What should you want?

As opportunities to decide what to want become more frequent, it becomes more necessary to fully develop a moral framework founded on objective principles with implications for what we should want. One field where we can find such principles is epistemology (the study of knowledge), from which we can get that we ought to want to be persuaded and to maintain our ability to be persuaded (as both individuals and societies), since being persuaded is how we manage to stop doing wrong things. We may also wish to take such principles as axioms, such as the principle that we should want beauty.

This question cuts deep into the fundamentals of existence. What food should you want to eat? If this applies to most people, should they be coerced into wanting to eat that food? What principles and frameworks do you base your solutions on? What sexual orientation should you have? Should people be coerced into changing their sexual orientation to a better one (if this were possible)? Why? What should you want to do with your leisure time? Should this be based on convenience or economic value? Would you change what you wanted to do with leisure time if you could? What career should you want? Should governments or corporations coerce people into wanting certain careers? What principles or frameworks should be used to make these decisions? Who should you fall in love with or want to be around? Under what conditions should they want to be around you? When should you modify your desires so that you want to be around somebody you previously didn’t?

In short, what should you want, if you could change what you want?