More is less!

More choices mean less happiness; the sooner we learn the better we would be, writes Binay Kumar.

Many years ago when I had joined the LSE in London for a post-graduate degree, I remember having spent my first few weeks at the school sampling the 'merchandise' on offer. We went from class to class, staying no more than half an hour in each lecture to see what the professor, or the course he was teaching, was like, and then walking out, often in the middle of the professor's sentence, to try another class. Students came and left in and out of classes just as window shoppers go in and out of stores in a mall. The problem confounding us then was the plethora of choices available to us in the electives menu. It was very plainly a problem of the plenty and the experience was, more than anything else, rather stressful.

This explosion of choices available at the university is a reflection of a pervasive social trend in the western world. I have just finished reading a wonderful book that provides a new insight into this problem we face in our daily lives. I am referring to "The Paradox of Choice," an outstanding book just released in paperback and authored by a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, Prof. Barry Schwartz.

I have often thought about the 'shopping week' at the LSE and those memories came hurtling down as I raced through Schwartz's analysis. The cardinal virtue of the western democratic model is its ability to offer its citizenry vast array of choices and the freedom to make those choices made available by an economic system geared to the philosophy of more is magnificent. It is a truism that having choice is better than not having any choice at all. And it seems self evident that if choice is good, more choice should be better. The paradox, according to Prof. Schwartz, is that this 'obvious' truth isn't always true. It turns out, as it does in our day-to-day experience in America, that a point can be reached very soon where, with more choice, we are actually worse off.

What makes America so different from the rest of the world (including Europe) is its variety and the multitude of choices it offers in whatever that you may seek to do. Perhaps this is most evident in the consumption of goods and services and it extends to virtually all aspects of life (and death too). Increasingly, people are free to choose when and how they will work, how they will worship, where they will live, what they will look like, even where they will be buried when they die and so on and forth.

Surely, this freedom of choice has been made possible by increased all round affluence. In the last 50 years, the inflation-adjusted, per capita income of Americans has more than doubled. What Schwartz is asking, however, is whether greater affluence and increased choice add up to greater happiness? His answer is No, it does not!

And if you look around America you suddenly realize that this man may be telling you something that you actually see everyday around you, every single day. The tell tale signs of this growing unhappiness are everywhere. To quote Prof. Shwartz himself, "In the last 30 years, the number of Americans describing themselves as 'very happy' declined by 5 percent, which means that about 14 million fewer people report being very happy today than in 1974.

And, as a recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association indicates, the rate of serious clinical depression has more than tripled over the last two generations, and increased by perhaps a factor of 10 from 1900 to 2000. Suicide rates are also up, not only in the United States, but in almost every developed country. And both serious depression and suicide are occurring among people younger than ever before. Deans at virtually every college and university in the United States can testify to this malaise, as they witness a demand for psychological services that they are unable to meet."

There are scores of examples that Schwartz picks up from American society and reaches conclusions that are difficult to disagree with. In many ways, his prescriptions resemble the simplicity and sagacity of Indian folklore and village tales. I wish to touch upon just one for our purposes here: the crisis facing the institution of marriage in the western world. By extension, this is a crisis facing the fundamental building block of any society, that is to say, the organization of family as we have known so far.

In a way, Swartz arguments on the subject are an affirmation of the virtues of arranged marriage (as our and earlier generations of Indians have known for centuries). He extols the love of constraint and the power of non-reversible decisions, especially with respect to life's most important decisions.

He relates the story of a minister who, in a sermon on marriage, shocked his congregation with the frank acknowledgment that, yes, the grass is greener on the other side. No matter whom you marry, inevitably there will be someone younger, funnier, smarter, wealthier or more empathetic than he or she is. But marriage is not a matter of comparison shopping.

"The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, 'I'm simply not going there. I've made my decision. I'm not in the market -- period.'. . . Wondering whether you could have done better is a prescription for misery." Considering your decision irreversible allows you to pour your energy into making your marriage better.

Let me quote Prof Swartz himself on this dilemma. He says, "Social ties actually decrease freedom of choice. Marriage, for example, is a commitment to a particular other person that curtails freedom of choice of sexual or emotional partners. Serious friendship also entails weighty responsibilities and obligations that at times may limit one's own freedom. The same is true, obviously, of family."

It is not difficult to see why so many people in their twenties and thirties keep putting off marriage because, for all the experimentations, they are not sure if they are making the right choice. The most insidious aspect of this youth culture is its hedonistic adaptation. Whenever we find something that does make us happier, we eventually get used to it, and our sense of well-being returns to where it was before the new 'object of desire' came into our lives. That is the logic underlying the recurrent cycle of marriage, divorce and remarriage. And what can you do if you have such role models as Elisabeth Taylor et al?! By the time the realization dawns that we can never make progress on the hedonistic treadmill, it is too late.

If greater prosperity and proliferation of choices cannot secure greater happiness, what can? Prof Swartz answers succinctly, "The most important factor seems to be close social relations. People who are married, who have good friends, and who are close to their families are happier than those who are not. Being connected to others seems to be more important to well-being than being rich or "keeping your options open." In other words, more choices mean less happiness; the sooner we learn from America's miseries the better we would be in India.