David Sasaki has an interesting post on “The Freedom of Familiarity” — or alternatively, the slavery of choice. He discusses the boundaries of freedom of choice, such that there is some point that so many alternative choices are available that either a person cannot simply settle on one thing or he may simply never be able to decide. The context in which he writes this is a very familiar scene: going to the cafe to read the newspaper and drink a cup of coffee.

There are three cafes here in Caracas where I have my morning coffee, palmera or cachito de jam????n, and read the newspaper. They are: Coma, el CELARG, and the plaza of el Museo Bellas Artes. I go to these places because they are, by now, familiar. I know what to expect.

But every morning that I return to these three places I also realize that I????????m not giving a chance to the other hundreds or thousands of cafes around Caracas. So this morning I chose choice over familiarity. I hopped on metro line 3 and got off where everyone else did – Ciudad Universitaria as it turned out – put on my iPod, and started walking until I found a cafe I liked. Coming out of the metro station, I was faced with a red and yellow mural of Che. Below his iconic portrait were the words ???????the university doesn????????t belong to anyone.??????? And opposite the mural were about five or six booths – surrounded by Levis-wearing students – selling pirated copies of the latest DVD????????s from Hollywood and CD????????s of American pop music.

45 minutes later I was still walking. By this point I passed two busy McDonalds and a number of crowded indoor mini-malls. But I couldn????????t find a single mom-and-pop????????s bakery or cafe. I was reminded of a conversation I had with Luis Carlos just a couple days ago. We had met at one major shopping mall in Chacao only to take motorcycle taxis across town to another major shopping mall where we met with a group of bloggers on our way to a party.

Walking through the second mall????????s main corridor Luis Carlos said, ???????you know, all these malls, they????????re all new. They didn????????t even exist a couple years ago. Centro San Ignacio, Sambil, el Recreo, this one, all of them are new.???????

I commented on how crowded they always were.

???????Yeah, because they????????ve replaced the plazas and the small stores and the markets. People come here because they????????re safe, and clean, and ??????? because everyone else comes here.???????

And, because they are familiar. Every mall in Caracas has the same stores with the same layouts. The same restaurants with the same menus. The same food-courts with the same combo meals. You go to a mall, any mall, and you know what you like and what you don????????t. There????????s no anxiety of whether you should order the pasticho de pollo or filet de at????n at some hole-in-the-wall restaurant because you already know that the combo #4 super-sized is for you and you know that it will taste exactly the same every single time. There are no ???????bad days??????? at McDonalds.

In general, choice is a good thing. It means there is a whole variety of everything out there so that you can find something that you like and stick to it. What if you wanted a soft drink, but the government only allowed for Coca Cola, and you don’t like Coca Cola? You’d be screwed. That’s why there are so many varieties of soft drinks — enough profitable flavors to fit all tastes.

Yet at some point choice does become mentally oppressive. You can eventually try every soft drink, but some things are impossible. You can date someone for a long time, get married, and live happily ever ever, but you can never know if you could have done better. The thought can be haunting, causing you to search forever for the “best” man or woman by some unspecified qualification. And at the end of your life you are miserable and alone because you could never settle for anything.

This is why people stop looking when they find something they think is good, otherwise nobody would get married, and you wouldn’t see the same people at Applebee’s for lunch on workdays. The link is undeniable. Eventually people just don’t care anymore because its become unimportant.

I also think it has to do a lot with personality types. For example, I like to find my thing and stick to it. The teriyaki burrito at Boloco is the best — to me. Yet I don’t really know better because its the only one I’ve tried and I liked it from the start. And I only go there when I crave a teriyaki burrito. However, my buddy Rishi likes to try just about everything and then makes his decision at the end of the cycle.

This is just the bad side of choice though. Choice and multiple options allow us the possibility to buy the store-brand 12-pack of soda for $2 instead of $3.50 from Coca-Cola. It allows us to learn Spanish and HTML and international politics or whatever else we may want. That so many choices is mental oppression may just in fact be an illusion; the result of a weak mind and will.

Grandparents wonder why young people these days don’t take advantage of the endless opportunities available to them. Back in the day, there was no choice, and there was no anxiety about it. It was work and live. Nowadays, it’s work and live extremely well, so when it comes down to it, many people don’t have the strength of mind to choose what they want. Should I learn Spanish? Or HTML? Or nuclear physics? Just like trying to decide whether the man or woman you’re with is the one you want to be with forever, these life-choices have gained such an oppressive importance that they are never made.

What do you think?