When I speak about the "tyranny of choice," I mean an ideology that originates in the era of post-industrial capitalism. It began with the American Dream - the idea of the self-made man, who works his way up from rags to riches. By and by, this career concept developed into a universal life philosophy. Today we believe we should be able to choose everything: the way we live, the way we look, even when it comes to the coffee we buy, we constantly need to weigh our decision. That is extremely unhealthy.
Renata SaleclWe constantly feel stressed, overwhelmed and guilty.It's our own fault if we're unhappy. It means we made a bad decision.
Renata SaleclSigmund Freud already discovered that suffering gives us pleasure - in a strange masochistic way. The tyranny of choice exploits that weakness. Consumer culture exhausts us. We suffer. We destroy ourselves. And we just can't stop.
Renata SaleclI don't criticize political or electoral freedom, but capitalism's perversion of the concept: the illusion that I hold the power over my own life.
Renata Salecl