There are many ways to describe
western contemporary society and management sciences professor, Rosenthal takes
part in this debate, arguing that choice is the key concept to understand the
era we are living. Having choice and having to make choice has
become the most important factor that influences both our personal lives and
our prevailing culture. Rosenthal shows that this ethos of choice arises
from two major situations. One is the great flood of goods made available
through the mass production; the other is what he calls "the loss of
absolute". The book tries, first of all, to explain the historical origins
of these situations by going back only to about 1850.  At that time, in fact, we find the theories of Darwin about the
origins of species, the writings of John Stuart Mill about liberalism, and
those of Karl Marx about capitalism. They all contributed to the secularization
of society. Then, in the following years, the scientific theories of Maxwell
and Einstein vastly increased our knowledge and our control of the world. The
consequence of these cultural evolutions has been the overwhelming presence of
choice. So that, nowadays, maybe too much choice can equal none at all.
Rosenthal, just analyzing the sciences and the arts in the twentieth century
suggests that, in this age, "reality is multifaceted"(p. 60): we are
in the dimension of the hyperreal, "where art and reality become
indistinguishable"(p. 67).

This condition of "blurring of
reality" is typical of the so-called postindustrial society. By this
expression, introduced by social scientist D. Bell, Rosenthal means a society
that has seen the transformation from a plenitude of goods to a plethora of
information. The sociological aspect of this condition that, according to
Rosenthal, has a great importance is the dualism created between the desire to
recognize our unique self and the desire (brought about by alienation) to
belong.

Moreover, the proliferation of
information has spurred the increasing of the theories and studies about the
decision-making processes. The author breaks down human development into four
stages.  The first one is that of
essentiality non choice; the second one is the current one of constrained
optimization; the third stage, which may be in the relatively near future, is
one of almost unconstrained optimization; the last stage, at the moment merely
hypothetical, is the so called "omega-point", in which to actualize
all of our possibilities we must prolong our lives ideally to establish
immortality.

The problems of decision-making led
Rosenthal to examine how binary oppositions have made an impact on some field
of knowledge. He underlines the concept of binary opposition, treating the theories
of Structuralism in Saussure, Jakobson, Levi-Strauss, Barthes, Derrida: such
analysis radically extends the loss of absolute.  Another example of how oppositions blur the sense of reality is
individuated in the physics’ mental experiment of the so called
"Schrodinger’s Cat".

After the discussion of the
theoretical condition in the era of choice, the attention moves to the
"question of deciding for oneself in a blurred world where absolutes have
receded" (p. 120). This leads to a discussion of the concepts of freedom
and existentialism. Freedom is both freedom of choice and freedom from choice:
existentialism is the philosophy that focused just the question of decisions
and choice. Though existentialism had been often misunderstood, Nietzsche,
Heidegger and Sartre, all great figures of this movement of thought, espouse a
higher morality, strength of character and sense of responsibility. But various
interpretations of their works have led to a pervasive  association of existentialism with nihilism,
anarchy and egocentricity. Now Rosenthal notices that, using existentialism in
psychotherapy, as Yalom tries to do, could be a good application, because it
shows that freedom entails a lot of baggage: responsibility, guilt and will.
All those elements are blurred by contemporary society’s growing liberty and
widening subjectivity that erase the notion that each of our actions has a
consequence. This point has great influences. Rosenthal explains the idea that
the individualism that characterizes our culture, liberates, but it separates
and thereby excludes and alienates.

If, according to this book, the era
of choice is collocated in the so called postindustrial society; then what is
the "turning point" (p. 169) of this era? The author sees it the
1960s. By that moment the upward- spiraling dance of progress was becoming
exhausted: the dissolution of the high-low cultural rift affected art, music
and other outlets. Talking about the turning point of 1960s, the text addresses
the passage from modernism to postmodernism. The debunking of the classical
truths, the fragmentation of Christianity, the expanded world view, the ancient
absolute that is overthrown: this was progress; this was modernism.
Postmodernism is more difficult to define; it "can be viewed as inherently
oppositional: as antimodernism"(p. 201). It also enables choices and
therefore promotes inclusion, but also postpones decisions and the exclusion
that the choice would involve. The main effect of postmodernism on everyday
life is that we are losing our long running balance between trend and tradition
and this means that life cycles of things and situations, in contemporary
society, are shorter; one tendency is growing: we have to refuse to wait for
one task to be finished before we begin the next one. Such multitasking is
dangerous, because it can increase the marginalization of what is important.

Rosenthal is not the only one to
point out the dangers of the era of choice; he joins other critics of
contemporary life, like W. I. Thompson, N. Postman, G. Rochlin, G. Easterbrook,
L. Levine.  They point out the themes of
our growing love affair with and dependence in technology, of the consequences
of computerization, and of the feeling worse, though society’s environment is
getting cleaner.

We are headed in a world in which,
as Sen notices, "modern economic theory, although good for understanding
markets, is often neither realistically descriptive of human economic behavior
nor optimal with respect to social welfare" (p. 266). We are in world in which,
as S. Huntington notices, global tensions could cause the clash of
civilizations. Closing his book, Rosenthal points out some ways to face this
situation. It’s important to understand the basic statement that "not all
of our socioeconomic problems can be solved by resorting to an implementation
of free markets and privatization for goods that are naturally
shared"  p. 302). Sometimes,
establishing some smart rules for ourselves can preclude a dose of angst.

Rosenthal’s book is very helpful to
understand the social and cultural questions of our time.  It is addressed to who are interested in
theoretical sociology, but it also engages with, in an articulated way, several
philosophical concepts, theories, and historical processes. The literature
Rosenthal refers to is vast, involving both American and European work. Yet
it’s surprising that Rosenthal doesn’t consider in his reconstructions some
French philosophy and especially the social critic M. Foucault, who worked so
much on modernity, subjectivity and historical evolution of social condition in
western society.

Despite this, reading Rosenthal’s
book, we can finally rediscover the value of equilibrium as basis for mental
health, seeing equilibrium not as a mix of opposites but as the wisdom in
facing the era of choice.

© 2006 Francesco
Giacomantonio

Francesco Giacomantonio has a Ph. D. in
Contemporary Philosophies and Social Theories (Bari’s University, Italy). He obtained
his MA degree in Political Sciences (Bari’s University, Italy).  He works with Italian academic Reviews and
Sites (SWIF, Jura Gentium,…) and his interests are in sociology and political
philosophy. Among his main writings online, the voice "Sociology of
Knowledge" for the Swif ebook  "Reserch’s
lines" and the Swif pages on Habermas,
Weber and Merton.

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