When I was very young -- nine or ten -- I asked my parents to explain communism. My mom summarized it this way: In the Soviet Union, you don't have any choices. You can only get vanilla ice cream.
I was horrified. Understandably so. Only vanilla? No Baskin-Robbins' 31-derful flavors?
For most of my life, I've loved freedom of choice. Fetishized it, even. It's the American way. It's why I went to a college that had no core requirements and where you can go through all four years writing papers about the usage of umlauts in the names of eighties heavy metal bands (Motley Cru, Motorhead, etc).
I still think communism is a terrible system, and I'm still glad that I got to write a paper on umlauts, if not major in the subject.
But I recently spent a year trying to follow all the rules of the Old Testament for my new book The Year of Living Biblically. And one of the more interesting revelations from my year was this: There are advantages to having freedom FROM choice.
You don't want to give up all choice, of course. An all-vanilla world would be a sad world. But I experienced first-hand the how a life of restricted choice can be satisfying, even paradoxically liberating - especially as our choices multiply like cable channels.
I recently did an interview on Newsweek.com in which I talked about how disoriented I was after my year ended. Without all my rules, without the stable architecture of biblical living, I felt unmoored and unanchored. I was overwhelmed by choice.
My know-it-all brother-in-law Eric Schoenberg - who teaches behavioral economics at Columbia - likes to lecture me about an experiment at a grocery store by researchers from Columbia and Stanford. They set up two tables offering free tastes - one had six flavors of jam, the other had 24 flavors of jam. Oddly, more people bought jams from the table with six flavors. The conclusion was that the other table was just too much, too many options.
Living biblically takes away a lot of those jam jars. What should I do on Friday night? Stay at home with the family. Should I waste my time reading about Cameron Diaz's love life? No. Should I give ten percent of my salary to the needy? Yes. Should I tell the truth about why I missed a deadline? Yes.
My dad always talked about how his hero Albert Einstein owned seven identical suits -- so that he wouldn't waste any neuronal activity on choosing what to wear.
In one of the more extreme instances of this, I learned from an Orthodox Jewish man that there is a rabbinically-approved way of putting on your shoes. You put on your right shoe. Then your left shoe. Then you tie your left shoe. Then you go back and tie your right shoe. It sounded like crazy talk to me when I first heard it. But maybe it's not all that different from Einstein's suits.
On the other hand, I learned an equally important lesson from my year of living biblically: abdicating too much choice is dangerous. You have to choose wisely which rules to obey in the first place.
There's a term -- cafeteria religion -- that is supposed to be a disparaging phrase. It describes those who pick and choose instead of following all of a religion's edicts or principles. But after my year, I think cafeteria religion is just fine. After all, there's nothing inherently wrong with cafeterias. I've had some delicious meals in cafeterias. I've also had some turkey tetrazzini that made me dry heave for several hours. It's all about picking the right parts. You want to take a heaping serving of the parts about compassion, mercy and gratefulness -- instead of the parts about hatred and intolerance. Inspiring leaders may not know everything about food, but maybe the good ones can guide you to the parts of the cafeteria with the freshest meals. They can be like a helpful lunch lady who...okay, I've taken the metaphor way too far.
******
AJ Jacobs' new book is The Year of Living Biblically. For more, visit www.ajjacobs.com. He has since shaved his biblical beard.
be able to make those choices. The REAL trap
is called 'force of habit'. Nevermind communism,
people are their own worst enemies in that regard...
......
That's great that you have the ability to do that. The problem is with society as a whole being at sea and choosing the path of least resistance. Nicole, Paris and Lindsay are good examples of young women who've been told they can and should have it all, but are extremely unhappy, deep down.
American behavior is becoming more and more dependent on how people feel in the moment, rather than by some sort of altruistic code. That goes for George Bush as well as Britney Spears.
A frined of mine sends her son to the Waldorf school and they encourage the parents to limit their childrens choices. For instance, they suggest that there be only one flavor of ice cream in the house at a time.
Some of the most refined and intersting cultures have a lot of rules and rituals to follow. The Japanese and the French, come to mind.
When your social interactions are proscribed, it frees your mind for other things. Manners are simply ways of knowing what to do automatically.
If society insists that pregnent women are entitled to a seat on the bus, it takes away the "should I or shouldn't I?" dilema and you can concentrate on that song lyric you're trying to write.
Even for you Atheist out there, you can not argue about the wisdom this book can reveal
The world would be a much better place if people lived these principals
What you mean to say is you are spiritual and you pick and choose what makes sense.
Being religious means you follow the teachings and rules of the religion.
Why is this so hard for people to grasp?
While it's important to have choice-one needs to be grounded in ideals and his/her own sense of virtue or morals-staying rooted in that makes it easier to make choices.It means not "keeping up with the Jones" mentality (or letting others make the decisions for you by putting yourself on autopilot)-but figuring out for oneself based on ones' INDIVIDUALITY as opposed to being prodded into groupthink or "herd" mentality.
I don't know what it means but there's a connection there.
"Freedom of choice is what we got, freedom from choice is what we want".
Despite 31 flavors, vanilla is still the favorite ice cream of Americans.
By and large, humans are social beings and want to conform to maintain harmony in their peer group and avoid being ostracized. Religion's continuing hold in society is not due to our need for explanations, most people readily accept a scientific explanation for what used to be an article of faith, like how the world was formed. But we, as a species, haven't moved past that need for acceptance. As long as a religion provides solace, we will have religion. And as long as we have religion, we will have silly rules to abide by.
Interestingly enough, the whole Talmudic idea of kosher probably spared the Hebrews a bunch of grief from food borne illnesses.
And Hebrew women were allowed to own property-also rare in ancient times
Oh, God!! Pepsi?! Or Coke?!
Less Filling?! Or great taste?!
Chevy?! Or Ford?!
Democrats?! Or Republicans?!
Oh God?! Oh, God?!
Well, I'm not going to waste my precious time reading Mr. Jacobs' book. We have nothing but piss-poor choices in the country: and when you can choose among only piss-poor choices, you can only make piss-poor decisions.
Living a year like an Old Testement Hebrew is not only a poor choice but it is a cop out( Jacobs knew he could always go back.) Living daily life by following ancient, prescribed ritual is a poor choice, it is nothing more than a piss-poor substitute for clear and logical thought.
But the literati will lionize Mr. Jacobs, for some reason or other. It's their choice.
Language is forst and foremost a thought tool, and, like all tools, we form them and thereafter they form us. Much like the inclination to choose a table with fewer jars of jam, we prefer to reduce an incomprehensible world into comprehensible terms. To do this we can divide all statements into observation-statements (facts) and non-observation statements (theories). Combine these statements into major and minor premises to synthesize new statements (conclusions). It was in the 4th century BC that Aristotle gave us this syllogism.
It sounds right to me.
But I would add the top religious leaders, those who historically founded churches, had God speak to them, wandered off, found tablets, had snakes give them direction. All demented, all mentally ill, probably schizophrenic. I think the shrinks say that people used to believe they were Napoleon; then they believed the CIA had listening devices in their homes (hey, wait a minute, I believe that). In other words delusions reflect current affairs.
All men you notice. Anyone wonder why we don't have major religions started by women? Why women aren't wandering in the desert having visions, spending hours preaching to a pack of men? Well, maybe it's because we're home having the babies, cooking the meals, cleaning the houses, pouring the men into bed when they come home drunk and full of delusional tales.
Religion is just one tool used by dictators to gain control of every aspect of people's lives down to what clothes they wear and what food they eat.
Mind you, I didn't say a word about God. God is an entirely different subject. But religion is mostly a corrupt hierarchical dictatorship run by men and supported by the terrified masses who believe the demented stories told by the insane.
Amen to that. I have always thought this.
Have you also noticed how ALL religions are oppressive to one or more groups in one way or another? Especially to women. I also find it odd that the descendants of African slaves here in the U.S. whole-heartedly embraced a tome that says that they should be subservient to the white man (accepted interpretation of Genesis 9:20-27 and Genesis 10:6-20). Weird.
I can think of a few nigs that are lukewarm at best re The Golden Rule.
One can find that spiritual direction inside oneself-by choosing to.
Regarding the beds, I have to plug the Tempur-Pedic because after 44 years of insomnia I'm finally getting some sleep on mine (and, no, I'm not a salesperson for Tempur-Pedic).
The older people get, the less they like to think, especially about new ideas.
The problem with all major religions is that they discourage thought, and oppress women.