Human Nature Is Created, Not Discovered
Idea technology and how capitalism makes us miserable
Barry Schwartz is one of the most interesting thinkers of our time.
He is most famous for his work on The Paradox of Choice. Where conventional wisdom tells us that more possibilities is better, Schwartz makes a compelling case that the abundance of choice in today’s western world is actually making us worse off. Infinite choice is paralyzing, Schwartz argues, and exhausting to the human psyche.
His TedTalk is a classic, ramping up over 12 million views.
Today, a decade later, what got crystalized into the collective unconsciousness is how subjective experiences about what is good for us can be, and often are, misleading. What, on the other hand, got neglected is that Schwartz meant his book as a social critique of our obsession with competition (even in the public domain) and maximizing the number of alternatives.
In his recent work, he has continued drawing out the societal consequences of the newest psychological knowledge, further exploring the link between psychology and economics.
It hasn’t yet received the attention of his more famous theory, but its implications are even deeper.
