The Sophisticated Idea of Sacrifice

Today I'd like to write about sacrifice and the mental model that I've built for it so far. In my time as a TSE, I had a co-worker who found this idea really interesting and useful. I was quite surprised he hadn't put much thought into the idea. I'm making this post partly because that interaction left me thinking that sacrifice is not as well understood as I thought. And I consider that a solid understanding of sacrifice is fundamental for navigating life.

To be fair, most of my mental model comes from Jordan Peterson's discourses. The aim of today's post is to make as clear as possible what sacrifice is not, what it really is, and how it's useful. Hopefully, this will make your life better by allowing you to make better decisions in the future.

What Sacrifice Is Not

After discussing sacrifice with certain individuals, I've realized lots of people give sacrifice a pejorative connotation. This is understandable, but misses sacrifice's usefulness:

  • Sacrifice is not designed to make us suffer.
  • Sacrifice is not deliberate self-harm.
  • Sacrifice is not a compromise without benefits.
  • Sacrifice is not a barbaric ritual.
  • Sacrifice is not an excuse for any of our actions.

When used incorrectly (and/or unconsciously), sacrifice can be all of the above. And just because I can become angry doesn't mean I am an angry person. Likewise, we shouldn't use sacrifice's possible negative outcomes to define it outright.

What Sacrifice Is

Sacrifice is giving something of value in the present so that you can have a better future. That's it. Sacrifice doesn't have to be a horrible experience. More importantly, you don't (always) have to give up what you love most for sacrifice to be effective. And it isn't obvious at all that the biggest sacrifice is always the best way forward. As put by Peterson, sacrifice is...

... "no different from what we call discipline. It's exactly the same thing. It's just the concretely acted out version of that".

Sacrifice became a thing ever since humans evolved to be aware of time (and the future became something that could be acted upon). Putting it bluntly, sacrifice is the currency of life. It's our only real way to influence the outcomes of the future. At its core, sacrifice is the active choice of trying to change the future. Sacrifice is our decisions (whenever our decision is not to do nothing and wait).

As a mental model, we are all like customers in a shop. The owner is life/god or whatever floats your boat. Sacrifice is what happens when you (roughly) tell god the following...

"Look, I don't have much. I pretty much only have the time I've been given in this world. I have my body, imperfect as it may be, but... supporting my familiy... having a carreer would mean the world to me. Could I somehow give you my time and you give me a better chance for that to become a reality? What could I give to get a guarantee?"

I want to emphasize that...

a) Most of the time we sacrifice our time, the most precious resource we own. And that's fine because it's one of the most effective things to sacrifice. When you put time into things, life eventually smiles back at you.

b) The sacrifice of time and effort are independent (even if partially) of your life circumstances. I couldn't blame you if you thought of school after reading that previous paragraph. But... what if unfortunately you just can't get an education? Giving up your time means so much more than studying and/or working!

The most rewarding and fulfilling experiences of your life will often come as a consequence of putting in the time to learn a craft. Time and attention teach things that you may never find anywhere else in the world.

c) Time (and effort) are not the only things that can (and should) be sacrificed. Sometimes sacrifice comes in the form of abstination. Not getting those vacations, not buying that car, not going out to party.


I closely relate the beginning of sacrifice with the story of Adam and Eve when both eat the forbidden fruit. It's not just the future that was discovered, of course. They also realized all that could befall them, essentially paving the way for evil (as well as intelligence and experimentation). But mainly, this is the "moment in history" when the future started appearing on our radar.

Colloquially speaking, I'd phrase it as follows...

We were all very 'happy' until we realized that we could be doing something to have a better tomorrow. Then we started being miserable. But hey, look at all the cool things that anxiety and stress have given us... shelter, warmth, food, entertainment, and more. The catch? There's no going back. We'll have to deal with stress and anxiety forever, it seems. And ain't that a bummer?

Peterson rightly states that Cain and Abel's story is the first to directly deal with sacrifice (at least in the biblical stories). It's a fascinating story and I highly recommend that you watch the previous 8-minute clip from Jocko Willink's podcast where Peterson covers the story. Trying to summarize it...

There's this idea in Cain and Abel's story that you have to make sacrifices to stay on the good side of God. There's kind of a hint in this story (it's just a hint) that Cain's sacrifices are sort of second-rate. In any case, it's ambivalent eh? But Abel just does wonderfully well and everything works out for him. Everyone knows people like that, you know? God accepts his sacrifices, but for some reason, God rejects Cain's. Maybe it's the arbitrariness of God. Or maybe it's 'cause Cain's heart isn't in the right place when he's making his sacrifices (which is more likely).

Cain goes and has a chat with God and says: "How in the world can you possibly justify this universe that you created? You look at me and I'm breaking myself, trying to adapt, and to make things right. And it's not working! And then there's this Abel character... and things come easy to him. Everything is flourishing for him. And so like, what the hell!?"

God says to Cain exactly what he doesn't wanna hear, which is: "Well, yeah, ok. But you have made lots of mistakes in your life. Sin is at your door like a predatory and sexually aroused animal. And you've invited it into your house to have its way with you and produce something creative as a consequence. You've willingly gone down the negative path. And you've allowed that to enter into you and to operate in a creative manner. And you've spun off all these terrible thoughts and it's justification for not acting properly. That's why things aren't going well for you. So don't lay that at my feet". Which is the most brutal message possible he could've got.

Then Cain leaves the presence of God. Cain's countenance fell. He was enraged. What does he do? He kills Abel. That's a very fascinating idea, because Abel is his ideal. So he kills his ideal. And when you kill your ideal, you're lost. He does that to take revenge on Abel, but also to take revenge on God, which I think is extremely interesting. It's a deep, deep idea.

Like these kids who shoot up high schools, for example. You cannot understand what they're doing unless you understand the story of Cain and Abel. You cannot understand what possesses them until you can understand they're out there for revenge on being itself. And that's why they produce as much mayhem as possible in the shortest period of time. That's why they sacrifice innocent people, because it's much more vengeful and demonstrative to kill innocent people that kill guilty people, right? 'cause it's a worse sin so to speak. And then they kill themselves as a final demonstration of their belief in nihilism and the horror of existence. You might say: "well why not kill themselves first and save everyone the trouble?" There's narcissism in death too, you know? Because they know their names are going to be splashed across the pages and that's their notoriety instead of their accomplishment. When you're talking about motivation for evil then you have to understand what it is that's driving it. It's a deep resentment about the structure of being, for being saturated with suffering, but also for rejecting your sacrifices. That produces the bitterness of failure.

A very interesting thing about the Old Testament and the Jews is they don't take the path of Cain. Every time they're walloped by God, which is fairly frequently, they say: "we must have done something wrong and we have to set ourselves right.". That's an unbelievably heroic attitude because that's the alternative to cursing faith. It's like you take the responsibility for failure onto yourself.

How to Approach Sacrifice

Have you ever thought of the following?

What would happen if I just did nothing for the rest of my life? Like, what if I just eat whenever I can and do my thing, but don't aspire to anything besides that? No getting up early. No trying to improve myself. I want all change to just stop.

That would be a life devoid of sacrifice (though we may argue we'd be sacrificing a better future for the security of what we already have). At the very least it's the path of life of least sacrifice. Because you'd be giving away the least things of value (if any). You'd be "cashing out" ASAP. I think we could all agree this way of moving forward would lead us to misery very fast. What would we do when we become old? Are we just going to give in to whatever random problem we face?

Now, a brilliant way to extrapolate truth in life (based on our intuition) is to part from something we are most certain about (e.g. that the path of least sacrifice is roughly the worst), and go to the other extreme: If the path of least sacrifice leads to the worst, then the path of most sacrifice leads to the best, right? I used to think that. But I'm no longer too sure about it.

I don't think the ultimate sacrifice is the way to go because of the story of Abraham and Isaac's sacrifice (and my intuition after attempting to act out what I construed as my ultimate sacrifice at the time).

At this point of the story, Abraham and his wife Sarah had miraculously managed to bear a son despite their old age. In ancient times this was nothing short of a miracle. So it's not just as if Abraham would have a son he loves (as if that wasn't enough), but it's a son beget by miracle. And yet the following happens...

Abraham received a calling from God. The creator said Abraham would have to take his son to the region of Moriah, to sacrifice his beloved son, as a holocaust.

Saddened by it, Abraham obeyed God's command. He cut the wood needed for the sacrifice and departed with his son to meet the destiny indicated by god.

Isaac and Abraham were near the mountain where the sacrifice was to be consummated when Isaac carrying the wood on his back asked his father: The flames and the wood were there. But where was the lamb for the holocaust? His father replied that God would provide it.

Isaac and Abraham built the altar for the sacrifice. Then, the patriarch tied his son to the altar. Isaac looked in fright at his father, when he pulled out his knife and raised his arm. Abraham was consumed by sorrow, but he had faith that his personal sacrifice was part of God's plans.

When Abraham was about to hit his son, he was stopped by a lord's angel, who asked him to stop and spare the young man. Abraham had passed the ultimate test of faith. He was willing to sacrifice his only son in the name of the lord.

Father and son moved, embraced each other. And after that, Abraham saw a lamb appear between the bushes. He grabbed the animal and sacrificed it to the lord in his son's place. Due to Abraham's unwayvering faith, God renewed his blessings, ensuring that Abraham's offspring would be numerous, while guaranteeing the victory of his people against their enemies. And due to Abraham's obedience, God would bless all mankind.

Now, I admit...

  1. I don't have a Ph.D. in theology or psychology
  2. The previous story can't be used as any hard proof of the nature of life
  3. I'm going out on a bit of a limb

... I'm not trying to be arrogant and I'm open to being wrong. But I think my intuition is sufficient to see that this story is trying to tell us the following: There is such a thing as sacrificing too much. What is important is not to actually consummate the ultimate sacrifice. But we must have the courage and guts to do it. In doing so, we sort of get to have our cake and eat it too. We have it in us to go all the way through, but we don't throw out the baby with the bathwater. This is what actually constitutes the best outcome when it comes to sacrifice.

Yes, you could study literally all day and all night every day of the year to pass all the arbitrary exams that life has put in front of you. Yes, it is very courageous and difficult to do so. Not everyone has the will to go through such a thing. But it's not worth it. And it's not in God's will that you go that hard (if you will). It's actually best for everyone if you study a good amount of hours. Sacrifice the goat, not your firstborn.

How Sacrifice Is Useful

Sacrifice gives us a way to fight the outcomes of suffering in the future. In essence, sacrifice is our free will. Sacrifice is all those other paths that we didn't take, needed to instantiate the path we are going through. Sacrifice is the price we pay for navigating a path, the price for choosing.

Sacrifice is useful as long as we bring it to our conscience, as long as we willingly engage in it at all times. A life driven by conscious sacrifice is a life without regrets, a life well lived.

Realize that life is a series of decisions. And that you're constantly making the best decision you can manage. Don't look back and wallop yourself for the outcomes you've brought about for yourself.

Find peace in the fact that you tried your best.

Find hope in the fact that you most likely have another chance to make things better today.

A solid understanding of sacrifice is unbelievably useful because...

If you don't understand and engage in sacrifice...

  • things just happen to you
  • the world is unfair and rigged against you
  • life is a tragic horror story
  • you become resentful and embittered
  • there's nothing you can really do about it

If you do understand and engage in sacrifice...

  • things never happen to you, you always bring them into your life
  • you have the opportunity to change things
  • you get a chance to fight resentment and bitterness
  • the world is still unfair, but not rigged against you
  • there's always at least one thing you could do to make things better

Understanding sacrifice may bloody well be the only meaningful difference between an award-winning doctor and a mass school shooter. Both fight for what they believe in. Both change our lives permanently. One figured that no sacrifice would ever be enough for god to secure a better future. The other concluded things were done incorrectly, or else everything would've worked out.

I only ask that you pose yourself with these questions:

  • What do you think is the importance of sacrifice?
  • What's stopping you from forgetting the importance of sacrifice?
  • Are you consciously choosing your sacrifices?
  • Or are you letting the wind take you wherever it pleases?

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