The cartoon above was used by Barry Schwartz at the end of an excellent lecture on TED Talks called ‘The Paradox of Choice’.  I used this video clip in my Theory of Knowledge class this week. In the lecture, Barry Schwartz (who is a psychologist at Swarthmore) dispels a central belief of western societies: that greater freedom of choice leads to greater personal happiness. According to Barry Schwartz, excessive choice is actually making us miserable.  He explains this by saying that greater choice leads us to set unreasonably high expectations, and that when our ideals of happiness prove impossible or unrealistic, we look for someone to blame - often ourselves, sometimes others.  He uses a range of examples, from consumer products (jeans, sound systems, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry) to illustrate his central argument, which is “too many choices undermine happiness”.

Barry Schwartz refers to the cartoon in this way: 

1. “What does this fish know?  Nothing is possible in this fish bowl.  It reflects impoverished imagination, a myopic view of the world.  At least, that’s the way I read it at first.  But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that this fish knows something, because the truth of the matter is that if you shatter the fish bowl so that everything is possible, you don’t have freedom - you have paralysis.  If you shatter the fish bowl so that everything is possible, you decrease satisfaction - you increase paralysis and you decrease satisfaction.  Everyone needs a fish bowl, maybe not as small as this one... but the absence of a metaphorical fishbowl is a recipe for misery and, I suspect, disaster.”
   

This relates to another TED lecture that I also used with my ToK class this week.  In that lecture, Dan Gilbert (a psychology professor at Harvard, and author of “Stumbling on Happiness”) uses research to show just how poor we humans are at predicting (or understanding) what will make us happy.  He says our beliefs about what will make us happy are often wrong, and that our brains systematically misjudge what will make us happy.  He strongly challenges the idea that we will be miserable if we don’t get what we want, and in fact, he agrees with Barry Schwartz by claiming our happiness is maximised when our choices are restricted.  He says that even when we know that greater choice will reduce our happiness, most people will still argue to have greater choice.

It seems to me that the implications of this are quite interesting.  In a school such as LPCUWC, knowing that increased choice leads to decreased happiness, why would any rational person argue that (for example) attending GIFs (Global Issues Forums) should be optional, or that we should not have a fixed ‘lights off’ time, or that we should continue to offer 66 quan cais with no limit on the number that can be chosen?  And yet, according to Gilbert, even when we know that having these choices will reduce our happiness, we will fight to retain the choice!

The French educator Jacques Barzun related this paradox very well to the educational context.  Knowing the deep sense of idealism that motivates good teachers and good students, he claimed that “Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.”  This seems very relevant to the next review of college rules that we undertake from time to time.  We owe it to ourselves to be very clear on the reasons we have rules (such as to protect the weaker members of the community, and to ensure compliance with legal requirements), and to make sure that we never fall into the trap of having rules for their own sake or simply because they might be the most convenient way of avoiding having to think deeply about difficult situations. 

One of the key UWC values to which we subscribe is ‘mutual responsibility and respect’.  When we combine this with another stated UWC value - ‘personal responsibility and integrity’ - then in an ideal world, we would have a sufficient basis to avoid the need for rules at all.  Sadly, we do not live in an ideal world, as we all experience from time to time.

Nonetheless, I think that a centrally important test for ‘mutual responsibility and respect’ is reciprocity.  In other words, before doing something to another person, we need to consider how we would feel if that person (or anyone, for that matter) were to do the same thing to us.  This question needs to asked honestly and frankly, and with a clear sense of the likely consequences.

'Mutual responsibility and respect' means nothing if it is only shown to those we agree with; the true test is whether we can extend it authentically and graciously to those with whom we disagree.  It is perhaps the most important measure of whether or not we are living according to the UWC ideals in everyday practice.

In this way, we can have the potential to stretch the fish bowl without shattering it.