Asking — and answering — life's interesting questions
There are well-known twosomes (many featured in these Thursday Throwdown questions!) and threesomes. Which speaks to you more, duality or trinity?
It’s nice to have an either/or choice, but a tripod needs three legs to stand. Or maybe we should consider unity as an alternative?
Share why if you wish.
Have you considered what people, places, and things in your life are things you need? What in your current existence could you not do without?
The world is an ever increasingly complicated place. There is more to see, do, and learn than at any other point in history. There is fierce competition for our attention, and endless stream of TV shows or movies to watch, books to read, podcasts and music to listen to, social media feeds to catch up on, video games to play, sporting events and concerts to attend, and on and on and on.
Our brains did not evolve to process today’s level of information. Under current circumstances, they do a remarkable job adapting to our sometimes chaotic environment.
But with all that noise, it can be tempting to dream about returning to a simpler time. Imagine, for a moment, you strip away one distraction after another. You remove one source of stress and anxiety, and then a second, a third, and so on. All unnecessary things fall away.
In this thought experiment, if you could manage to get rid of all the things you don’t need, what would remain? In your opinion, what is fundamental to a fulfilling, meaningful life for you? What can’t you imagine doing without, even for a short period of time?
Related questions: How do you determine what matters? What material possession means the most to you? What are your favorite hobbies? Are we too busy? What are you willing to sacrifice?
Is mandatory military service good for society? Or is it better to give people the choice of serving their country as a member of the military?
Share why if you wish.
For rational creatures, human beings make a lot of bad choices. Why is that?
If you think about all the choices you’ve made over the course of your life, undoubtedly you can find plenty that, in hindsight, were bad in nature.
Some of these decisions may have been minor in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps you had one too many pieces of cake at the birthday party when you are trying to lose weight. Or you drank an extra glass of wine, when past experience suggested your body would suffer for it the next day. Or maybe you stayed up too late when you should have gotten a good night’s sleep.
But there are other, more serious bad choices. Spending money you don’t have on things you don’t need. Getting behind the wheel when you are not in the condition to drive. Insulting your boss at a job you like. Being unfaithful to a partner.
Maybe you haven’t made these specific choices, but they happen ALL THE TIME. People end up in the hospital regularly for ridiculous purposes. People constantly behave in ways that are damaging to their own life, often for no obvious reason.
Why?
What is it that makes a bad choice seem to be desirable in the moment it is made? What makes us do something that we know in advance we shouldn’t do? Is there some way we might curb our impulses to make these unfortunate choices? Shouldn’t we, in general, make better decisions?
Related questions: What do you do that you shouldn’t? When have you made good from a bad situation? What mistake taught you the most? Why do we put up with unhappiness?
We tend to perceive limits as fundamentally bad. But is that necessarily the case? Can limitations be good for us?
There is a natural sense that the more options we have, the better. Limitations are… well, limiting. They keep us from getting the exact thing that we want.
However, in some cases our brains can be confronted with information overload. Given a choice of two or three items — for instance, jars of pasta sauce at the grocery store — we can settle on one fairly easily. Maybe we look at the price, or the ingredients, or one is a family favorite, or whatever.
However, that choice becomes much more difficult when there are a hundred options. Comparing a hundred prices, or a hundred lists of ingredients is much more daunting.
We see this with the internet. Someone opening up a web browser has a virtually unlimited number of websites they could visit. Perhaps you want to check out some news. Or play a game, or watch some cat videos, or learn a foreign language, or talk with someone halfway around the world. All of these, and much, much more, are available at the click of a mouse or a swipe of a finger.
How do you decide what to do? It can feel completely overwhelming.
It turns out that limiting your choices can actually be good in many cases. Narrowing your choices reduces cognitive load, or the amount of brain energy needed to make decisions. A sub-optimal decision made quickly and decisively, may be preferable to a slightly better option made later on.
Can you think of ways that limits can be beneficial?
Related questions: How do you limit yourself? How much is enough? When is it useful to fail? Too much or too little?