Overchoice I

Christmas always offers a window on our brave new consumerist world. Even in the midst of recession and austerity, people still cannot escape the urge to shop. Even in the midst of recession and austerity, the government actively urges them to shop so that the powers that be can batten down on any positive statistic to peddle the illusion of economic recovery. Even in the midst of recession and austerity, we still fall for this con trick and out we go, in our droves, to pay homage to the great consumerist god and buy our way to salvation.

And when we get to the shops, or when we get to the supermarket, we stand frozen in the aisles as we are confronted by thousands of choices for anything and everything. This is the paradox of our consumerist society: by giving us what we think we want/they decide we want in every shape, size, colour, quality and price, they have given us the burden of choice. And each choice demands a decision. And each decision demands a process of working out (a) what you think you want and (b) what you really need and (c) what your selection criteria are and (d) what you are prepared to pay and (e) can you get it more cheaply elsewhere and (f) oh I can't be bothered anymore, it's doing my head in.

So think of your average expedition to your local super/hyper/mega/gigamarket, think of the 100 or so different items you have to locate on your weekly shop in the massive, overlit, echoing, overcrowded, soulless hangar where this phantasmagoria of consumer choices is displayed in endless aisles of labelled categories (aka a warehouse) - you are tramping from one decision point to another a hundred times over. Each decision is fraught with fear and uncertainty: too much salt, too much sugar, too many calories, can I heat it in the oven, can I freeze it, should I buy two for one, three for two, none for any, much too much, oh my god! Tilt!

This is the brave new world of consumer choice and convenience. In the early 1970s, the American futurologist Alvin Toffler published his seminal book Future Shock. In it he predicted that the global capitalist system would eventually result in a state of overchoice. Overchoice is a direct threat to mental health, it is the condition where the human brain is physiologically unable to process the information required to make an informed decision. Your decision-making powers become paralysed, your brain becomes overloaded and you have to withdraw from the decision situation to recover.

That's why shopping has become so stressful. The consumerist model of consumption that has ruled the Western world for the last 30 years has spiralled out of control: shopping has become the new opium of the masses and people's lives have been sacrificed on the altar of consumer choice.