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Limited Choices of a Modern Human Being



Soren Kierkegaard once remarked that modern culture offers only two alternatives: either we have too many choices which confuse us that which one should be chosen or we have fixed limited choices within which we have to compromise. Every person who is identified with his or her profession carries out this burden for whole life until pension programme is enabled for the last few years. In the beginning of life choices appear in abundance. In between, choices are constricted but still an adventurous person may break the shackles of profession and can take the risk to wander in different directions. But the last few years of life becomes a monument either to celebrate in the name of bank balance or honour earned or to go down silently in atonement. Jean Paul Sartre investigated the question of choices in his Magnum Opus, "Nausea", and reflected on the limited choices of a modern man, just like a receptionist at the airport fakes the smile whole life with meaningless and inauthentic courtesy, which is offered repeatedly without feeling it with sincerity. Under the compulsion of job, a person lives a precarious life without enjoying what he does only for the sake of money. These instances are apt to describe what it means to be autonomy for a modern man.

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