The Paradox of Choice
8th Jul 2010; 13:00
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We are encouraged from all sides to view our lives as being full of choices. Like the products on a supermarket shelf, our careers, our relationships, our bodies, our very identities seem to be there for the choosing. But paradoxically this seeming freedom to choose can actually create extreme anxiety, and feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Does this freedom to be the architects of our own lives actually hinder rather than help us?
Professor Renata Salecl explores how capitalism’s shrill exhortations to ‘be oneself’ can be a tyranny which leads to ever-greater dissatisfaction and how the insistence that choice is a purely individual matter obstructs social change.
Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #rsachoice
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