The idea of progress is founded on a process of forward movement. It is not too controversial to observe that, in the general discourse, progress is intimately tied to a particular direction measured by sets of well-known variables: education, economic prosperity, industrial power, material well-being, political transparency, health, and so on (an argument can be made that slowly these are beginning to shift towards new factors still difficult to articulate in the public sphere).
In any case, progress is a unidirectional vector where more of any of these variables equals more progress equals more good, while less means less progress and thus is bad. Ultimately, because in public discourse progress has been set as the modern civilisational goal, it becomes the reference point by which we decide what to focus on improving, reproducing, realising, and expanding.
And I would argue that the idea of an individual freedom that strikes that precious balance of growing while at the same time making life in society better is what overarches much of these factors that constitute this idea of progress.
Since technology belongs to this idea of progress, it is also deeply conditioned by how it increases freedom, either directly or indirectly by facilitating other things that themselves increase freedom down the line. Thus, when we look at much of the predictions and aspirations about technological advancement that get the most attention, the multiplication of available choice and perfecting how we can consistently make the best choices seems to be one of its constant targets.
Now, let us take this vector of progress to its limits: what if we had infinity of choice?
Many already deal with an almost infinite range of choice in their daily existences. Every day we are able to choose what information to consume, what tasks to perform, what commitments to invest ourselves in, what products to buy, who to communicate to, etc. In fact, we are expected to do so, both in short-term and long-term choices, because few guidelines, constraints, or punitive enforcements from society or authority will do it for us, because that would restrain our freedom. Given this increased freedom, the availability of options to choose from can be seen as both a blessing and a heavy burden.
Our range of choice is to all intents and purposes infinite, not because it actually is. We obviously are far from having an infinite range of choice; compared to the inconceivable idea of infinity, our range of choice is infinitesimal, unimaginably small. Yet the reasons for the impossibility of it being infinite and why it can to all intents and purposes be considered infinite are the same: we are finite mortal beings, limited by finite time, bodily presence, resources, physical strength, attention, and emotional energy.
Our limitations restrain us so much that we have far more than enough choices at every moment of our lives to occupy quite a lot of lifetimes. Even more, we not only have an exponentially larger menu of choices than ever before in human history, but we also face situations that require us to choose among too many options far more often. Hence, given an increase in leaps and bounds both of quantity and frequency, to all intents and purposes we have infinite choice; we have functional infinity.
And infinity has this blessedly vertiginous quality of begetting more infinity. All the sacrifices we make for choosing something over the other (the essence of the most dramatic human situation of all: the dilemma), all of the choices we make at intersections and forking paths that we feel narrow down our possibilities by cancelling one full branch of our possible destinies forever, result in the opening up of a new infinity of available choices.
Even by abandoning one path by taking the other, many previously nonexistent paths will suddenly spring out before our eyes, sometimes manifesting quite clearly before us, and sometimes pulsing down the line as intriguing flares in the distance. With every severing of an unchosen path, a new bouquet of paths will bloom, like the severed stump of the hydra.
What we think are constraints are just a blink in infinity. Infinity is still infinity no matter how much you narrow it. This is also applicable to the infinity by all means and purposes that we are exploring here. Compared to our finitude, we are effectively facing infinite choice. And this proliferation of paths that the severing of one produces also happens when we attempt to force constraints into our choices even before we find ourselves before them. Like pomegranates, when we squeeze them hard enough, gushes of sweet juice and clusters of glistening vivid seeds will splatter out all at once.
By choosing the path to the right instead of that to the left, you might have sacrificed all the dreams and aspirations that lay down the latter. Even worse, you might have realised too late the gravity of your mistake, when your choice cannot be reversed. Yet, by attempting to cut through infinity, you have only created more paths; you might even discover new dimensions of choice, that there are paths upward and downward, or even wormholes that take you to entirely new paradigms that you would never have imagined could be so right for you. The pomegranate gives in and bursts, brightening the greyness around you with glistening vermilion paths radiating in all directions. Don’t mourn the crushed pomegranate. More will grow from its seeds, and they might surprise you, relegating their predecessor to a beloved yet overcome memory. A single shell, solid and graspable, is now multiple seeds, sweet and fertile.
But ultimately, the question is not whether new paths will appear. They will. The question is what makes us recognise one glistening seed among hundreds and walk towards it. Not because we chose it, but because it called to us, and we were open enough to be seized by its force. And it is this force that finds us. We feel it in our bones before our minds catch up, if we haven’t desensitised ourselves to its pull. What guides this receptivity is the question of meaning and where its source dwells.
The paradox of choice is not that the more choice we have the more we suffer from paralysing indecision. It is rather that the best choice might turn out to be the worst choice down the line, especially if we sacrificed an unreasonable amount of energy, attention, and perhaps our moral principles, to make it. We are not narrowing down our possibilities with each choice; regardless of our thinking it was the wrong or the right choice, they will still remain effectively infinite. The number of options and frequency of situations that require us to choose will continue to grow. But this isn’t necessarily directly in sync with our level of freedom.
The real consequence of our finitude is that we have a limited time on this earth to understand what meaningfulness is and how our decisions respect and further reveal that meaning. It is meaning that is the foundation of our existence. It is what highlights in our perception what matters most in certain moments, what is worth choosing and committing to. It is what, once acknowledged and accounted for in action and cultivation, both inflames our hearts and puts them at ease in equal measure. And meaning is related to choice not in whether we made the “right” or “wrong” choice, whether we broke or opened something with our choice. Any choice we make can feed into meaning if we are trying to connect with its source. Both sorrow for our bad choices and breakthroughs from our good choices will bring us closer to connecting with our source of meaning, the one that we feel in our bones.
After all, if every choice begets a multiplicity of new choices, then we are continuously creating more stepping stones towards cultivating our relationship with true meaning. What matters is not to fall into despair and circle eternally over paralysing choices, mourning the loss of one path as an irretrievable defeat and failing to look past its dead carcass to all the new possibilities that rose in its demise. Blinding ourselves to the richness of possibilities in the world, tying ourselves to a sinking anchor into the dark depths, and above all abandoning our faith in our capacity to choose. Those are the real sins.
Speaking of choice being infinite: I would have done well to dispense with one or two metaphors. Perhaps the hydra was unnecessary. Sometimes we have many ideas and we don’t want to waste any of them, but for the sake of cohesiveness and conciseness, we need to limit ourselves. Had I done away with the hydra metaphor, it is probable that many other choices would have sprung from that absence, choices that would have taken me to the best metaphor possible. However, I keep it as a pesky reminder to follow my own advice.
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