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When I was preparing for this talk,

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I went to search for a couple of quotes

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that I can share with you.

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Good news: I found three

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that I particularly liked,

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the first by Samuel Johnson, who said,

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"When making your choice in life,

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do not forget to live."

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The second by Aeschylus, who reminded us that

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"happiness is a choice that requires effort."

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And the third is one by Groucho Marx

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who said, "I wouldn't want to choose to belong

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to any club that would have me as a member."

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Now, bad news:

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I didn't know which one of these quotes

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to choose and share with you.

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The sweet anxiety of choice.

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In today's times of post-industrial capitalism,

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choice, together with individual freedom

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and the idea of self-making,

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has been elevated to an ideal.

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Now, together with this, we also have a belief

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in endless progress.

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But the underside of this ideology

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has been an increase of anxiety,

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feelings of guilt,

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feelings of being inadequate,

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feeling that we are failing in our choices.

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Sadly, this ideology of individual choice

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has prevented us to think about social changes.

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It appears that this ideology was actually

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very efficient in pacifying us

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as political and social thinkers.

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Instead of making social critiques,

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we are more and more engaged in self-critique,

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sometimes to the point of self-destruction.

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Now, how come that ideology of choice

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is still so powerful,

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even among people who have

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not many things to choose among?

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How come that even people who are poor

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very much still identify with the idea of choice,

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the kind of rational idea of choice

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which we embrace?

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Now, the ideology of choice is very successful

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in sort of opening for us a space to think

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about some imagined future.

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Let me give you an example.

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My friend Mania,

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when she was a student at university in California,

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was earning money

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by working for a car dealer.

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Now, Mania, when she encountered

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a typical customer, would debate with him

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about his lifestyle,

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how much he wants to spend,

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how many children he has,

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what does he need the car for?

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They would usually come to a good conclusion

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what would be a perfect car.

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Now, before Mania's customer would go home

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and think things through,

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she would say to him,

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"The car that you are buying now is perfect,

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but in a few year's time,

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when your kids will be already out of the house,

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when you will have a little bit more money,

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that other car will be ideal.

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But what you are buying now is great."

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Now the majority of Mania's customers

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who came back the next day

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bought that other car,

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the car they did not need,

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the car that cost far too much money.

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Now, Mania became so successful in selling cars

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that soon she moved on to selling airplanes.

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(Laughter)

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And knowing so much about
the psychology of people

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prepared her well for her current job,

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which is that of a psychoanalyst.

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Now, why were Mania's customers so irrational?

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Mania's success was that she was able

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to open in their heads an image

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of an idealized future,

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an image of themselves

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when they are already more successful, freer,

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and for them, choosing that other car

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was as if they are coming closer to this ideal

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in which it was as if Mania already saw them.

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Now, we rarely make really totally rational choices.

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Choices are influenced by our unconscious,

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by our community.

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We're often choosing

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by guessing, what would other people

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think about our choice?

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Also we are choosing

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by looking at what others are choosing.

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We're also guessing what is
socially acceptable choice.

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Now, because of this, we actually

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even after we have already chosen,

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like bought a car,

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endlessly read reviews about cars,

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as if we still want to convince ourselves

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that we made the right choice.

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Now, choices are anxiety-provoking.

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They are linked to risks, losses.

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They are highly unpredictable.

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Now, because of this,

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people have now more and more problems

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that they are not choosing anything.

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Not long ago, I was at a wedding reception,

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and I met a young, beautiful woman

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who immediately started telling
me about her anxiety over choice.

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She said to me, "I needed one month

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to decide which dress to wear."

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Then she said, "For weeks I was researching

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which hotel to stay for this one night.

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And now, I need to choose a sperm donor."

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(Laughter)

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I looked at this woman in shock.

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"Sperm donor? What's the rush?"

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She said, "I'm turning 40 at the end of this year,

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and I've been so bad in choosing men in my life."

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Now choice, because it's linked to risk,

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is anxiety-provoking,

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and it was already the famous

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Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard

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who pointed out that anxiety

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is linked to the possibility of possibility.

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Now, we think today that we can prevent these risks.

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We have endless market analysis,

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projections of the future earnings.

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Even with market, which is about chance,

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randomness, we think we can predict rationally

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where it's going.

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Now, chance is actually becoming very traumatic.

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Last year, my friend Bernard Harcourt

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at the University of Chicago organized an event,

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a conference on the idea of chance.

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He and I were together on the panel,

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and just before delivering our papers,

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we didn't know each other's papers,

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we decided to take chance seriously.

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So we informed our audience

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that what they will just now here

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will be a random paper,

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a mixture of the two papers

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which we didn't know what each was writing.

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Now, we delivered the conference in such a way.

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Bernard read his first paragraph,

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I read my first paragraph,

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Bernard read his second paragraph,

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I read my second paragraph,

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in this way towards the end of our papers.

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Now you will be surprised

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that a majority of our audience

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did not think that what they'd just listened

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was a completely random paper.

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They couldn't believe that

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speaking from the position of authority

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like two professors we were,

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we would take chance seriously.

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They thought we prepared the papers together

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and were just joking that it's random.

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Now, we live in times with a lot of information,

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big data,

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a lot of knowledge about the insights of our body.

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We decoded our genome.

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We know about our brains more than before.

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But surprisingly, people are more and more

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turning a blind eye in front of this knowledge.

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Ignorance and denial are on the rise.

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Now, in regard to current economic crisis,

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we think that we will just wake up again

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and everything will be the same as before,

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and no political or social changes are needed.

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In regard to ecological crisis,

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we think nothing needs to be done just now,

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or others need to act before us.

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Or even when ecological crisis already happens,

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like a catastrophe in Fukushima,

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often we have people living in the same environment

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with the same amount of information,

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and half of them will be anxious about radiation

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and half of them will ignore it.

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Now, psychoanalysts know very well

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that people surprisingly don't have

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passion for knowledge

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but passion for ignorance.

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Now, what does that mean?

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Let's say when we are facing

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a life-threatening illness,

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a lot of people don't want to know that.

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They'd rather prefer denying the illness,

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which is why it's not so wise to inform them

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if they don't ask.

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Surprisingly, research shows that sometimes

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people who deny their illness

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live longer than those who are rationally choosing

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the best treatment.

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Now, this ignorance, however,

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is not very helpful on the level of the social.

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When we are ignorant about where we are heading,

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a lot of social damage can be caused.

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Now, on top of facing ignorance,

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we are also facing today

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some kind of an obviousness.

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Now, it was French philosopher

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Louis Althusser who pointed out

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that ideology functions in such a way

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that it creates a veil of obviousness.

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Before we kind of do any social critique,

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it is necessary really to lift that veil of obviousness

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and to think through a little bit differently.

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If we go back to this ideology

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of individual, rational choice

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we often embrace,

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it's necessary precisely here

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to lift this obviousness

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and to think a little bit differently.

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Now for me, a question often is

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why we still embrace this idea of a self-made man

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on which capitalism relied from its beginning?

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Why do we think that we are really such masters

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of our lives that we can rationally

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make the best ideal choices,

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that we don't accept losses and risks?

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And for me, it's very shocking to
see sometimes very poor people,

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for example, not supporting the idea

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of the rich being taxed more.

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Quite often here they still identify

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with a certain kind of a lottery mentality.

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Okay, maybe they don't think that they will make it

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in the future, but maybe they think,

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my son might become the next Bill Gates.

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And who would want to tax one's son?

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Or, a question for me is also, you know,

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why would people who have no health insurance

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not embrace universal healthcare?

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Sometimes they don't embrace it

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again identifying with the idea of choice,

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but they have nothing to choose from.

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Now, Margaret Thatcher famously said

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that there is nothing like a society.

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Society doesn't exist, it is only individuals

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and their families.

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Sadly, this ideology still functions very well,

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which is why people who are poor might feel

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ashamed for their poverty.

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We might endlessly feel guilty that we are

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not making the right choices,

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and that's why we didn't succeed.

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We are anxious that we are not good enough.

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That's why we work very hard,

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long hours at the workplace

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and equally long hours on remaking ourselves.

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Now, when we are anxious over choices,

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sometimes we easily give our power of choice away.

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We identify with the guru

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who tells us what to do,

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self-help therapist,

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or we embrace a totalitarian leader

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who appears to have no doubts about choices,

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who sort of knows.

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Now, often people ask me,

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"What did you learn by studying choice?"

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And there is an important message that I did learn.

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When thinking about choices,

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I stopped taking choices too seriously, personally.

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First, I realized a lot of choice I make

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is not rational.

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It's linked to my unconscious,

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my guesses of what others are choosing,

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or what is a socially embraced choice.

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I also embrace the idea

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that we should go beyond

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thinking about individual choices,

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that it's very important to rethink social choices,

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since this ideology of individual
choice has pacified us.

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It really prevented us to think about social change.

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We spend so much time
choosing things for ourselves

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and barely reflect on

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communal choices we can make.

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Now, we should not forget that choice

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is always linked to change.

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We can make individual changes,

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but we can make social changes.

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We can choose to have more wolves.

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We can choose to change our environment

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to have more bees.

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We can choose to have different rating agencies.

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We can choose to control corporations

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instead of allowing corporations controlling us.

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We have a possibility to make changes.

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Now, I started with a quote from Samuel Johnson,

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who said that when we make choice in life,

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we shouldn't forget to live.

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Finally, you can see

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I did have a choice

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to choose one of the three quotes

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with which I wanted to start my lecture.

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I did have a choice,

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such as nations, as people,

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we have choices too to rethink

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what kind of society we want to live in the future.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)