This post was written by a friend who
shared his thoughts with me. Although he was addressing NFP in this essay, his thesis that choice does not make us happy can also be seen as a more general proposition that applies to many areas of our lives where we have, perhaps, too many choices.
The
Libertarian philosophy is based on the fundamental presupposition that
"Choice makes us happy." I am not simply attributing this to them,
any libertarian would be in complete agreement with this statement. This
applies to both the intellectual libertarians like Ron Paul as well as to the
lower-class libertines for whom "libertarianism" is just a euphemism
for smoking pot, free sex and royalty-free downloads. Both classes of
libertarians share the fundamental philosophy that "Choice is what makes
us happy." This philosophy has spread to the wider society as well, and
most Americans are philosophically libertarian.
I
thought about this again after watching the "Mic'd Up" video about
NFP (embedded below). Dr. Mike Manhart from the Couple-to-Couple League
said (rather disingenuously) that NFP is not about Catholic birth control, it
is about information and choice. He presented NFP in a libertarian context. NFP
provides you with information so that you can choose. He saw this as a
proposition which is self-evidently a good thing. He assumed that no one could
argue against information and choice.
The
problem with this philosophy is not its pragmatic consequences but its
foundational philosophy. Choice does not make us happy, choice makes us
miserable. Choice is the source of anxiety and ennui. Choice is the real reason
for the misery of modern life. Choice is fundamentally antithetical to the life
of the soul.
Imagine
a mother who has just finished giving birth. She is joyful at seeing her
newborn child. But then someone comes to give her some information. "We
have finished genetic testing, and it turns out that your child has some
anomalies which might cause health problems in the future. You have the choice
to terminate your child. What do you choose to do?"
Suddenly
she has been presented with information and choices. Does this make her happy?
No, it makes her miserable. It sucks all the joy out of her childbirth. It
crushes her soul. It places a tremendous, insupportable weight upon her
shoulders. One choice will make her much more unhappy than the other, but
whichever choice she makes, the knowledge will continue to eat away at her,
destroying the delight she should have experienced.
Lack of
choice, on the other hand, is the foundation of the religious life. The reason
why religious practice poverty, chastity and obedience is because these virtues
destroy all possibility of choice. What one eats, what one wears, whom one
loves, what one does all day, none of these things are any longer within our
choice once we take religious vows.
To the
worldly person, a life of poverty, chastity, and obedience is the ultimate
misery. But the reality is that the religious life properly lived results in a
sort of ecstatic state. Relieved of the burden of choice, the soul is free to
breathe and grow and be happy.
Unfortunately,
we are like monkeys with our hands in the cookie jar of choice. We have to let
go in order to free ourselves, but it is very difficult to release from our
grasp the choices which we have made and intend to make in the future.
It is
also the case that we cannot effectively make the argument against NFP and
similar projects if we ourselves continue to believe in the myth of choice. If
we at heart believe that choice makes us happy, then we don't really have a
good argument against the guy from the CCL. It's true that NFP is fundamentally
a libertarian proposition, and that is what makes it attractive to modern
people, but that is also what makes it anti-Catholic. Only by recognizing that
choice is what makes us miserable can we effectively argue for the
providentialist position.
Moreover,
we also have to recognize that the anti-choice argument is fundamentally
religious and supernatural. One chooses either God and renunciation of
self-will or else the world and its choices. These are the two paths at the
fork in the road. NFP is a sort of compromise to allow us the illusion of
taking both roads at once.
But
ultimately only one path leads to eternal happiness.
