Among President Donald Trump’s lizard-brain intuitions is that Americans are overwhelmed by choice. This exhaustion is a strangely underexplored reason for his appeal; it may even help explain why his heavy use of executive power (verging on what some experts have no problem calling authoritarianism) is often met with shrugs and blank stares.
在唐纳德·特朗普总统的蜥蜴脑的直觉中，美国人被选择不知所措。这种精疲力尽是他吸引他的奇怪的理由。它甚至可以帮助解释为什么他大量利用执行权（即使某些专家毫无问题地称呼专制主义）经常会遇到耸耸肩和空白的凝视。
Just to take one surprising example: Last month, Trump swept away worries about his tariff war raising the cost of an array of consumer products by suggesting that children didn’t need so many toys (“I don’t think a beautiful baby girl needs—that’s 11 years old—needs 30 dolls”)—to which a chorus on the anti-consumerist left responded, Yeah, you’re probably right. Although most observers interpreted Trump’s comments as a gaffe (because what president since Jimmy Carter has suggested that Americans should scrimp?), the journalist Alissa Quart wrote that Trump had “unwittingly” put his finger on a real problem, that “American kids are being overly defined by material goods and they and we need to buy less.” Writing in Slate, Rebecca Onion, also holding her nose, admitted that “American parenthood is an intense encounter with the excesses of the consumer economy, where the acquisition of stuff feels like it’s not in your control.”
举一个令人惊讶的例子：上个月，特朗普扫除了对他的关税战争的担忧，提出了一系列消费产品的成本，这表明孩子们不需要太多玩具（“我不认为一个漂亮的女婴需要 - 11岁的30岁的娃娃 - 需要30个娃娃”） - 在抗笨拙的剩下的剩下的剩下的人中，是左翼左派，是的，是的，您可能是正确的。尽管大多数观察家都将特朗普的评论解释为陷入困境（因为吉米·卡特（Jimmy Carter）以来的总统建议美国人应该scri脚？），但记者艾丽莎（Alissa Quart）写道，特朗普“不知不觉地”将他的手指放在了一个真正的问题上，“美国孩子被物质商品过于界定，他们和他们和他们需要更少的购买。”丽贝卡·洋葱（Rebecca Onion）在板岩中写道，也握住鼻子，他承认：“美国的父母身份是对消费者经济过度的过度接触，在这种情况下，收购东西就像您无法控制的东西。”
Much of Trump’s schtick—the aspiration to wear a crown (literally), the assertion that “I alone can fix it,” the ostentatious governing through reward and punishment—can be seen as a leader offering his subjects relief from the burden of making decisions. This is not to say that Trump has developed such a supreme case for himself as Daddy, but rather that his popularity reveals the readiness of Americans to turn to one. The desire to have someone else choose might have to do with just how valueless our many options have become. Think of the expansive selection of “mid” TV shows to pick from on Netflix, or the nearly infinite number of possible sexual partners that fly by on Tinder, or the agony of selecting a candidate at the polls (among either, usually, two flawed politicians or, as in New York City’s ranked-choice Democratic primary, so many candidates that consensus feels unreachable).
特朗普的大部分Schtick（从字面上看）佩戴冠冕的愿望，即“我一个人可以解决它”的断言，即通过奖励和惩罚的义大管理 - 可以看作是使他的臣民摆脱决策负担的领导者。这并不是说特朗普已经为自己做出了如此的最高案例，而是他的受欢迎程度揭示了美国人准备求助于一个。拥有别人选择的愿望可能与我们的许多选择变得多么毫无用处。想想在Netflix上挑选的“中型”电视节目的广泛选择，或者在Tinder上飞来飞去的几乎无限的性伴侣，或者在民意测验中选择候选人的痛苦（通常是两名有缺陷的政治家，或者，就像纽约市的民主党民主主义者一样，如此多的候选人，如此众多的共识）。
The notion that Trump is the wrong answer to the right question has become something of a truism for liberals. But perhaps he is, in this unintended way, pointing us to the end of “choice idolatry.” This is the phrase that the historian Sophia Rosenfeld uses in her recent book, The Age of Choice, which sets out to explain how freedom came to be synonymous with having an endless number of possible doors to open, and how wrapped up our sense of self is with the ability “to make one’s own personally satisfying choices, with a minimum of impediments, from among a range of options.” She uses idolatry for a distinct reason, suggesting that we might be reaching a golden-calf moment: As shiny and captivating as choice has been for so long, it is revealing itself as a hollow source of identity and a distraction from what really matters.
特朗普是正确问题的错误答案的观念已成为自由主义者的真实性。但是，也许他以这种意想不到的方式指出了我们的“选择偶像崇拜”的结尾。这是历史学家索菲亚·罗森菲尔德（Sophia Rosenfeld）在她最近的书《时代》中使用的一句话，它着手解释自由是如何成为无限数量的可能打开门的代名词，而我们的自我意识如何具有“使自己的个人满足选择的能力”，从范围范围内就可以使自己的个人满足选择。”她使用偶像崇拜是出于独特的原因，这表明我们可能会达到一个金色的时刻：随着选择的闪亮和迷人，它已经很长时间了，它将自己表现为空心的身份，并分散了真正重要的东西。
Read: America got the father it wanted.
阅读：美国得到了他想要的父亲。
Rosenfeld, who teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, calls herself a “historian of the taken-for-granted.” (A previous book of hers traced the history of common sense.) The presumption that freedom equals choice is the kind of fixed notion she is primed to deconstruct. To think of humans as a species that revels in possibility—unlike, say, anteaters or mice, who are not exactly seeking out novelty—seems self-evident. But Rosenfeld’s book demonstrates just how recent and culturally constructed this definition is, a seeping consequence of social and psychological developments over the past 300 years that gradually saturated the way people came to see themselves.
罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）在宾夕法尼亚大学（University of Pennsylvania）任教，称自己为“被授予的历史学家”。（她的上一本书追溯了常识的历史。）自由相等选择的假设是她为解构而准备的那种固定概念。将人类视为一种可能性的物种，例如，没有完全寻求新颖性的食肉动物或小鼠，似乎是不言而喻的。但是罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）的书证明了最近和文化上的构建定义是多么的，这是过去300年中社会和心理发展的渗透结果，逐渐使人们看到自己的方式逐渐饱和。
Ceasing to think of freedom as the possession of many options would be no small rupture. What might take its place? Abandoning a consumerist worldview might not be the worst thing for humanity, and for Americans in particular—it might lead to a sturdier value system, maybe one more concerned with the common good. But the resulting vacuum could just as easily be filled by Trump’s idea of freedom, one based on power and sovereignty over others, and on screwing the other guy before he screws you. The cruelty of this vision almost demands a reinvigoration of choice, an effort to salvage what had made this human impulse so liberating to begin with.
停止将自由视为拥有许多选择的权力将不是很小的破裂。可能会取代它？放弃消费主义的世界观可能并不是人类最糟糕的事情，尤其是美国人 - 这可能导致更坚固的价值体系，也许还有一个与共同利益有关。但是，由特朗普的自由观念，一个基于对他人的权力和主权的想法，可以很容易地填补所产生的真空，并在另一个人搞砸你之前拧紧。这种愿景的虐待几乎需要重新振奋选择，这是为了挽救使这种人类冲动的原因，从而自由。
For Rosenfeld, the first inklings of our choosiness could be glimpsed in Western Europe in the late 17th century. Picture a woman walking into a store that sells calicos, which were ornamental pieces of cotton from India printed with varied and colorful designs of flowers, birds, and the like. These were some of the first pieces of frippery available, sold at a price point that made them accessible to more than just the rich. No longer was the act of buying goods one of provisioning, asking for flour or butter from behind the counter. Now the products were on display, Rosenfeld writes, “hung from hooks inside shops or on the side of entranceways in enticing folds that stretched down to the floor in a simulation of women’s copious skirts.” This was not mere sustenance; it was seduction.
对于罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）而言，我们选择的最初含义在17世纪后期可以在西欧瞥见。想象一个女人走进一家出售印花布的商店，那里是印度的装饰品棉花，上面印有各种各样的鲜花，鸟类等的设计。这些是一些可用的餐厅，以价格出售，这使它们不仅可以富裕。购买商品的行为不再是供应之一，从柜台后面要求面粉或黄油。罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）写道：“现在展出了这些产品，“从商店内部或入口处悬挂着挂钩，以诱使褶皱，以模拟女性的丰富裙子，这些褶皱一直延伸到地板上。”这不仅仅是寄托。这是诱惑。
During the century that followed, choice exploded. Soon, sales catalogs laying out the choicest wares were read for pleasure, presenting opportunities to fantasize. A new style of eating establishment, by the 1790s exemplified in the Parisian bistro, offered expanding menus of meats and sauces and drinks in hundreds of possible variations.
在随后的世纪中，选择爆炸了。很快，销售精选的商品的销售目录被阅读为愉悦，并提供了幻想的机会。到1790年代，一种新的饮食习惯风格在巴黎小酒馆举例说明了，为数百种可能的变体提供了扩大肉类，调味料和饮料的菜单。
The habits of mind that formed around these activities altered the way people thought about their lives. This is Rosenfeld’s central contention. But shopping was soon perceived to have a moral cost; it was seen, she writes, “as emancipatory and as selfish and indulgent.” An anxiety attached itself to choice even as the rituals of consumption were becoming ingrained—the coveting, the browsing, the haggling, the price comparison.
围绕这些活动形成的思想习惯改变了人们对生活的思考方式。这是罗森菲尔德的中心争论。但是购物很快被认为是有道德成本的。她写道，这是“解放性的，自私和放纵的。”即使消费的仪式变得根深蒂固，渴望，浏览，讨价还价，价格比较也会引起焦虑。
Shopping guides emerged to help guard against making bad choices. The Tea Purchaser’s Guide; or, The Lady and Gentleman’s Tea Table and Useful Companion, in the Knowledge and Choice of Teas, authored anonymously by “A Friend to the Public,” could be considered a kind of 18th-century Wirecutter. Such compendia were created to avoid choosing according to “fancy” or “whim,” two vices that made their appearance in novels of the time, as did a new stock female character: the coquette. This was the woman who exercises her power to choose by browsing extensively but also withholding a decision. She teases. As Rosenfeld emphasizes throughout her history, such excesses were often projected onto women, who were accused of causing “social and moral decay” through their frivolity and unexpected economic power.
购物指南出现了，以帮助防止做出错误的选择。茶购买者指南；或者，在茶的知识和选择中，女士和绅士的茶几和有用的伴侣，由“公众的朋友”匿名撰写，可以被认为是一种18世纪的拼字机。创建了这种汇编是为了避免根据“幻想”或“异想天开”的选择，这两个恶习使他们在当时的小说中露面，新的股票女性角色也是如此：Coquette。这是那个女人通过广泛浏览，同时扣留决定来行使自己的权力。她取笑。正如罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）在整个历史上强调的那样，这种过剩通常被投射到妇女身上，这些妇女被指控通过轻浮和意外的经济力量造成“社会和道德衰败”。
Read: There’s no such thing as free will.
阅读：没有自由意志。
The shopping revolution was as significant as the more obvious political revolts that occurred around the same time. The philosophers of liberalism and the authors of new constitutions may have provided a language for talking about individual freedom, but it was the consumer’s habit, in Rosenfeld’s framing, that eventually trickled down and transformed political systems into expressions of personal preference.
购物革命与大约同时发生的更明显的政治起义一样重要。自由主义的哲学家和新宪法的作者可能为谈论个人自由提供了一种语言，但是在罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）的框架中，消费者的习惯最终使政治体系转化为个人喜好的表达。
Because of the dangers of unhindered possibility, the expansion of choice came with guardrails, rules meant to stave off anarchy and social disorder. The use of dance cards at 19th-century balls—another of Rosenfeld’s charmingly idiosyncratic examples—expanded women’s agency in choosing a mate. The little booklets allowed a woman to create a menu of options, but they also precluded a free-for-all—it was highly improper, for example, to dance with the same partner for more than a waltz or two.
由于可能性不受阻碍的危险，因此选择的扩展是护栏，因此规则旨在避免无政府状态和社会障碍。在19世纪的球上使用舞蹈卡，这是罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）诱人的特质例子的另一个 - 选择伴侣的女性代理。这些小册子允许一个女人创建一个选项菜单，但她们也排除了一个免费的选项 - 例如，与同一伴侣共舞，这比一个或两个华尔兹的伴侣多。
With the introduction of the secret ballot, in the Yorkshire town of Pontrefract in 1872, choice idolatry conquered its last frontier: voting. No longer would elections be noisy, populous affairs in which candidates would treat voters to food and drink in a shared good time for all. No longer would political choice be the result of something like a public caucus, a ritual that mostly just codified already existing social alliances. The secret ballot began as an “experiment,” as one local paper put it, in which one was to go “alone and unbefriended to a compartment,” in the words of another, and indicate one’s favored candidate. This solitary physical act soon became, Rosenfeld writes, “what modern freedom is supposed to feel like.” The secret ballot became the most fundamental of rights in a democracy. Attention turned to the question of who should secure this right, and understandably so: Women and minority groups understood its power, even as an emblem (recall Afghan women in 2014 proudly raising their ink-stained fingers to indicate that they had taken part).
随着1872年在约克郡小镇Pontrefract的推出，Choice Idolatry征服了其最后的边界：投票。选举不再是嘈杂，人口众多的事务，候选人会在共同的美好时光中对选民进行食物和饮料。政治选择不再是公共核心小组之类的结果，这种仪式大多刚刚将已经存在的社会联盟编纂而成。正如一位当地报纸所说，秘密投票是作为“实验”开始的，其中一个人要“独自一人，不愿与一个隔间”，用他人的话说，并表明一个人喜欢的候选人。罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）写道：“现代自由应该感觉如何。”秘密投票成为民主国家中最基本的权利。注意到谁应该确保这一权利，这是可以理解的：妇女和少数群体也理解其力量，即使是标志（召回2014年的阿富汗妇女，自豪地抬起墨水染色的手指表明她们已经参与其中）。
Yet even before that first ballot was shoved into a box, some saw the shift from the communal act of voting, messy as it had been, to the purely individual as carrying its own problems. Writing in 1861, John Stuart Mill, a champion of liberalism, worried about what would be let loose in the secrecy of the voting booth, where an elector might be encouraged to “use a public function for his own interests, pleasures or caprice.” Voters would think of their choices as a way “to please themselves,” or as an expression of their “personal interests, or class interest, or some mean feeling in his own mind.” The whole process, Mill argued, would move voting away from a referendum on a community’s values and toward an act of whimsy, like browsing from an array of calico clothes.
然而，即使在第一次投票被推入盒子之前，有些投票也看到了从公共投票行为的转变，就像过去一样，纯粹是纯粹的人来承担自己的问题。1861年的自由主义拥护者约翰·斯图尔特·米尔（John Stuart Mill）在1861年写作，担心在投票摊位的保密中会放手，在那里可以鼓励选举人“为自己的利益，乐趣或卡普里斯（Caprice）使用公共职能”。选民会将自己的选择视为“取悦自己”的一种方式，或者是他们“个人利益，阶级兴趣，或者在他自己的脑海中有些卑鄙的感觉”的表达。米尔认为，整个过程将使对社区价值观的全民公决和奇特的行为，例如从一系列印花布服装中浏览。
The 20th century only further solidified the idea of choice as the paramount freedom, which also meant shedding some of the guardrails of earlier eras. Many economists came to perceive an individual as the sum of their preferences, a choosing machine, Homo economicus, acting rationally and always maximizing the collective good through their own self-interest. The celebration of market-based individualism hit a peak when Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism triumphed in the 1980s. Friedman once wrote that “the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society.”
20世纪，只有选择的观念是至高无上的自由，这也意味着放弃了早期时代的一些护栏。许多经济学家开始将一个人视为他们的偏好的总和，选择机器，同性恋经济性，并始终通过自己的自身利益来最大化集体利益。米尔顿·弗里德曼（Milton Friedman）的新自由主义在1980年代取得了胜利时，基于市场的个人主义的庆祝活动达到了顶峰。弗里德曼曾经写道：“人们根据自己的价值观控制自己的生活的自由是实现伟大社会的全部潜力的最可靠方法。”
Read: The friendship that created behavioral economics
阅读：创造行为经济学的友谊
At the same time, paradoxically, the 20th century provided much reason for skepticism about how much control humans really have over their choices. Freud revealed the subterranean sources of our desires; advertisers manipulate our taste for breakfast cereals as well as presidents. In this century, at least to a behavioral psychologist such as the late Daniel Kahneman, even the question of free will seems unsettled. This insecurity is particularly glaring in a world of proliferating algorithms that serve us more of what they predict we will want and AIs that offer to do the thinking for us.
同时，自相矛盾的是，20世纪，关于人类对自己的选择的真正控制权提供了许多持怀疑态度的理由。弗洛伊德揭示了我们欲望的地下来源。广告商操纵了我们对早餐谷物和总统的品味。在本世纪，至少对于已故丹尼尔·卡尼曼（Daniel Kahneman）等行为心理学家来说，即使是自由意志的问题似乎都没有解决。这种不安全感尤其令人陶醉，这在一个扩散的算法世界中，这些算法为我们提供了更多他们预测的我们想要的东西和为我们做思考的AIS。
If choice is the “useless and exhausted idiom” that Rosenfeld suggests it might be by the end of her history, then maybe the concept is worth abandoning altogether. Doing so, she writes, would be akin to asking “if we are done with capitalism and democracy and their special offspring, human rights”—if we are ready, that is, to throw out the dominant principle of the contemporary world.
如果罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）认为这可能是在她的历史结束时所表明的“无用和疲惫的成语”，那么这个概念也许值得完全放弃。她写道，这样做类似于问：“我们是否对资本主义和民主及其特殊后代，人权做到了”，如果我们准备好抛弃当代世界的主要原则。
I don’t think we are. But if choice has indeed become an end unto itself, absent a set of principles for actually making choices, then something has gone awry.
我认为我们不是。但是，如果选择确实已经成为目的，没有真正做出选择的原则，那么某些事情就变得不好了。
Abortion rights is a telling test case. In the late 1960s, feminists began using the slogan “My Body, My Choice” to argue for the legalization of abortion in order to make it seem to be a self-evident right: Americans would never stand in the way of freedom, and to be free was to have choices. But what is clearer now, after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, is that the pro-choice argument was fragile. It gave conservatives the chance to challenge the consumerist-sounding appeal to “choice” with the more moral-sounding appeal of “life.” But even more damning are critiques of this framing from the left. The decision to rely on “choice,” Rosenfeld writes, made access to abortion “solely a civil right, a right to fulfill individual desires without government interference, not a social or economic right framed in response to essential needs or a matter of social justice.” She explains that this made abortion seem like “something for sale exclusively to those who had the resources—financial, familial, and psychological—to select it in a reproductive marketplace.”
堕胎权利是一个有说服力的测试案例。在1960年代后期，女权主义者开始使用口号“我的身体，我的选择”来主张堕胎合法化，以使其似乎是一项不言而喻的权利：美国人永远不会束缚自由的方式，而自由的是有选择。但是，在最高法院的Dobbs裁决（推翻Roev。Wade）之后，现在更加清楚的是，亲选择的论点是脆弱的。它使保守派有机会以“生活”的更具道德感的吸引力来挑战对“选择”的吸引力。但是，更加令人讨厌的是对左侧框架的批评。罗森菲尔德（Rosenfeld）写道，依靠“选择”的决定使堕胎获得了“仅是一项公民权利，有权履行个人欲望的权利而不会在不干预政府干预的情况下，而不是针对基本需求或社会正义问题的社会或经济权利。”她解释说，这使堕胎看起来像是“仅向拥有资源（财务，家庭和心理学）的人出售的东西，可以在生殖市场中选择它。”
Is it possible to make an argument for abortion without resorting to choice idolatry? I began to hear an inkling of this possibility during the recent presidential campaign. Access to abortion was presented not as a matter of personal bodily autonomy but as a public-health concern. In one memorable speech, Michelle Obama painted a dire picture of what would happen to women if, because of abortion bans, they didn’t get “the care” they needed; to the male partners of these women, she said, “You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something.” Kamala Harris, in her one debate with Trump, also turned to images of medical distress—of “pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room.” Rather than appealing to women’s personal agency, Harris invoked other values: communal care and well-being.
是否可以在不诉诸选择偶像崇拜的情况下进行堕胎论点？在最近的总统竞选期间，我开始听到这种可能性的意见。堕胎的机会不是作为个人身体自治的问题，而是作为公共卫生的关注。在一次令人难忘的演讲中，米歇尔·奥巴马（Michelle Obama）描绘了一幅可怕的照片，说明妇女因堕胎禁令而不会得到所需的“关怀”；对于这些女人的男性伴侣，她说：“您将是一个恳求任何人，任何人做某事的人。”卡马拉·哈里斯（Kamala Harris）在与特朗普的一场辩论中，也转向了医疗困扰的形象，“想要怀孕的孕妇以流产的痛苦，在急诊室被拒绝护理。”哈里斯没有吸引妇女的个人代理，而是援引了其他价值观：公共护理和福祉。
Read: Abortion takes center stage.
阅读：堕胎是中心舞台。
What I picked up in this tonal shift was a realization among liberals, conscious or not, that just arguing for having choices was not enough. It matters how you choose and what you choose. What matters is the moral choice in question, the stakes—in this case, what we value more: the health and happiness of the mother, or the existence of her fetus.
我在这种音调转变中挑选的是自由主义者之间的意识，无论是否有意识，只是主张选择选择是不够的。您的选择方式和选择是重要的。重要的是所讨论的道德选择，赌注 - 在这种情况下，我们更重视的是：母亲的健康和幸福或胎儿的存在。
This is a harder debate to have, and it demands making a more profound argument than one simply in favor of choice, but it is also more rewarding. In his 1946 lecture “Existentialism Is a Humanism,” Jean-Paul Sartre compared making moral choices to “the construction of a work of art.” The decisions you make at every juncture are what make you. This is as true of a person’s life as it is of a society. “Freedom could be reconfigured as the chance to do what one ought rather than simply what one desired,” Rosenfeld writes. Releasing ourselves from choice idolatry doesn’t have to mean letting someone else—an imperial president, for instance—decide for us. It means separating good choices from bad, understanding these categories as the ones that matter, delineating them alongside our fellow citizens. This, rather than just being drunk on options, should be the sweet slog of modernity.
这是一个更困难的辩论，它要求比仅仅是选择选择的一个更深刻的论据，但这也更有意义。让·保罗·萨特（Jean-Paul Sartre）在1946年的“存在主义是一种人文主义”中，将道德选择与“艺术作品的建设”进行了比较。您在每个关头做出的决定就是您的决定。一个人的生活和社会一样，都是如此。罗森菲尔德写道：“可以重新配置自由，因为有机会做一个应该做的事情，而不仅仅是一个人想要的事情。”释放自己的选择偶像崇拜并不一定意味着让别人（例如，帝国总统）为我们付出。这意味着将好的选择与不良的选择分开，将这些类别理解为重要的选择，并将它们与我们的同胞一起描述。这不仅是在选择方面喝醉的，还应该是现代性的甜蜜。
