lifestyle
When my brother and I were growing up, our dad would respond to my brother's "alternative" preferences for how he chose to express himself by rolling his eyes and saying, "whatever floats your boat." This phrase was etched into his mind and, later, into his skin, when he commissioned a tattoo artist to ink a wooden ship floating on a rough sea with the initials "W.F.Y.B" underneath.
The idea that how one ought to live one's life was a matter of individual preference rather than in accordance with any normative moral framework is a relatively new development. We're about two hundred years into a grand experiment in lifestyle choice. One might be tempted to ask, how are things going?
It doesn't seem unreasonable to wonder how one might discern the value of living one's life in one way or another, the same way one might wonder whether he should part his hair to the left or to the right, or whether to comb his hair at all. If the question of how one ought to live is so inconsequential as to relegate it to the category of style, it would seem unreasonable to spend much time trying to answer it wisely. Unsurprisingly, many people today give as much thought to how one ought to style one's life as they do to what brand of toothpaste to purchase at the pharmacy.
If you ask me, relegating the question of how to live to the realm of individual preference has had a profoundly alienating and immiserating effect on a great number of people; there's no guarantee that most people will get it right, whatever that means, if it means anything at all.
How are things going? Well, just look around.