Owning Our Preferences

 

One of the big factors behind social, political and domestic division is the habitual mistake of confusing correct policy with preferences – that is, people are constantly asserting something as being the right way things should be done when all they are really revealing is a personal preference. For example, environmentalists declare moral outrage when green space is proposed as a good site for a road or industrial estate; socialists declare injustice when a favoured domestic business is not protected from foreign competition, northerners cry outrage at lack of investment in their regions compared with the south, that sort of thing. But while these propositions do involve value judgements, they are not implicitly moral considerations, they merely convey preferences about how money and resources are allocated.

Consequently, one of the best pieces of wisdom we can learn is to be alert to when we are dealing with preferences and not axiomatic truths, empirical facts or moral propositions. In formal economic terms, a preference is the order that an individual gives to two or more options based on their relative utility. With two considerations, x and y, it will be the case that x is preferred to y, or y is preferred to x, or x and y are preferred equally (this can be measured using an indifference curve, which is a line on a graph showing all the combinations of two goods that give an individual equal utility ). X and y can relate to pretty much anything it is possible to prefer over something else (pieces of fruit, places to go on holiday, online or in-person banking, you name it) – and those preferences are dynamical too (they can change according to context).

Understanding this, and mindfulness of straying from its wisdom, are important home truths that can help bless a marriage too, because if a couple doesn't understand or acknowledge when their views are really preferences, there can be contention that doesn't get negotiated properly.