The End of Preference

I've been thinking a lot about preference recently. What, precisely, is it? Is it an inextricably interwoven feature of our human makeup? I ask because I think humanity would be a lot better off if we could disconnect from it.

Once we deliberately drop our personal preferences our second method for decision making is common good. "I don't care either way, so what works for everyone?" Perhaps you've heard this when planning an event or going out for lunch with colleagues. Currently, to perpetually place common good first would bring a level of altruism that would be nothing but oppressive. But what would happen if our preferences never existed to begin?

Permit me to give some simplistic examples that might help conceptualize this potential reality. Traffic flows with a simple, efficient order. Queues are drastically reduced. Provisions are made available for all.

There are, however, significant issues I'm wrestling with that need to be solved:

• Can our values be retained if our preferences are removed? Flavor is important for culture.
  
• When do preferences stop and duties/obligations begin? We can't have a society of unemployed, detached nomads wandering around.
• How close is this to Hindu renunciation of the world or Buddhist interdependent arising? Or even Christianity's "Love your neighbor as yourself"?

Perhaps it's time to dust off the long dormant Leftsider wiki and really flesh things through.