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No More Freedoms!
“Could Western society be getting bored by its success?”
That is the question posed by the Calgary Herald in an article reporting on the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Vancouver. William A. Gorton, a professor at the academic meeting, stated that people who are given too much freedom often end up miserable. It isn’t necessarily freedom making us unhappy, but the paralyzing feeling of too many options and the subsequent “freezing up” that can occur.
Such a blunt statement concerning the downsides of freedom predictably caused some controversy, but Gorton affirmed that while autonomy and freedom are important, society must be structured in ways that “tip people in the direction of being happy.” Easier said than done?
Nigel Hannaford, the writer of the Calgary Herald article, thinks that freedoms should remain as they are, but that more thought should go into decisions about life, careers, love, etc. He thinks that if decisions are made too casually, their makers end up depressed or down when things don’t turn out well.
Are you ever stymied by so many options in life? How do you arrive at the decisions that affect your happiness? [Calgary Herald]
Posted: 6/21/08
