Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions. -Hume

The newest modern-day virtue may be logic and reasoning. The need for Hume to say what he did at all, and that what he said is now well-known, attests to the praise of cleverness. Perhaps the rise of the scientific method, and all the good that it has done, is to blame. It asserts, and reason suggests, that the best outcome is always calculable and explainable.

It is tempting to believe that the same is true for people and their desires. "Do what is reasonable." For any situation in which a person can be placed is there an optimal choice, a series of perfect actions?

While I do believe that leading a moral life is rational and that there are objective moral values and truths that lead to objectively positive outcomes for everyone every time, I also believe that many (if not the majority) of the values one can hold, are amoral. Many of our desires exist in a moral vacuum.

Suppose oranges are your favorite fruit, and you somehow learn that God much prefers bananas to oranges or enjoys the beach more than the mountains. Is it more logical or rational to prefer one over the other in either case? Does a proclivity, either way, imply superior morality?

Heaven is a diverse place. The most diverse place. The people there are infinitely similar in their shared morals and infinitely different in their personal passions. The homogeneity of morals is inversely proportional to the homogeneity of passions.

While reason and intellect grant more capability and efficacy they cannot calculate or derive the optimal passion. Such a thing does not exist.

Yet how often do we believe that our preferences are objectively superior to another's? In discussions or disagreements, people talk past each other while desperately trying to explain the superiority of their reasoning, never acknowledging the existence of non-logical preferences at the root. Or maybe admitting our true values and motivators often requires more vulnerability than we can bear, and so we use reason as a band-aid to explain away our actions to ourselves and others. Almost subconsciously, deliberating individuals may converge on what may be a presumed (common) shared value, (i.e money, autonomy, etc.) and build a logical case for their persuasion while never acknowledging their true motivating passions in fear of being rejected or misunderstood.

The moral endeavor would be assisted by the acknowledgment of the existence of amoral endeavors.