Episode 17 From paperclips to marshmallows: false promises of individual choice

All this talk of social structure and how it could be better: does it match your own experience? Last week I talked about a social structure that is divided along gender, and requires boys and men to behave in one way and girls and women to behave in a different way. But I can hear you saying: ‘But Jodie, I never felt constrained in that way! I was a girl and always wanted to roughhouse with the boys.’ Or: ‘I was a boy and liked to paint my fingernails.’ ‘It was never a problem. Every individual has a choice.’

When is a choice not really a choice? When none of the options you’re choosing from are particularly desirable. The Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, for instance, gave children the choice to have one marshmallow right away, or wait 10 minutes and get two.

But what if I want something other than marshmallows?

Or what if I want to enjoy my marshmallow now and spend the next 10 minutes doing something other than sitting in agony, waiting for more marshmallows?

I explore in this episode the tension between the idea of the individual, who goes through the world making choices and the idea of social structure, whereby choices seemed to be constrained. I mention the notion of the community of practice again, and talk about the various ways people can engage with, or adapt to particular communities. This week I propose the idea of a new type of social structure in which individuals would not be required to adapt to social structures. Instead, social structures would adapt to individuals – and recognise the possibility for transformation that each individual offers.