"Choice is an illusion." What does it mean?

Question

One of my friends used it as his favorite quotes.

What does it mean anyway? Does it mean he regrets his choice or something?

Answer 1

Pretty cynical.

It means there really is no free choice in this world, that is just an illusion. It means that when you are confronted with what seems to be a choice, instead you have to do your duty, I suppose, or else conform to someone else's expectations or demands, and you don't get a choice in what you do, really.

Answer 2

I think is from a movie maybe the matrix. It has some truth to it. You always have a choice but the choice is so bad that most people could not possibly follow it or it requires so much of a sacrifice that it would be i logical to follow it. One example is leaving off the system. Meaning that you will not abide by certain rules like working, paying taxes, in short leaving independant of money. Well, you just can't do that. You need money. The other option is becoming ahomelss person. I don't think most people become homeless by choice. A lot of them are victims of alcoholism or extremely bad luck. Some even have mental health issue. Whatever the cause choice is not one of those. It is things like that. Another is telling your boss to go shove it. Well, you can actually do that and some people are better off for it but, it doesn't work for everybody. As you become more ingrain into society that choice becomes harder to make because you have to feed your kids, pay the mortage etc etc. So, even though you have the choice of doing it, most people simply can't. if you can't then there really isn't much of a choice. Thus it is an illusion of a choice.

Answer 3

It probably means different things for different people... for me it means that when we have options in life, what we appear to choose is actually determined by our will, and that is not something we choose... can we choose who we love, if we are happy or sad, even what colour to paint the living room... The last example is harder to prove that choice is not involved, but when we decide to pick a colour, how is that decision made? Our feelings determine what colour to pick, and we didn t choose our feelings, so the choice becomes an illusion... If we decide to go against our will to try and prove that we have a choice, then what gave us the will to do that?? Again, it was our un-controlled will that made us want to prove this theory wrong, thus the theory is proved right again...