The Fredösphere

Another chapter in the continuing story of consumers' need to be saved from overwhelming choice.  Via ArtsJournal, it's the Denver Post describing dailyCD.com.  If I sound sarcastic, let me assure you I appreciate the service these people do, even if I prefer to go the collaborative filtering route.  What I don't care for is the suggestion (not being made, let me hasten to add, by anyone mentioned in the Denver Post article) that, deep down, people dislike too much choice; that choice is somehow bad for people.  This is an opinion that would warm the heart of Stalin himself.

It's part of a more general attitude that distrusts giving power, wealth, or even simple ease and convenience, to the people generally.  It was better when the only entertainment was bowling, because then everyone bowled together!  Central heating is bad; it was better when the family gathered around the hearth at night, because they were forced to talk to one another!

I recall one friend who speculated he would prefer pre-modern life on some tropical island.  Whether the survival rate such a life would sustain would make even his very existence likely was something he had not thought through very carefully.

There is no question that power (even in the form of choice and personal freedom) will corrupt many.  The atomization of our culture sure makes my job of recruiting church choir members a lot harder.  But we are called to develop the character to rise above such temptations to self-indulgence.  If your eye offends you, by all means, cut it out.  But if you are worried merely that your eye might offend you some time in the future, keep your knife sharpened, but sheathed.

Darn.  I went on a bit of a rant there, didn't I.