“To choose is to renounce”

The title of this post, which I came across in this essay, sounds even better in the original French, even though I don't know that language: “choisir, c’est renoncer.”

By choosing one out of the many options that we might have, we are essentially sacrificing all those other options.  And if ever if we have even a little bit of unease with the choice that we made, then forever we could be haunted by the "what if ...?"

A few weeks ago, a couple came over for dinner.  We presented the drink options: wine, soda, and water.  Then came the qualifiers: Red wine, or white wine? Grapefruit soda or blood orange soda?

"There is something called a blood orange?"

I told them that I hadn't known about such an orange until I came to Oregon.  And how it was only here that I also knew about, and came to enjoy, Cara Cara oranges, which are pinkish inside.

I laughingly told them that this is the problem in rich countries: There are always too many choices. 

As brown immigrants, they knew what I was referring to.  Back in our respective old countries, especially when we were younger, there was no choice; we ate and drank whatever that we were given.  I laugh within when I see mothers here in America asking their toddler children what they would like to eat; what does a child know!  It is no laughing matter, however, when a child chooses a super-gulp that the parent is happy to pay for without worrying about the long-term health consequences.

The modern economy presents us with a gazillion choices in everything.  Fifteen years ago, when TED Talk was a thing, Barry Schwartz made a compelling argument about the tyranny of choice.  While we might think that more choices are good, it turns out that decision-making becomes a Himalayan challenge when we are forced to select one out of many.  Have you not been stumped by the health care plans that you are asked to choose from?  Or, heck, even the coffee options?

So, now, we have to learn how to choose.  And want to make sure that we choose well so that we don't have regrets later.

Or, as a first step, we can simply learn to reduce our choices even as the modern economy is hell bent on further increasing the options.  I would think that deciding from fewer choices is easier and a lot less stressful.  And, therefore, less anxiety over what we might have missed out on.

The moral of the story is not difficult to figure out: Without being hasty, reduce the unnecessary decisions that you have to make in a day, and try to get going with the choices that you have.

So, yes, "to choose is to renounce."  Living such a life of systematic and conscious saying no is also perhaps why I come across as a person who knows what he wants, and is quite decisive.  I try my best to ignore the gazillion other options that are not really meaningful choices at all.  Blood orange soda is such an easy call!

Want to buy a shiny new thing?

I have heard my mother and grandmothers comment that if you leave the house it is for nothing but expense.  My mother has lived long enough to experience for herself how one doesn't even have to leave home anymore to spend money in this click-and-spend culture.

We consume a lot.  We buy things we need, we want, we don't need, and we don't want.  We have grown addicted to stuff, and getting rid of this addiction is impossible it seems.  

Consumption is practically what the modern economy is all about, once we got beyond basic survival.  Such a worry about consumption and economic growth is not new.  In graduate school, I learnt about the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth.  This report came out when I had barely started elementary school!  Decades later, we continue to worry about the consequences of growth and consumption.

Whether we live in apartments or mansions, we Americans collect a whole lot of worthless crap.  A few years ago, I wrote in Planetizen: 

Of course, as many of us have observed, but for which data don't exist, most homeowners seem to fill their garages with refrigerators, freezers, bicycles, treadmills, etc., and then park their cars on the driveways or by the curb. When things have to be put away, households find that they have more stuff for which they need additional space, which is where the self-storage business comes in.

How did we humans become such voracious consumers?  Kerryn Higgs has written a book on this.  In a shorter version, she writes:

People, of course, have always “consumed” the necessities of life — food, shelter, clothing — and have always had to work to get them or have others work for them, but there was little economic motive for increased consumption among the mass of people before the 20th century.

Through most of their lives, my grandmothers were not consumers.  Sure, they had more than what was needed to survive.  But, it is not as if they bought stuff and stored them at home.  What they left behind was truly worthwhile--like the wall clock that I have inherited.

Higgs writes:

Although the period after World War II is often identified as the beginning of the immense eruption of consumption across the industrialized world, the historian William Leach locates its roots in the United States around the turn of the century. 

In the United States, existing shops were rapidly extended through the 1890s, mail-order shopping surged, and the new century saw massive multistory department stores covering millions of acres of selling space. Retailing was already passing decisively from small shopkeepers to corporate giants who had access to investment bankers and drew on assembly-line production of commodities, powered by fossil fuels; the traditional objective of making products for their self-evident usefulness was displaced by the goal of profit and the need for a machinery of enticement.

Think about "making products for their self-evident usefulness" and compare it to now.  We didn't know we needed carbonated drinks, for instance.  The profit-motive means that businesses create new products for which they then have to create a marketing campaign in order to convince us that we need them.

New needs would be created, with advertising brought into play to “augment and accelerate” the process. People would be encouraged to give up thrift and husbandry, to value goods over free time.

My grandmothers had lots of free time.  They spent that time talking with their neighbor women while playing kattam.  Or, they read.  Or, they slept.  They knew how to handle free time, which is why when we kids--who were growing up in a "modern" society--complained about being bored, my grandmothers had a tough time understanding what boredom was all about!

This modern economic system would collapse overnight "if people were content because they felt they had enough."  But, of course, we have been brainwashed enough that we have no understanding of what it means to be content.

If we are working long hours primarily because it is not about mere survival but to consume more, then "today’s discussions need to move beyond the old point about the marvels of technology, and truly ask: what is it all for?"

Thus begins the retirement

Retirement became real today.

On this final working day of the month, my bank account shows a direct deposit of my pension.  I am now officially a pensioner!

Pension and retirement are relatively new concepts in human history.  In the old country, for instance, the multi-generational living arrangement allowed for the elderly--if they managed to live long--to be supported by their children and grandchildren.

I grew up in such a system. 

My paternal grandmother had two sons--my father and his elder brother. As was the custom, she--a widow--went to live with her first son.  And that is how it would have been until she died, but for the domestic drama with that daughter-in-law.  She then lived her final seven years with us before her congenitally enlarged heart just stopped working.

My maternal grandmother had no sons.  In the old tradition, parents worried a lot if they did not have sons.  Only sons could support them in this earthly life and in the beyond.  She lucked out with welcoming and warm sons-in-law and daughters who never fought a day in their lives.

At some point in my high school life, I began to wonder if people had children only because they wanted somebody to take care of them in their old age.  As we get older, our bodies begin to ache and squeak and break, for which medical and financial assistance is needed.  Sons and daughters and grandchildren automatically become the insurance policy.

With a few cousins and friends I talked about this old age insurance scheme.  Looking back, I am not surprised that one cousin started referring to me as the Buddha because I had lots of thoughts and questions on various aspects of life.

Much later, in graduate school, I found it hilarious that researchers had given such a behavior a name, and were publishing papers on it!  According to the old-age-security hypothesis, the benefits that people expect from children as their insurance decreases with economic development.  Further, if there are government-offered old-age security programs, then fertility rates plunge with economic development.  Of course, there are a few other factors too--like increase in the rights for women.  My gut-level and observation-led argument on children as old-age insurance was now intellectually validated.

Sure, people have children for other reasons too. But, none of those reasons ever appealed to me.  Even as a teenager, I knew for certain that I did not want to have children, and why people have kids continues to be beyond my imagination.  But, here too, life does not unfold as we script it.

At my first real job, in California, a colleague, Peter, told me that he was going to offer me a piece of advice whether or not I needed it.  He talked about the importance of saving for retirement. He suggested that I channel the pay-raises into savings.  His mantra was simple: You never miss the money you never saw in the first place.  

I became a saver, and am thankful I did.  After all, the odds are that the years in retirement could even exceed the years that I lived working.