Was just watching a talk by Sheena Iyengar form the TED conference regarding ‘the art of choosing’ http://www.ted.com/talks/sheena_iyengar_on_the_art_of_choosing.html and was not giving It my full attention until she said that:

‘When offered to those not accustomed to it choice does not entail a liberation but a suffocation by meaningless minutia', which essentially gave voice to something I’ve been feeling for a long time. An example of the above statement is the experiences of those in eastern Europe who have undergone the transition from living in a communist state wherein product choice was confined to an affirmation or negation of the state brand of soap, chewing gum, beer etc (to which in east Germany many interestingly still retain their loyalty) to now, under democracy, being subject to an overwhelming deluge of seemingly identical possible brands, from which to operate an autonomous choice.

For those of us who have grown up as a part of this late capitalist paradigm we have been able to develop an acute ability to sift through the various possible manifestations of chewing gum or ‘soft drink’ with such fluency that forming brand allegiances and counterbalancing the market choices available becomes an almost instinctive activity that can be a source of pride. It is then however that we will find, when we believe ourselves to have carved a secure niche of brand preferences and loyalties out of the swarm of those commodities and products we could have chosen, and when we begin to derive a vivid impression of our own ‘consumer identity’ as it where, that we are most susceptible to undergoing a crisis of confidence.

The dissemination of the Anglo-American ideal of choice and the implications it has in forcing its citizens to compile a portfolio of freely chosen deals, contracts, brand’s and assorted paraphernalia can make those subjected to this tyranny of possibilities faint-headed. I increasingly feel absorbed by Sartre’s phantasmagorical ‘nausea’, on heading into town, as I start to feel winded by modernity’s unceasing reliance on my personal jurisdiction. To use a common example, any visit to a corporate, or indeed any other, coffee shop now consists of the customer being asked to dictate a carefully scrutinised prescription of how one would like one’s caffeine hit assembled. Surely I am not alone in feeling that this compliance and egalitarianism on the behalf of the coffee makers is enormously tedious? For imagine now how refreshing it would be to remove all the requests and democracy from the transaction and put your faith in the barista to process and comply with the words ‘can I have a coffee please’- what I would give to be dictated my order at a restaurant! On a trip into town I began to feel sweat trickle down my brow, and my consciousness teeming with neurosis as I calculate the price margins that delineate the different brands. A single trip into town will see the consumer sent hurtling from the void towards an onslaught of possible choices, negations and affirmations from which they are required by the late capitalist machine to perform countless exertions of what is actually quite high-level cognitive scrutiny. Only because from an increasingly young age we are initiated into this bizarre ritual, distinguishing our preferred cartoon enterprise, favoured manufactor of sweets etc, does it seem to us to be a natural one. However as Iyengar wittily points out in the video, choice is not an organic phenomenon which is a mainstay every culture, and hence the west is wrong to treat those cultures, such as her example regarding the green tea in japan, which do not bestow upon the consumer a vast array of options, as being aberrations that run counter to the notions of democracy and liberty.

The truth is that I believe many of the people who would triumphantly champion our ability in Britain to freely vote on who governs us as one of the most admirable facets of our culture would still, like me, relish a little bit of autocracy when buying a coffee. Because when absolute liberty infects the marketplace you begin to feel trapped and not freed. Supermarkets, far from being bastions of self-governance are its anathema; countless research having told us that when the range of options provided exceeds 10 we become lazy and disengage from the decision we are making. Multiply this disengagement by one trolley load and it becomes apparent that a reduction in the multiplicity of choice (in reality just homogenous variations on a theme) offered by the market would not leave the modern consumer disempowered and obedient, but would re-empower them by allowing them to redirect their cognitive energies away from shopping.

Was a bit apprehensive about posting this- but then bore in mind that i am essentially yelling into the void/muttering to myself here, such is the scarcity of those tuned in to hear me (which is actually a comforting and not a discouraging thought- more in touch with the idea of a blog as a 'log' kept whilst aboard a ship. Full of insidious bickering about the crew and hastily sketched recounts of the journey's progress/ self-indulgent moaning about the hardship of life at sea, all written in a sinuous scrawl due to the rockiness of the cabin desk ) Besides i think my three 'followers' may soon stop being the devotees the phrase implies, and justifiably take a detour from my inanities whilst i'm not looking etc etc

Anyway i wrote this in a frenzied burst- my eyelids artificially pronged up by caffeine stimulation on sunday early in the morning following a first shift at my new job-

Dissection of a Saturday night.

The residue of nights passed clings to everything here, a testament to punters liberally dousing every surface they pass with a variety of spirits, sugars and saliva like deranged catholic priests. I’m now acutely aware of this as I reach out to grip a table for balance whilst trying to weave in and amongst the horde of sweating, lurching drunks, emphatically bellowing innocuous lyrics in their friends faces. I glance at my palm in horror and with considerable effort succeed in wrenching it from its glucose web, a squelch audible as it is peeled away. Having completed this act of escapology I turn to face my true purpose for having stepped out from behind the relative safety of the bar.

Stopping to find my bearings I’m struck by the myopia of the club where a gaze is diverted by a hesitant glimmer of familiarity in the face over there, a distinct note to RSVP in a cute girls face or the unwitting intrusion of a passing elbow to the nave of my back. Then it’s the glance that in your daze your unaware to have held and the pulsing exposure of the strobe light etching phantom forms around you; it’s a scene from which sobriety reels and staggers to escape clutching its head like Chatterton. Its just then as I feel the rapid advance of blood from my feet to my head that I glimpse what I’d been sent to identify, over there, just behind the couple dispassionately gyrating against each other like two sticks being rubbed together by a boy scout hoping to prompt a spark. So I route cautiously through the crowd, side-on sneaking through the narrowest of human corridors, ducking beneath biceps tensed for photographs and intermittently issuing a barely audible ‘sorry’. Then with a final swivel past a middle-aged woman arcing her head around a seemingly oblivious partners neck and I’m by the crime scene, a freshly trampled carpet of glass.

Crouched down sweeping up the detritus I feel as though I’m a courtyard in a cloister of high heels and trainers. I’m reluctant to leave this clearing within the brooding forest of legs, hemmed in by the refractions of the lit mirrors that line the walls. Feet trace the floor and swing inches from my head whilst I sweep shattered beer glass from beneath them and I entertain the thought that months of feigning invisibility have paid off and I am now as translucent as the shards I’m collecting. For after all the role of the employee at the lowest rung of a business is to maintain a contrite efficiency and a perennial apology for their consumption of space and time. I see it in the shade of confusion and hostility that enters the delirious expressions I encounter on my way back to the bar. It’s the most transient of sensations for the drunk when inhibitions sneak back into their mind, and their own humility is reflected to them in the furrows of my brow. Once this peculiar apparition has dissolved from view however they can continue to exile any reservations and resume dancing.

As the clock hands meet and the proximity to other bodies lessens a greater flamboyancy enters the moves of those on the dance floor; what little etiquette was in place is all but savaged as grown men entertain guitar hero fantasies, lunging to the floor optimistically before despondently calling on their mates to haul them off the beer drenched floor. Blokes who habitually trust the authority of the Suns sages jut their starch-collared necks forward in time to American Idiot, and bark orders for ‘every body to enjoy the propaganda’ Women wield imaginary microphones aloft, eyes clenched, pirouetting their unoccupied hand in the air and yelling something resembling ‘if you want it/ you should’ve put a ring on it’, the final word stressed in a spirit of empowered solidarity.