In this new RSA Animate, Professor Renata Salecl explores the paralysing anxiety and dissatisfaction surrounding limitless choice. Does the freedom to be the architects of our own lives actually hinder rather than help us? Does our preoccupation with choosing and consuming actually obstruct social change?
Taken from the RSA’s free public events programme www.thersa.org/events. The RSA was established in the heart of the Enlightenment, and is dedicated to driving social progress and spreading world-changing ideas.
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This audio has been edited from the original event by Becca Pyne. Series produced by Abi Stephenson, RSA.
Animation by Cognitive Media. Andrew Park, the mastermind behind the Animate series and everyone’s favourite hairy hand, discusses their appeal and success in his blog post, ‘Talk to the hand’: http://www.thersa.org/talk-to-the-hand/
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Beautifully presented
Do we truly have free will ?
Well, this paralysis from choosing is just self doubt. If you own your choices and stop having regrets of past choices, you can eliminate this paralysis and anxiety. Though I am not saying that you shouldn't learn from your mistakes and reflect on your choices.
I find her misconception to be the same as every other left-wing that addresses capitalism. The idea of capitalism and choice is not that EVERYONE can make it, but ANYONE can.
A very very sad paradox
I think the real paradox of choice, or free will, is that less than 1% of our thoughts actually reach our conscious mind.
Sounds deceptively Marxist and even more Sartrean. She's clever but she ain't fulling me and I'm definitely not anxious about choosing or rather making my own damn opinion know either.
She seems like a Female version of Slavoj Zizek!
:v
Yes, we have free will. Now, tell me your definition of free will.
My experience has been that the average person's definition of capitalism looks a lot like my definition of oligarchy.
Are these arms hers? Because they're more wookiee like then anything else 😮
I feel bad for this woman and other people that have been freed from communism and have a hard time coping with choice. But part of her problem is she has anxiety about what other people will think of her. That is a personal problem that she needs to overcome and stop worrying about what other people think.
Opportunity cost
A lack of empathy allows me to make my choice less of a social choice
Someone explain to me like I'm 5?
I hear slavoj zizek female incarnartion
there are interesting points but it is still concentrating on ourselves who have intelectual ability to understand it, this is why there is critique everywhere but not changes visible
If you're self-aware and clear about what your needs are, too many choices CAN be a pain in the a** to navigate, but overall they're a nice problem to have. If you're UNSURE about who you are, and you haven't defined exactly what your needs are pertaining to a decision, then yes, too many choices can shut you down. The author seems to be struggling with some kind of internal deficit, she blames capitalism, and then she does not identify a solution (e.g. maybe she's more comfortable with decisions being made for her, or she's rather have only a limited set of options presented to her). I'd rather err on the side of having too many choices and the freedom to decide (or not decide) instead of the alternative.
Very well explained and understandable, thank you
Great videos – a bit hard to understand with the accent
Are there any high-res versions of these final pictures? That would be wonderful.
her arm is pretty hairy
1.) Not everyone is overwhelmed by choices, some of us enjoys the expression of self and even the process of contemplating
2.) When you feel like you "have to" choose something because of social pressure, it is already a choice on its own, whether you are looking too closely to be aware of that or not
3.) I found that the narrator's assertion of us all are overwhelmed and anxious about having choices very troubling, the mere fact of asserting to us "this is how you feel" is an oppression on it's own
So basically freedom is bad because it makes us anxious?
haha, what is this "professor Renata salecl" interpretation of Zizek?
Having "too many" choices causes people to be "over-analytical" and be inordinately preoccupied with minutia. Kiss it simple dumb ass.
This video is incredibly interesting! Got pointed here from a student on an online course about Ideology and propaganda!
This woman has read too much Zizek.
u must be very neurotic to feel like the narrating woman.
why should u care for choices that in the end doesnt effect u much? why should u care for what u think what other people think? u say choices and throw into a pot a choice between the next cerials u gonna buy and the partner for life?? woman maybe grow some logic. For someone with a working and intact mind a choice alone (or even in numbers) wont provoke anxiety. Anxiety is caused by possible outcome of a bad choice and this anxiety scales with the size of the actual problem. so the choice if i have fuckn nutella or honey on my bread or even both will NEVER cause any anxiety in most normal functioning and healthy people
>Yugoslavian
>Says no one read Marx or Lenin in a Marxist-Leninist state
>People become disenchanted
>Switch to capitalism.exe
>Three decades follow
>100 years since October Revolution
>”Hmm capitalism is disenchanting, if only there were some alternative”
>Restates Marxist ideas
Hats off to you, RSA folks, for this animated series and the hard work you put on making all this. I have found these clips to be very interesting and useful. Thank you very much. You've got an amazing channel.
So what's the alternative to choice, if it's so problematic?
So I shouldn’t have choice because it causes anxiety in some people?
This lady is an obvious pessimist. I like my choice, for better or worse. Don’t take my freedom because you cannot make up your mind. Ridiculous.
Complete rubbish. I am sorry for the people who fall for this.
So after all of that u have nothing to contribute as a solution
We have never been more free throughout the history of civilization than we are today, and the level of social change for the good is orders of magnitude greater in the capitalism than it was prior.
boy she has a hairy arm (I know its not hers im just not funny)
Listen to Rush's Freewill. "Choosing not to decide you STILL have made a choice!"
Not making choices or having anxiety over choice is the curse of immature individuals. Unless it's a life or death choice that has to be made AND there is not enough information to support your choice nothing else in life should be anxiety generating.
Make a decision, and if it's bad then learn from it and try not repeat the same poor decision making process. Get informed , ask questions of people, groups and yourself.
Only YOU can make YOU happy.
At all times and in all places, the collectivist objects to, is opposed to, or denigrates human choice. So long as RSA has the goal of "social" change, then it will make the collectivist argument against human choice, either as being an 'illusion' or as being anxiety-provoking. The opposition to choice always emanates from the dark, pessimistic epistemology of a herd, as in herd-values, group-think, and especially in "social" justice, where negativity is the dominant psychology forever teetering on the brink of depression and the immobility of passivity. Optimists love choice; pessimists fear choice.
Professor Rewnata Salecl is, bluntly, far too broad in the application of her ideas. She is talking about the negative aspects of belonging to a Tribe: a family, a community or even a society that seeks to control you. All the negative emotions she describes, the anxiety, the isolation, the pressures of consumer society, the standards by which to measure happiness, all of this is immediately negated when a person starts down the path of personal self-development and self actualization. Once a person decides to think for themselves, question everything, questioning their religion beliefs, their family values, their social ideology, and then take responsibility for their own health and happiness, and strive to become a fully self actualized person, little of the Professor's concerns are relevant. When you break away from the Tribe, which you can do in Capitalist countries (but in other countries I'm not sure), then you will not care what other's think of you, or what you should feel or do in comparison to anybody else. You do not become a sociopath, you do not give up compassion or empathy or family. You do not stop grooming and washing your clothes. You do not start breaking the law without reason. But what you do is listen to yourself, find the truth in the world for yourself, and make your own choices. What you do is pay attention to yourself, learn to filter out the Tribe, learn who your are as an individual person, what You want to do with your life, learn what your relationship to spirit and God is (if you feel one), and strive to evolve yourself. Learn what makes you feel happy and fulfilled. This is universal. At least if you are in a Capitalist country this is possible.