Or perhaps just utterly pedantic, regarding the nature of 'Choice'

[RevelsRoulette]

If I am, I know I will be told (forcefully and with much swearing and I can take it

Just because you don't like your choices, doesn't mean you don't have them.

Just because choices are often between two equally shitty things, doesn't mean they aren't choices

Just because you are afraid to make a change, does not mean you are not making a choice to do nothing (doing nothing being in itself a choice)

Not wanting to do something is not the same as having no choice.

Not liking to admit that you have choices or have made choices, does not stop them from being choices

Bad choices are still choices.

You choose to do something, you don't have to do it. You only have to be ok with the consequences of your choice.

I am just so tired of arguing about the meaning of choice with my husband that it would be good to hear other views.

"So what is it when there are two good things to choose from?"

bloody bliss.

Yes, I tend to just say 2 cos it's easier when you're talking about the idea of choice, but two is really just your minimum

When you get given choices by another person, is not one of your choices to refuse to choose? Going back to the kick in the leg v poke in the eye, a third choice would be to say that I refuse to comply with your choices for me. That is also a choice.

I mean, if you're being given the choice at gunpoint, it's probably wise to choose a kick or a poke but other than that...

I've always thought seeing it like that was empowering, that you own your choices, you weren't a victim in them, they weren't done to you, you did have the power. A way of thinking that gives you control.

I totally agree with the above. Even if they were shitty options it is better to feel you have the power/the control rather than believing you don't. Unfortunately that must also mean that you own the regret if it was the wrong choice. BUT I suspect one might be less inclined to regret if one feels they made an active/positive choice in the first place.

Context is everything.

The difference between "owning your decisions is empowering" and "made your bed, now lie in it" could simply be a matter of who's speaking.

I heard a long time ago "saying 'I had no choice' is just something people say to make themselves feel better about the downsides of the choices they made". Generally, it's true.

You see it a lot on mn both ways, people who think that situations they are in are down to just bad luck without owning the fact they were caused by a selection of small (or sometimes big) choices along the way - just because you didn't think through /couldn't foresee all possible consequences of your choices, doesn't mean they weren't choices and you didn't have other options, that you didn't want to take those options doesn't mean it wasn't a choice.

The other side of the same thing when there are so many who put other people's good situations down to goo

Sorry, hit post too soon!

The other side being when people put other people's good situations down to good luck, not acknowledging that it also took that person to make good decisions along the way.

Yes i agree dontmindifido and revels (and others saying the same thing)

My ex very much maintains he is the victim of his own life story. He had no choice but to leave the country and join the armed forces when he had a son here. He has no choice in how often he sees our children due to his work ( not armed forces anymore 9-5 office) he doesnt accept that he has made choices to be in the work he is in and that i have made choices to be in the work that i am in that means i can have my dcs living with me and take care of every aspect of their lives. I could have made the same choices he made but our dcs would then be living with neither of their parents and spending one night a fortnight with each of us. I made choices so thy didnt happen- he made choices so it did from his side. He doesnt accept this.

I think 'technically' you are right, but I think it is grossly unfair to throw it in someone's face when they are unhappy about something and the rest of us would say 'well, she didn't really have any choice'.

I'm not saying that you do, do that. But if 'choice' is something you argue about with your DH it does tend to imply that, a bit.

you're right, i do. which when you put it like that is wrong. it is just frustrating beyond belief when he says " i HAVE to do x" or "i HAD to do Y" and i say no you didnt /dont HAVE to. it is your choice to.
to me it is like he is trying to avoid any responsibility for his choices by maintaining he doesnt/didnt have them

i just want "yeah. i want to/choose to" not the "have to"

yes, he's suggesting the concequences of a choice are not related to a choice - so if he wants A then he'll have to do X, then while he has to do X, it's only if he wants A, if he'll chose B, then he wouldn't have to do X, but he wouldn't get A.

(for example, he would "have to" go to university and study medicine if he wants to be a doctor. While he "has to" do this degree to be a doctor, it's a choice to decide to be a doctor, if he wanted to study something else he could, but that is a choice not to have a career in medicine - making a choice about a certain career limits other options, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a choice, he just can't chose to study the subject of his liking and expect that to have no negative concequences on his later career options)

OP, I think it's about meaningful choice.

If a person is between a rock and a hard place then although there is technically a choice, it is not a meaningful one.

And while meaningful is in itself a subjective term, there are some people who see themselevs as having little choice in anything. I hear this a lot from mothers actually. Doing all manner of ridiculous things, that they don't want to do, because they have no choice.

Revels - I suppose it depends on what sort of things he does this about. If it's 'I have a hang over, I had no choice but to keep up with my mates' then yes, it's fucking annoying. If it's 'I hate taking these tablets, but I have no choice' (ie he'd die if he didn't) then it's you that's being unreasonable... now, somewhere in between those two there is a 'line' - where that line is, depends on the people involved really.

Some things I'd see as 'not having a choice' you might see as 'having a choice'.

It is, as WF says, 'meaningful choice'.

YABU and I don't think even 'pedantic' as pedantic would imply accuracy and I seriously doubt you have the postdoctoral research experience in neurology, philosophy and quantum physics (it would take all of those) to make unilateral accurate pronouncements on the nature of free will tbh when even the greatest philosophers and scientists are undecided. It's particularly twattish when people go round making the kind of unhelpful and twee comments that someone has made a choice when clearly all their choices are a bit shit, even if it were true which you definitely don't have enough evidence to state.

I've got another view point on this -

You can be in a situation where you have only equally bad choices, lack of opportunity to change something, or have something ghastly foisted upon you...

but, how you DEAL with that situation is your choice.

By way of demonstration, I cite Malala Yousafzai. Now, THERE's an example to us all. Life sucks, don't let the buggers get you down (though, she'd put it more eloquently)

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-24475305

My only problem with the OP is the (thankfully rare) situation where you are being forced to choose between two equally objectionable options. I might choose the least worst option, but I would reserve the right to hate forever the person/organisation/circumstances that forced me to make that decision.

So if someone held me at gunpoint and asked me to choose between a kick on the leg or a poke in the eye, I might choose the kick. But I would hate that person and have a long term objective to make sure they got their comeuppance. I would also probably hate myself for not being able capable of creating a third choice for myself (kick in the fork and run away). The consequences of the original choice would be much greater than simply the pain of a kick or a poke and I don't think I should simply be expected to suck it up.

I agree with you, OP. Even when the choices are equally rubbish, or you're being forced to choose one option, it's still a choice.

A PP mentioned the girls who had no choice but to give their babies away. Well, they did have a choice, but it was either to struggle alone/suffer/be thrown out of their home and have the child taken away at a later date, or give the child up for adoption immediately. Both awful choices, but one may have given the child a better hope or start in life.

If there was always a good option and a bad option, then it would be easy. But sometimes the choices are simply different forms of pain/suffering/hardship. And you don't always have control over what choices you are given.

I also thinking about this further in the example you gave OP, there's an element of not linking all aspects of a choice together, so if he has to spend 3 hours with someone in order to improve the chances of getting them to do him a favour, then that is part of the same choice to ask them to do the favour. I would say that YABU if you agreed with your DH in the choice of asking this person to do the favour but not seeing that once you've made that choice, then the spending time with them is a requirement of that choice.

So when your DH said he didn't have a choice not to spend 3 hours talking with them, it ment, he didn't have a choice not to spend 3 hours taking with them if you want them to do you a favour. If you/he are fine with them not doing the favour, then it's ok to not spend the time, and it is a choice, if you/he need/want the favour doing then this is part of the same choice to ask them to help, not an independent choice.

I think it's the other way round, DontmindifIdo - people often put their success down to their own merits - hard work, oomph, get up and go, whatever - when in fact they have been lucky.

They may well have worked hard, but so have some other people who haven't had the same breaks - e.g. health, socio-economic status of the family into which you are born, whether your parents survive long enough to bring you up, or just being in the right place at the right time to find out about X or Y opportunity.

in fact you are right too, but I think the belief in 'it must be something I/you have done rather than chance or any outside factor' is particularly problematic when people are judging anyone who has a raw deal/bad luck.

There does seem to be an innate human tendency to assume agency, which leads people to get all judgeypants. 'oh, if only poor people behaved like me they wouldn't be poor'... forgetting that it is far more complicated than that. Or 'oh, if only women avoid dark alleys/short skirts they won't get raped'.

Well....

There is a school of thought which advocates psychological manipulators giving their victim a set of essentially crap choices on the premise that they will choose the least crap choice.

If the victim complains/whinges the manipulator sternly reminds them, that they chose to do this, it's their responsibility.

Conveniently distracting, of course from the fact that the manipulator has set this all up.

That's the theory, but then some awkward bastard victims start to point out they didn't really have a choice.

Then the manipulator runs the victim round a few other circles of the manipulators choosing.

So when people are referring to "not really having a choice", they may well be referring to this and the bastard manipulator behind it.

My life has panned out really well, I have a wonderful DH, a great house, beautiful children, enough money to do most stuff and a great career. (Yeah there's always room for improvement, plenty to complain about too, but painting a picture here)

I tend to talk about my life in terms of being lucky - my sister has a crap DP, not much money and a bit of a crap time generally. If I was to frame my life in terms of agency, that it's caused by choices I made, it's like a massive insult to her. Whereas if I am quite self deprecating about it all, I act like things fall into my lap, then she can't hate me.

Thinking about it, I am proud of myself for making good choices - but I'm under no illusions that those choices have been available to me due to several things - being intelligent, being quite confident and quite good looking.

God I sound like a right show off here, there's a multitude of crap in my life too! It frustrates me to see my sister making poor choices, as I expected us to have similar lives growing up and we don't

So we talk about how things are, rather than how things could be, if that makes sense. It makes conversing with her less awkward.

This thread is making me think of those books you get where you decide what happens to various steps, and have to turn to page x

I think going for the more interesting choice, the more challenging one, is generally a good idea.

This is just so interesting. There's so much to think about that I hadn't really considered before (whether I agree with it or not ) , about the nature of choice, meaningful choice, if you don't understand that you have a choice does that mean that choice doesn't still exist, etc. Really lots to think about.

Now I have to go fetch the kids.

I could choose not to, of course be more quiet for a bit but I think I might get into trouble

Here's one for you: Nazis making mothers choose which child to shoot.

Fits your criteria of there being more than one possible outcome, so a genuine choice, even though the chooser was forced into making a choice they didn't want to make. You can't argue it wasn't a choice simply because they were forced into making it because the same could be said of many things in life. I am forced into paying tax. I could refuse but would pay with my liberty. The mother in Nazi Germany could refuse but would have seen herself (and both children) shot.

I agree with you BTW. I think you just need to lose the "be ok with the consequences" side of your argument. Sometimes, choices suck and are not freely made.

You know when you read something that makes your breath catch? Just picturing that scenario did that. It's just so awful, what a horrendous thing to be told to choose.

Yes, I see what you are saying and I don't think anything could have more movingly illustrated that there are decisions that you may have to make where it's impossible to find any way to be ok with (accept/own) the consequences, even though you have to make the choice. I see that some situations can exist where you have to make a choice that you hate making and leaves you with consequences that you hate.

Sorry to cast a downer on the thread. I debated giving it as an example TBH, but it was the only way I could think of to illustrate the point in a way that really hit home.

It's a really interesting philosophical discussion. I hope I haven't killed the thread by making it too serious.