. I didn’t want to be a lawyer,” Chang says. “You need to think about what is closer to you, what you are intended for, and with the help of a difficult choice, become just such a person.”
In fact, the problem of difficult choice poses a single question for us: “Who do I want to be?”. To answer it, we need to develop our own rules of the game and come up with arguments in favor of one of the alternatives. “By choosing between options “on an equal footing”, we can justify the choice with the help of our position. “Here is my position. I am like that! I like banking and I choose chocolate donuts.” Our response when making a difficult choice is a rational response, but it is not dictated by external reasonable arguments.
In such a situation, our internal arguments should play the main role. An honest answer to the question “what do I want?” and the decision made on its basis places upon us full responsibility for our lives. And only then do we get a unique opportunity to really become ourselves.
* Adapted from a lecture by Ruth Chang at ted.com