Journey & Discover With Me: What Would I Die For?
The answer? Probably more questions—but they’ll be good ones.
What shapes our values, purpose, and decisions in the infinite game of life?
This is a pretty strong question to consider as its answer reflects strong core pieces of who you are and what you wish for the world. This being said, my first port of call is interpreting what it means and interrogating what purpose it serves. It is important to distinguish the contrast between this and the opposite question “what would I kill for?” as the answer you would give would be different. The opposite question is more likely to be interpreted as eradicating something for personal gain. However, the former question relates to a strong alignment with what you find valuable in the context of a person, group of people, idea, ideology, or social cause such that you have conviction to seek its realisation through personal sacrifice. In essence, the purpose and intention of our investigation are two-fold. Firstly, to uncover strongly held beliefs that are beneficial to you and/or your community. Secondly, to help clarify what goal posts or expectations you have about the world and the future.
It is also important to define a context which bounds the question we ask, as this provides the relevant framing that helps us give a more specific answer. In this instance, lets choose “myself” as the actor and “my death” as the bounding constraint. When you re-write the question it can then be clarified to “Suppose I know I am to die of natural causes 5 years from now, what would I sacrifice my remaining life to achieve?” (as opposed to something like “aliens are attacking, what would I choose to die for?” – as they potentially result in different answers).
The range of possible answers are numerous, however, for the most part they fall into 2 main categories: negative and positive magnitude. A negative magnitude answer seeks to externalise the effect in a way that removes or blocks something from the world. This would be answers that avoid or stop a group from doing something or aim to attack or destroy a group or activity. Answers of this nature see some level of martyrdom in “their cause”, because by dying the world must be changed with the removal or inhibition of something in alignment with their core values and affiliations. In essence, creating a negative-sum game by removing something from the world when they die.
On the other hand, a positive magnitude answer would seek to externalise the effect in a way that adds something to the world. This would be answers that seek to create something of value like “creating a safe space for neurodivergent people”. Answers of this nature are phrased differently, and the sacrifice aims to build culture or progress a generative cause that is a positive-sum game (i.e. the world is left with more after your death).
As with any question, there is a reactionary answer and deeper contemplative answer, albeit sometimes these are aligned, but not always. I think that the best place to start is always the reactive answer, despite the fact it is likely to be negative magnitude to some degree, it at least gives us a starting point. Once you have your reactive answer, the next step is to consider “why?”, which is a simple question but can be a difficult step.
Contemplative answers are always an initial answer (or question) preceded with additional clarifying questions. A simple example of this is to precede any answer with “Why?”. Taking a step away from this article, you see that the first thing I did was attempt to the narrow scope by asking follow-up questions. In this example I asked a question of the initial question which amounted to “is this question sufficiently narrow to provide a meaningful answer?”. In turn, the answer to this caused the addition of contextualising detail to the initial question to make it more impactful and easier to parse.
In retrospect, these clarifying questions can be quite easy to see (or justify), but when faced with a question there is a temptation to provide the reactive answer without consideration of the underlying components and assumptions that compose it. This therefore hurts the quality of your answer. This is a skill that can be trained and practiced and it is important because without it we do not improve our ability to understand what is being asked, or our understanding of the world at large. Breaking down the question is one way to train yourself, the other is through learning to be sceptical of your own understanding. This means approaching things with the assumption that your initial position is one of ignorance, and the only way to truly know something is to learn it again as if from ground zero. Diversity in the knowledge you consume is also critical in nourishing this useful assumption as constructive dissent and varying points of view are important in getting yourself to a place where you don’t, as my father says, “begin to believe your own bullshit” (i.e. self-validate and self-justify).
My personal answer to the question we posed comes via the wisdom of Brad Stulberg in his book Master of Change, Martha Beck from The Way of Integrity, James P. Carse from Finite and Infinite Games, and Simon Sinek from The Infinite Game (Amazon). These books highlight what I believe to be the most important component of understanding the value bring to the world - core values and purpose/meaning making.
Your core values are the fundamental and enduring tenants that influence your actions, decisions, and behaviours and serve as your foundation to goals, strategies, and interactions with others. In essence they are what you find valuable (makes sense). Although defining your own core values will be the subject of a different post, I will give a quick description. Inspired by Brad Stulberg and Martha Beck, the way I have come to construct core values is drawn from either a [verb] [noun] or [verb] [adverb] pair. The key here is that they are constructed with practice or action in mind, rather than as static traits. Each of these word-pairs are also specifically defined so there is clarity of what each means to you, therefore conveying their “value”.
My core values are Seeking Understanding, Exploring Openly, Playing and Experimenting Curiously, Respecting and Empathising Thoughtfully, and Offering Love. So, when considering what my sacrifice would bring about, I believe it needs to be in alignment with these, otherwise, it would be a subjectively useless action to take. For me, this means that whatever the answer is should include things that create, empathise, and promote deeper understanding.
The second puzzle piece is the consideration of purpose and your definition of a meaningful life. I am not going to lie; this has pretty much always eluded me and I have struggled with this as I am sure many have. However, recently I heard something which felt profound, although I cannot for the life of me remember attribution – “meaning” can only be ascribed retrospectively, as the true value or outcome of something is not available until after the completion of an event or activity (I sort of paraphrased). This means then, that it is more important to have an overall worthy target for which you are sacrificing in the service of building something and that meaning will come later.
Enter the “Infinite Game”, initially described by James Carse in Finite and Infinite Games. In essence, the Infinite Game is a single, all spanning game without constraint or a winner/loser (positive-sum), it is merely played to extend the inclusion of everyone in the game. Examples of things that are included in the Infinite Game are things like culture, language, art, science and really anything that involves the creation of something offered as a gift for the world to use beyond your control. Key to the concept is that an Infinite Game must be inclusive and available to everyone, and offered to others as such, as rules that govern who can and can’t participate, and who receives benefit or doesn’t are the constraints of a Finite Game, which ultimately have a negative magnitude.
Simon Sinek takes Carse’s concept further by describing a framework of a “Just Cause”. A Just Cause is a specific vision of a future state of the world which stands for something without being against something, is idealistic and inclusive, can endure changes in the world (tech, politics, etc.), and is focused on the benefit conveyed to others. Key to this concept is that it must not be attainable. It is not a “moonshot” or BHAG type goal where it is outrageous but doable under extreme circumstances. It is in effect your “ultimate vision” of life, or your realisation of the Infinite Game. A Just Cause is generally constructed in the form "To [impact] so that [contribution]” - where [impact] represents what general effect you are looking to have on the [contribution] and the [contribution] represents the world that you would ideally provide other people should everything be perfect.
My Just Cause as an example is: “To overcome ignorance by producing simplex and interactive experiences and systems to build a world where money is no object and all that matters is your passion and curiosity so that everyone can enjoy an equal, joyous and collaborative world.” It therefore follows that I would wish my death to further this cause in some way.
The final piece of the puzzle, is to view the gestalt (or emergent property) of these two concepts in concert with the core question. After our journey through core values and the Just Cause/Infinite Game, you can see that the answer for me really comes down to some strong core themes of deep investigation with the ultimate aim of living a deeply informed life. I would sacrifice my life to grow the understanding of others so that they can enjoy the rich wisdoms that form the tapestries of the world and help others come to appreciate its beautiful intricacy and delicacy.
As a conclusion to my ramblings, I want to take a step forward. One of my biggest gripes with philosophy as a genre is that it often describes generalities and not specific actions to take or questions to ponder (well maybe too many in the latter). If I was to ask myself what you could try to action in your own life, it would be this: As our personal narratives are irreversibly tied to the way we act on our future, it is paramount that we try to understand the frames and constructions we live within. To see these, try to ask 1 question every day (to keep the doctor away?) – a reflective question, a problem-solving question, or a clarifying question, it matters not. Even by asking crap questions each day we build the skill of questioning more deeply until eventually we figure out ways to change our world, the world of others, and the world around us. With some thought, most things are possible.
Reflection Questions:
Imagine you had $100 to your name, what would you wish someone would do for you that did not include giving you money?
Now imagine the same scenario, but replace all references to money with emotional support, time, or self-belief; How does your answer change?
Songs That Embodies This For Me:
Imagine – John Lennon
It’s Not Right for You – The Script
Deeper than Money – Logic
Voyage into Eternity - Valhalore
Resources You Could Explore:
Master of Change – Brad Stulberg (Amazon)
The Way of Integrity – Martha Beck (Amazon)
Finite and Infinite Games – James P Carse (Amazon)
The Infinite Game – Simon Sinek (Amazon)
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