"Capitalism when it first developed was a very significant part of life, but it wasn't all of life. In other words, it had its place, but that place wasn't every place. And what's happened over the years, what some people call economic imperialism, is that the incredible efficiencies of the market started being exported to other aspects of life. And so the classroom, the educational institution is just another market. The students are customers, the professors are the retailers, and you operate to keep the customers happy. It wouldn't have occurred to anyone to think about education in those terms, but it's increasingly become a market. And that influence is so pervasive that I think it can exert itself without our even realizing. It doesn't occur to people growing up now that they've got a kind of market capitalist lens through which they look at everything. When they're trying to decide whether to form a friendship, they ask themselves: is it worth it to me to invest my time in this relationship? Notice the language. Is it worth it to invest my time? And it doesn't occur to people that this is a sort of distorted way to be thinking about developing close relations to other people. It's just become the language of our time. So you get influenced by being awash in markets and consumerism without realizing that that's what's happening to you. So that's a hard influence to overcome because you don't even realize its presence. That's what makes it so difficult for people to change."

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? How can we learn practical wisdom?

Dr. Barry Schwartz is the Dorwin P. Cartwright Professor Emeritus of Social Theory and Social Action in the psychology department at Swarthmore College. He is the author of many books, including Why We Work, The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, and co-author of Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing.

www.swarthmore.edu/profile/barry-schwartz
www.simonandschuster.com/books/Why-We-Work/Barry-Schwartz/TED-Books/9781476784861
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-paradox-of-choice-barry-schwartz?variant=32207920234530
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/307231/practical-wisdom-by-barry-schwartz-and-kenneth-sharpe

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