I was eating a post-Christmas-party brownie one day when I noticed that mere millimeters beside the box of brownies sat a bowl of oranges. And thought, “Ah, so that was a real choice.” Which then got me thinking. What’s a choice?
The initial question I had was about whether choices only feel like choices when the other option is close at hand. Like in this case, right next to it. Do choices we make habitually not count?
In the movie Wonder that I just watched an hour ago, the tagline was “Choose kind.”
Not everything is typically thought through the way cookie-baking instructions are thought through whether that be kindness or unkindness. The kindness highlighted in this movie, though, was purposeful. Someone had to think “Yeah I’m going to do this and not this” before they did what they did. And that was the kindness that was lauded, a plot point, onstage, in the spotlight.
Summer, the girl who makes a point to be nice simply because she is nice, felt like a passing cloud in the rain.
And then, as always, there is God. And the friend of mine who passionately spoke of how she could not believe that God is both loving and good yet punishes humanity for something He could have stopped – the fall. That’s an exploration of choice too, I thought.
What is a choice?
Exhibit A. “The act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.” The word that jumps out to me is possibilities.
I felt that moment in anime where a realization, a lightbulb moment, makes the wind blow the protagonist’s hair from their face and their eyes shine like marbles. That’s why the brownie felt like a real choice. What was likely was clear. The fact that there were two or more possibilities was clear.
This seems like a no-brainer but if you delve into the language of choice, I wonder if we forget the complexity this simple observation reveals.
Rights
Democracy
I want
I believe
You don’t
Where does choice begin and end? It depends on so many factors.
Time. How long does it take you to move? Does the likelihood of it being a choice increase the longer you think about it?
Brute force. The more possibilities, the choicier the choice?
Opposite. What does it mean to take away another’s ability to choose? What does it look like? You would have to know what a choice was to take it away. I’d imagine a lot of the choice-stealers and the victims of those choice-stealers were in situations where they didn’t understand the worth of what was being stolen.
Values. Actually, does what was stolen have worth? Why? There seems to be nothing inherent to the definition of choice that gives it value. Why is choice valuable?
Depth. How far-removed can the alternative option be for your decision to constitute a choice? How do you measure far-removedness?
Purpose. If you do not actively seek to make a choice in your action, is it still a choice? The whole thing about bystanders is that even by just standing there, they’re making the decision not to stop whatever terrible thing is happening before them. And the plethora of school-wide assemblies dedicated to teaching kids about stepping up is essentially showing them their options. The entire assembly could be summed up in: There is another choice. Take it.
Doesn’t that mean that said bystanders didn’t comprehend there was another choice? And the whole surprise about it is that because of that, what they were doing didn’t feel to them like a choice. So being told that it was suddenly their fault was a wakeup call instead of something they knew all along, despite society labeling that a choice. So…does society decide what is and isn’t a choice? Do the psychologists who observe and operationalize terms decide?
It didn’t feel like a choice to them. So if something does not feel like a choice, it is dangerous? There is the concept of choice…and then there is the concept of perceiving a choice? Understanding a choice? Three very different things.
I’m thinking about the psychology classes I took last year. The distribution of blame has a lot to do with the understanding of choice. Like the lady that an entire apartment complex of people watched get murdered. I am not trivializing the situation – I’m saying that this is a real discussion. Because what is choice must be identified before one can form and defend an opinion. Were those bystanders at fault or not? Does whether or not they made a conscious decision really matter?
This is real.
Definition. If the answer to the ‘is it still a choice’ question is yes, then is the concept of choice outside of humanity? If so, where did it come from? And does its originator decide what is and what is not a choice?
And now. The ultimate question. How does this relate to our perception of good vs. evil?
If the basis of our society is so very complicated yet reduced to memorized adages about the American dream and surface-level conversations about politics, then no wonder we’re in trouble. Does no one think about the words we use and the concepts we wave around like flags?
Some may say “English is not my native tongue.” I would argue that everyone should say “Humanity is not my native tongue.” We are all foreigners here.
Yet not enough acknowledge that we must ask more questions than we do and have fewer answers than we think.
And it all started with a brownie.
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