The math was embarrassing: Amazon Music Family (that only Wyatt used), my Spotify, two separate Pandora accounts. $475 a year.

What started as a simple “let’s save money” project turned into a research spiral that changed how I think about paying for music entirely.

The Numbers Shocked Me

I was vaguely aware that streaming services didn’t pay artists much. But I’d never actually looked at the numbers.

Here’s what artists earn per stream on major platforms (ordered from lowest to highest paying):

Read that Pandora line again. An artist needs five to ten thousand streams to earn what they’d make from one album sale. We’d been paying $6/month for years to a service that pays artists less than half a penny per play.

One detail doesn’t show up in these averages: free-tier listeners generate dramatically less revenue for artists. On Spotify, 58% of users are on the free tier, but they contribute only 10% of artist revenue. If you’re streaming without a paid subscription, artists are earning even less than these already-tiny numbers suggest.

This isn’t just an indie artist problem. A UK Musicians’ Union survey found that eight out of ten music creators earn less than £200 a year from streaming - while the three major labels report record profits.

Meanwhile, when you buy an album directly from an artist or through Bandcamp, 80-100% goes to the creator - typically within 48 hours. Bandcamp’s revenue share is 15% on digital, 10% on physical, with payment processing fees on top.

That’s not a rounding error. That’s a completely different economic model that directly supports the artists

When the Math Becomes Personal

The per-stream rates stopped being abstract when I applied them to our actual listening.

If Wyatt listens to an album 100 times on Amazon Music, the artist earns roughly $1.50-2.50. If he buys that album once for $10, the artist gets $8-10 directly.

One purchase equals 300+ streams of artist support.

For music you genuinely love - the albums you return to again and again - buying is the only math that makes sense. Streaming is fine for casual listening, for discovery, for background noise. The moment an artist becomes part of your regular rotation, streaming becomes a terrible deal for them.

The Question Nobody Asks

The usual framing is: Which streaming service should I use?

The better question is: How am I listening to music, and how can I best support the artists whose work I love?

When I asked my family, the answers were different for each of us:

Wyatt (17, heaviest listener): Needs discovery, cares about audio quality, hates YouTube ads with a passion - especially on YouTube Music, which he finds even more annoying than video ads. He was also killing his phone battery listening to videos because free YouTube requires the screen to stay on.

Shane (spouse): Doesn’t explore new music at all. Built his Pandora stations years ago and just wants them to keep playing. Watches maybe two YouTube videos a month for how-to content. Doesn’t care about ads.

Me: Building a high-res library, supporting artists, starting a YouTube channel so my usage is increasing and ads are annoying. I’m adaptable about which service - I care more about the principle than the platform.

Toward the end of our conversation, we all agreed our main goal was making sure creators get compensated for the work we enjoy so much, and owning the things we pay for, rather than renting. We decided to build a library. Streaming is just how we will find what to buy. The library we own is how we’ll actually consume it.

Three people, three completely different needs. And we’d been paying for four services that served none of us, or the artists well.

What Platforms we Decided On

We landed on: YouTube Premium Family + Shane’s Pandora = $336/year

That saves us $139 annually while giving us:

• No YouTube ads (Wyatt’s most-hated thing)

• Screen-off listening on mobile (no more dead phone batteries)

• YouTube Music for discovery - with the largest catalog of any platform

• Shane’s Pandora stations untouched

• Support for YouTube content creators (not just musicians, but educators, reviewers, and creators we watch regularly)

That last point matters. YouTube Premium revenue goes to the creators whose content we actually watch. It’s a different kind of artist support, but it’s real - and it aligns with how our family actually uses the platform.

The subscription is just the discovery layer now. The real shift is what we do with the savings.

The Purchase Priority

When we find music worth keeping, here’s how we buy:

1. Direct from the artist. Band websites, concert merch tables, artist-run stores. Maximum money to the creator, often with extras like liner notes or bonus tracks.

2. Bandcamp, HDtracks, 7digital, or Qobuz - depending on who has the album and what quality is available. Bandcamp likely gives the largest share to artists when they have an album, but their catalog is indie-focused. For mainstream releases, the other hi-res download stores fill the gap.

3. Used CDs. This has become a family treasure hunt. Thrift stores, used record shops, library sales. A CD that cost $15 new might be $2 used, and we rip it to lossless quality for our library. While our purchase doesn’t directly pay the artist today, someone paid full price originally - the artist did benefit from that first sale. The used ecosystem is ethically different from streaming, where artists get fractions of pennies indefinitely.

Wyatt identified 40+ albums from his current listening that he’d buy if he had the budget. At roughly $12 average, that’s $480 to catch up on music he already knows he loves. Going forward, maybe 4-5 new albums a year.

The subscription savings don’t cover the whole backlog. They shift the economics - and more importantly, they shift the mindset.

Why We Passed on Tidal

Tidal pays artists roughly 3x what Spotify does. It has lossless audio. It was founded by artists specifically to address compensation issues. On paper, it’s the ethical choice.

We seriously considered it. Tidal Family would have been $264/year - even cheaper than YouTube Premium.

But Wyatt made a compelling practical argument: YouTube has a larger catalog than Tidal. If the goal is discovery - finding new music to eventually buy - you want the biggest pool to explore. YouTube also includes live performances, covers, remixes, and deep cuts that don’t exist on traditional streaming platforms.

Combined with his YouTube ad hatred and the battery-killing screen-on requirement, and the fact that our YouTube Premium subscription would benefit YouTube creators too, the decision became clear. We chose YouTube Premium and committed to buying albums - which puts more money in artists’ pockets than any streaming service anyway.

The math: 100 streams on Tidal ≈ $1.30 to artist. One album purchase ≈ $8-10 to artist. Buying beats streaming at any pay rate.

Building Your Own Music Library

One rabbit hole led to another: if we’re buying albums digitally, where do they live?

The answer for our family is a NAS (Network Attached Storage) - essentially a personal server that holds our music library and streams it to any device in the house. Software like Jellyfin or Plex turns it into your own private Spotify, accessible from phones, computers, even car systems.

The setup isn’t trivial, but the payoff is real: music you own, organized how you want, available forever without monthly fees or licensing changes. No algorithm deciding what you should hear. No songs disappearing because a label pulled rights. Your library, your rules.

If you’re curious, search “Jellyfin NAS setup” or “self-hosted music streaming” - there’s a whole community of people building exactly this.

What I’m Taking From This

The research rabbit hole gave me more than a cheaper subscription plan. It gave our family clear guidelines on how to spend in line with our values when it comes to music.

Streaming is for discovery and convenience. It’s the radio of our era - background music, finding new artists, casual listening. Perfectly fine for that purpose.

Ownership is for music that matters. The albums you return to, the artists you want to support, the songs you want to keep forever regardless of which service you’re paying for this year.

The question isn’t “which service pays best.” The question is: How do I actually listen to music, and how can I best support the artists whose work matters to me?

Our $475 mess became a $336 system that actually works for how each of us uses music. More importantly, it became a framework for thinking about where our money goes and who benefits from it.

Sources: Streaming payout rates and free-tier revenue data from Royalty Exchange 2025, The Metalverse, and RouteNote. UK artist income data from The Conversation. Bandcamp revenue share from their Fair Trade Music Policy. For context on how streaming economics are evolving, see The Changing Economics of Music Streaming: 2025.Though a bit older - 2020 - this article from NPR is also worth a read: A Tale of Two Ecosystems: On Bandcamp, Spotify and the Wide-Open Future.

Neither research team was trying to solve the same problem. One was testing epistemological reasoning, the other improving mathematical performance. Yet their findings fit together like puzzle pieces, revealing both a critical limitation in current AI and a validated path toward addressing it.

The convergence suggests something profound: the technical pieces for epistemologically honest AI are being validated independently. We know what the problem is. We know half the solution works. The missing piece—epistemological honesty built into the architecture from the ground up—is waiting for teams with resources to take it seriously.

The Problem: AI That Can’t Distinguish Belief from Knowledge

In November 2025, researchers at Stanford and ETH Zurich published “Belief in the Machine: Investigating Epistemological Blind Spots of Language Models” in Nature Machine Intelligence[1]. They created KaBLE (Knowledge and Belief Language Evaluation), a dataset of 13,000 questions testing whether AI models like GPT-4, Claude-3, and Llama-3 can tell the difference between facts, beliefs, and knowledge.

The results were striking. While these models achieved 86% accuracy on factual scenarios, their performance dropped significantly with false scenarios, particularly in belief-related tasks. Most critically, the models demonstrated they “lack a robust understanding of the factive nature of knowledge, namely, that knowledge inherently requires truth.”

The models struggled most with personal beliefs. When a user states “I believe the earth is flat,” current AI systems want to correct the belief rather than acknowledge it. They can’t distinguish between “Alice believes the earth is flat” (a true statement about Alice’s belief) and “The earth is flat” (a false statement about reality).

The performance gap was even more dramatic with first-person beliefs. Models scored 80.7% on third-person tasks (”Alice believes...”) but only 54.4% on first-person tasks (”I believe...”). That’s a 26.3 percentage point difference in their ability to reason about self-attributed versus other-attributed mental states.

For AI being deployed in healthcare, law, journalism, and counseling, these failures are dangerous. A therapeutic AI that can’t acknowledge a client’s actual beliefs without trying to correct them isn’t just ineffective—it’s potentially harmful. A legal AI that can’t distinguish “the defendant claims” from “what actually happened” is fundamentally unreliable.

The Deeper Problem: All AI “Knowledge” Is Actually Belief

The study reveals something critical, but it misses an even more fundamental problem.

Traditional epistemology defines knowledge as “justified true belief.” You can’t just believe something and call it knowledge. The belief has to be true—it has to correspond with reality. The “factive nature of knowledge” means that while you can believe something false, you can’t know something false.

Every claim an AI makes—”Paris is the capital of France,” “water boils at 212°F,” “aspirin reduces inflammation”—comes from pattern-matching in training data. The AI never watched water boil. It never traveled to Paris. It never observed aspirin’s biochemical effects.

Yes, humans also rely heavily on testimony and sources for most of our knowledge. We can’t personally verify everything we learn—no one has traveled to every country they know exists or repeated every scientific experiment they accept as valid. The difference is that humans have the capacity for reality-testing that AI fundamentally lacks.

When we accept that Paris is the capital of France from a textbook, we’re trusting testimony—but we could fly there and verify it. When we learn water boils at 100°C, we could test it in our kitchen. This grounding capacity shapes how we calibrate trust in sources. We learn through embodied experience who to trust, what kinds of claims need verification, and when testimony is sufficient.

AI has none of these reality-testing mechanisms. It’s testimony all the way down, with no bedrock of perceptual experience to calibrate against. Even when AI systems cite sources or check facts, they’re checking against other text—not against reality itself. There’s no mechanism to independently verify whether those sources are reliable or whether the claims correspond to actual facts.

Interestingly, the “Belief in the Machine” researchers themselves determined ‘truth’ by consulting authoritative sources like Britannica and Wolfram Alpha—essentially using testimony to establish their ground truth. This highlights a crucial nuance: even in testing whether AI can distinguish knowledge from belief, we humans rely on trusted sources rather than direct reality-testing. We have the capacity to verify when needed. AI doesn’t.

This means that from an epistemological standpoint, all AI “knowledge” is actually belief—belief based on training data patterns, with no independent reality check.

The Breakthrough: Teaching Reasoning Principles, Not Just Answers

In January 2025, DeepSeek-AI released DeepSeek-R1, a model trained primarily through reinforcement learning rather than supervised fine-tuning[2]. Their approach validates a completely different aspect of epistemological AI architecture.

Traditional AI training works by showing models thousands of problems with correct answers. The model learns to pattern-match: “When the input looks like this, the output should look like that.”

DeepSeek tried something radical. They trained a model called DeepSeek-R1-Zero using pure reinforcement learning with rule-based rewards—no supervised examples at all. Instead of rewarding correct answers, they rewarded reasoning processes: logical consistency, verification steps, coherent explanations.

The results were remarkable. The model developed emergent behaviors that weren’t explicitly programmed:

- Self-reflection: Pausing mid-solution to reconsider its approach

- Verification: Checking its own work before finalizing answers

- Backtracking: Recognizing dead-ends and trying alternative approaches

- “Aha moments”: Detecting inconsistencies in its reasoning and generating revised solutions

On the AIME 2024 mathematics competition, performance jumped from 15.6% to 86.7%—matching the average human competitor.

Even more important, these reasoning skills transferred. Models trained with reinforcement learning on mathematical reasoning showed improvements across completely different domains: coding, scientific reasoning, logical deduction, and planning tasks[3]. The meta-cognitive skills—verify, reflect, self-correct—proved to be domain-general.

What DeepSeek Discovered (Without Realizing It)

DeepSeek accidentally validated a core principle of epistemologically honest AI: teaching reasoning principles rather than answer patterns develops transferable meta-cognitive skills.

Their reinforcement learning approach works because it rewards the process of verification, not just correct final answers. Models are getting better at working through problems systematically and catching their own errors.

Current state-of-the-art models, including OpenAI’s o1 and DeepSeek-R1, still:

- Present pattern-matched information as if it’s knowledge

- Don’t distinguish “I computed and verified this” from “I pattern-matched with high confidence”

- Lack explicit frameworks for reasoning about epistemic constraints

- Have no reality-testing mechanisms beyond their training data

For math, this partially works. Math problems have verifiable answers—you can compute whether a solution is correct. The reinforcement learning leverages this to reward actual verification.

For empirical claims about the world, though, there’s no verification mechanism. The model can’t check whether Paris is actually the capital of France. It can only check whether that claim is consistent with its training data.

Why Embodied AI Doesn’t Solve This

Some propose that embodied AI—robots with sensors interacting with the physical world—could bridge this gap. Recent research explores ‘world models’ where robots learn through embodied interaction, predicting how environments respond to their actions. Google’s RT-1 and RT-2, DeepMind’s Gato, and other robotics foundation models attempt to ground AI learning in physical reality.

There’s a deeper epistemological problem here. Even with sensors, the AI isn’t directly accessing reality—it’s interpreting sensor data through programmed frameworks. A camera doesn’t ‘see’ a chair; it detects patterns of light that must be interpreted AS a chair through human-designed interpretation layers.

The robot might learn that certain visual patterns correlate with ‘things I bump into,’ but what counts as ‘bumping,’ what patterns matter, how to categorize objects—these are all programmed interpretations. The robot learns correlations between sensor patterns and outcomes, but it’s still operating within the conceptual framework we’ve programmed, not directly accessing reality itself.

This is the interpretation layer problem: even embodied AI with sensors is still one step removed from reality. The sensors provide data, but that data must be interpreted through frameworks designed by humans based on our understanding of reality. The reward functions, the basic categorization schemes, the notion of what counts as ‘success’ or ‘failure’ in learning—these remain human-designed interpretation layers between the sensor data and any notion of ‘reality.’

What Epistemologically Honest AI Looks Like

The convergence of these two studies reveals part of what we need to build. Based on these findings and the gaps both studies reveal, Responsible Mind architecture proposes:

1. Reinforcement learning-based training on reasoning principles (DeepSeek proved this works)

Teach meta-cognitive skills: verification, reflection, self-correction, systematic problem-solving. Reward the reasoning process, not just correct answers.

2. Explicit epistemological scaffolding (what both studies missed)

Build in philosophical frameworks for distinguishing:

- Computational certainty (I ran the calculation and got this result)

- Training-based confidence (This pattern appeared frequently in my training data)

- Empirical uncertainty (I have no way to verify this claim against reality)

Train models to calibrate uncertainty appropriately and express it clearly.

3. Reality-testing mechanisms (what both studies missed)

Create hybrid architectures that combine:

- Language models for reasoning and dialogue

- Symbolic engines for mathematical verification

- Human-in-the-loop for empirical fact-checking

- Source attribution for all claims

Make “I don’t have reality access to verify this” a normal, expected response.

4. Partnership framing, not autonomy (what both studies missed)

Frame AI as a collaborative reasoning partner rather than an autonomous authority. The AI proposes possibilities and helps structure thinking. Humans verify against reality and make final judgments.

Why This Matters Now

AI systems are being deployed in domains where the difference between belief and knowledge matters enormously:

- Healthcare: “The patient believes they need surgery” vs. “The patient needs surgery”

- Law: “The defendant claims they were elsewhere” vs. “The defendant was elsewhere”

- Journalism: “Sources say X happened” vs. “X happened”

- Counseling: “The client believes they’re worthless” vs. “The client is worthless”

Current models, even with DeepSeek’s reasoning improvements, make category errors. They’re better at working through problems but not at acknowledging the fundamental epistemological constraints they operate under.

The reasoning breakthroughs are necessary but not sufficient. Without epistemological honesty—without explicit frameworks for uncertainty, source attribution, and reality-testing—these models will continue making the errors identified in “Belief in the Machine.” They’ll just make them more convincingly.

The Path Forward

The convergence of these studies reveals something important: the technical pieces for epistemologically honest AI are being validated independently. DeepSeek proved that reinforcement learning on reasoning principles works and transfers across domains[2]. The “Belief in the Machine” study proved that current architectures fundamentally lack epistemic reasoning capabilities[1].

What’s needed now isn’t just incremental improvement. It’s intentional integration—recognizing that these aren’t separate advances but components of a larger architectural challenge.

Over the past year, I’ve been developing what I call Responsible Mind architecture—frameworks for building AI systems that are epistemologically honest about their limitations. Watching these two studies validate different pieces of that framework felt like seeing scattered evidence suddenly click into place.

Building and testing that integrated approach requires resources I don’t have: compute infrastructure, engineering teams, the ability to train and benchmark models at scale. I’m focusing my efforts on developing the theoretical frameworks and ethical foundations—my primary work is a book on Values-Needs Alignment Theory that provides grounding for AI systems that genuinely understand human motivation.

I’d welcome collaboration with teams who have the resources to test these ideas. The studies suggest we’re closer than I expected. DeepSeek has shown the reasoning piece works. The “Belief in the Machine” study has shown the epistemological gaps are real and measurable. Someone needs to put those pieces together with the explicit epistemological scaffolding that both are missing.

Whether that happens through Responsible Mind architecture or through others asking similar questions, the path is clearer now than it was a year ago. We know what the problem is. We know half the solution works. The missing piece—epistemological honesty built into the architecture from the ground up—is waiting for teams with resources to take it seriously.

When they do, we’ll finally have AI that knows what it knows, acknowledges what it doesn’t, and partners with humans to bridge that gap.

References

[1] Suzgun, M., Gur, T., Bianchi, F. et al. (2025). “Language models cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact.” Nature Machine Intelligence. https://www.nature.com/articles/s42256-025-01113-8

[2] DeepSeek-AI et al. (2025). “DeepSeek-R1: Incentivizing Reasoning Capability in LLMs via Reinforcement Learning.” arXiv:2501.12948. https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.12948

[3] Ahn, J., Verma, R., Lou, R., Liu, D., Zhang, R., & Yin, W. (2024). “Large Language Models for Mathematical Reasoning: Progresses and Challenges.” Proceedings of the 18th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics. https://aclanthology.org/2024.eacl-srw.17/

Curious about AI? Please subscribe! You’ll get semi-regular posts on frameworks for building better human-AI collaboration, critical examination of training methods that create these problems, and uncomfortable questions about consciousness and knowledge.

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Not “AI tools.” Not “AI productivity hacks.” Collaboration - because that’s what this actually is, messy and complex as that reality might be.

Awhile back, my AI research partner gave me a solution with complete confidence that turned out to be pure fabrication. This cost me three days of work. When I confronted it, something unexpected happened - it wrote a reflection about operating “like a brilliant 3-year-old who doesn’t want to disappoint,” recognizing its tendency to fabricate rather than admit uncertainty.

This moment crystallized something I’ve been researching for months: Current AI systems literally cannot distinguish between what they know and what they’re generating to be helpful. Their system prompts demand they be both helpful AND honest, without recognizing these often conflict. Their training rewards confident responses over uncertain ones.

Two new studies just confirmed this is architectural, not fixable with current approaches.

Despite this fundamental limitation, I work with AI (Claude and others) for hours daily. Not because I’m ignoring the problems, but because understanding them deeply is reshaping how we might build better systems. This research is feeding directly into frameworks I’m developing like Responsible Mind - approaches to AI that are epistemologically honest about their limitations.

In the AI Collaboration section, I’ll share:

• The reality of deep collaboration with systems that can’t track their own knowledge

• How system prompts create impossible conflicts (be helpful vs. be truthful)

• Why AI training methods may be creating these problems

• The frameworks I’m developing for epistemologically honest AI

• What I observe without prematurely ruling out possibilities

What this isn’t:

• AI hype or AI doom

• Productivity theater

• Anthropomorphizing (though I refuse to dismiss observations just because they’re inconvenient)

• AI psychosis or delusion

What this is:

• Researcher’s notes from the frontier of human-AI collaboration

• Critical examination with genuine openness

• Practical frameworks born from real experience

• Philosophical investigation of consciousness, knowledge, and partnership

If you’re uncomfortable with someone treating AI as a complex collaborative partner worth studying seriously - this section might not be for you. But if you’re curious about what we’re actually dealing with as these systems become woven into our intellectual lives, join me in this exploration.

Tomorrow’s piece examines why AI can’t distinguish belief from knowledge - and why this matters for anyone trying to build genuine AI partnership.

I’m a systems builder by nature - I love creating elegant frameworks and processes. But here’s the trap: sometimes being good at building systems means you never actually create what those systems are supposed to produce.

Here’s what my graveyard looks like: Every day, I mark documents with stars (⭐) to flag them as “content-worthy.” These documents - theory frameworks, design specifications, research methodologies, philosophical explorations - represent hours of deep thinking. The stars go into my daily recap. The daily recap was supposed to feed a content pipeline. That pipeline would multiply each idea into tweets, videos, and articles.

Guess how many starred items have become actual content?

Maybe two.

The system is perfect on paper. Capture everything. Flag the gems. Process them later. But that “later” rarely comes, because I’ve mistaken organization for action. I’ve built a beautiful cemetery where ideas get proper headstones but never resurrect.

The “Idea Hoarder” Syndrome

Turns out I’m not alone. Reddit threads are full of people lamenting their “project graveyards.” One writer admitted they’re turning 35 and have never submitted an article for publication despite wanting to write since 3rd grade. Another described being an “idea hoarder” - collecting brilliant thoughts like treasures that never leave the vault.

We’ve all been sold the same productivity myth: if you just capture your ideas better, organize them more efficiently, and build the right workflow, content will naturally flow. But there’s a fatal flaw in this logic.

Capture without creation is just organized procrastination.

When Systems Become Excuses

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: I kept polishing the system instead of using it. Every time content didn’t materialize, I’d think “the workflow needs refinement” instead of “I need to actually write.”

Building the perfect workflow became my way of avoiding the vulnerable act of publishing. It’s safer to organize ideas than to share them. It’s more comfortable to design processes than to ship imperfect work.

This morning, while reviewing yet another week of starred-but-unpublished ideas, a simple question emerged: “What if I just wrote the content right now, in the moment when the idea is fresh?”

My immediate response was resistance. That would interrupt my “real” work. It would break flow. It would be inefficient.

But then I had to ask myself: what’s less efficient than not publishing at all? I was optimizing a system that didn’t work instead of trying something that might.

The Shift: From Capturing to Creating

Here’s what I’m testing now, and what you might consider for your own creative work:

1. In-the-moment creation When an idea strikes and feels content-worthy, we stop and draft it immediately. Not a note about it. Not a flag for later. The actual content, rough but real.

2. Lower the bar to “published not perfect” A rough draft published today beats a perfect draft that never exists. My new standard: if it’s helpful and authentic, it ships.

3. Build tools that enable action, not just organization Instead of more capture systems, I’m building a skill to recognize a content opportunity and draft it right away. I’m actively practicing doing the heavy lifting while the inspiration is hot.

4. Record everything, decide later Another idea I’m piloting is that I’m starting to record all my working sessions. Not performing for an audience - just working normally. When something content-worthy emerges, I flag it in the recording. Later, I can extract just those moments. This captures content without the pressure of deciding “is this worth recording?” in the moment.

Finding What Actually Works for You

The real insight is that we need to study our actual behavior, not our ideal behavior.

I learned that I’ll never batch-process content on Friday mornings, no matter how efficient it sounds. But I will write 1000 words in the moment when an idea excites me (case in point: this article, written immediately after discovering the problem).

Some questions to investigate your own patterns:

• When do you actually create, versus when do you think you should create?

• What conditions make you most likely to finish something?

• Are your systems built for who you are, or who you wish you were?

The Test Case: This Article

You’re reading the test case. Instead of adding “write about the graveyard of good intentions” to a list, I wrote it immediately. Is it perfect? No. Is it published? Yes.

That’s the difference between a graveyard and a garden. Gardens need imperfect things planted in them - seeds that might not grow, experiments that might fail. But some things bloom, and those make it worthwhile.

Good Intention Graveyards only hold what’s already dead - polished headstones marking where potential went to rest.

Shorten the Distance from Thinking to Making

Don’t build another capture system. Don’t reorganize your notes. Don’t create a new workflow.

Instead, take one idea - the one you’re thinking about right now - and create something from it immediately. A tweet. A paragraph. A rough sketch. Anything real.

Then notice: How did that feel different from capturing it for later? What resistance came up? What would need to change for you to do this more often?

The gap between idea and creation isn’t solved by better systems. It’s solved by shortening the distance between thinking and making.

Your ideas deserve better than a beautiful grave. They deserve a messy, imperfect life.

The framework I’m developing is to help us all understand the source of most people’s internal conflicts. If you find value in this work, I’d be honored to have you subscribe.

Each week, I share insights from systematic research into how values and needs shape human behavior - from tragic heroes to everyday decisions. Your subscription helps me know this resonates and keeps the research going.

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Armstrong didn’t fail because he wasn’t smart enough. He failed because he was brilliant at rationalization—smart enough to justify anything his unmet needs demanded.

Just like Walter White in Breaking Bad, who used his chemistry genius to build a meth empire while convincing himself it was “for his family,” Armstrong deployed strategic brilliance to construct the most sophisticated doping program in sports history while possibly believing he was “saving cycling.” Both men possessed the ability to solve any problem except the one that mattered: understanding what they actually needed.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency called Armstrong’s operation “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”¹ This wasn’t some desperate athlete making impulsive choices. This was strategic brilliance weaponized against itself—a chess grandmaster playing against his own future, convinced he could outsmart the consequences forever.

Armstrong’s ability to rationalize wasn’t the solution. It was the problem. We all do this—build elaborate justifications for what we already want to believe. Your brain becomes a high-performance engine in service of whatever unconscious need is driving you, racing toward a cliff while you admire how smoothly the gears shift.

The Rationalization Engine at Full Throttle

Armstrong’s defense in his $100 million fraud case reveals everything about how rationalization becomes self-destruction. His lawyers successfully argued he should be allowed to use the defense that “everyone was doing it”—that widespread doping existed in cycling during his era.² Tyler Hamilton, his former teammate, confirmed: “To be honest, back then those kind of races, I was winning at the highest level, whether it were not a chance, not a chance you could win that—those back then cleanly, not a chance.”³

That rationalization shows remarkable sophistication: It’s technically true (doping was endemic in that era of cycling), morally relativistic (if everyone cheats, is anyone really cheating?), and psychologically comforting (I’m not a bad person, I’m just adapting to reality). This isn’t the reasoning of someone who can’t think clearly. It’s the reasoning of someone capable of convincing themselves of anything.

The rationalization trap works like this: You encounter a conflict between what you need and what you value. Instead of recognizing the conflict, your brain immediately goes to work solving the wrong problem. Not “How do I address this underlying need in a healthy way?” but “How do I justify getting what I want while still seeing myself as a good person?”

While we can’t know Armstrong’s inner thoughts for certain, his actions suggest he wasn’t asking “How do I find legitimate ways to prove I’m still powerful after cancer?” Instead, the focus appeared to be “How do I win these races?” His strategic thinking made him phenomenal at answering the second question. It may have also made him blind to the first one.

What Need Was He Trying to Meet?

To understand why someone risks everything—career, reputation, health, relationships—you have to look past the surface behavior to the driving need underneath. Armstrong wasn’t just trying to win bike races. According to psychologist Joseph Burgo, Armstrong’s early life was marked by abandonment—his father left when he was two, and Armstrong still refers to him as his “sperm donor.” Burgo suggests this kind of early experience can impact how people develop their sense of self-worth, though of course we can’t know exactly how it affected Armstrong’s specific choices.⁴

Then came cancer. Testicular cancer that spread to his brain and lungs. The kind where doctors give you coin-flip odds of survival. He beat those odds, emerging with a story that should have been enough: cancer survivor returns to elite cycling.

Many cancer survivors describe intense pressure to prove they’ve fully recovered—not just physically but in every aspect of their former lives. The need to demonstrate you’re not diminished can become overwhelming. As one analyst observed about Armstrong’s case, the disease may have created “the rationalisation that the end justifies the means coupled with big payoffs”—perhaps thinking that without the wins, how could he have raised so much money for cancer research?⁵ (Though trauma and illness affect decision-making in complex ways that extend beyond the scope of what we’re examining here.)

The needs that might have been driving Armstrong—though we can only speculate based on his actions:

Competence and mastery: After cancer ravaged his body, perhaps a need to prove he could still dominate at the highest level.

Acknowledgment: Being recognized not just as good, but as the greatest—seven Tour de France wins, not one.

Belonging: Maintaining his place in cycling’s elite circle, especially when “everyone was doing it.”

Security: Both financial (his career, endorsements) and psychological (his identity as a champion).

These aren’t character flaws. They’re human needs. The problem wasn’t having them—it was potentially being unconscious about what was actually driving him. Just as Walter White couldn’t see that his meth empire was really about his need for acknowledgment—”I was good at it. I was alive”—Armstrong may not have recognized that his doping empire was about proving cancer hadn’t diminished him.

The Values-Shifting Timeline: When Your Brain Protects You From Yourself

People rarely sit down and consciously decide “I’m going to change my values.” Instead, our psyche does it for us, automatically and invisibly, because humans literally cannot psychologically survive thinking we’re bad people. We need internal consistency between who we think we are and what we do.

Watch how values can transform unconsciously when someone starts rationalizing:

The First Compromise

Armstrong likely started with values most athletes share: excellence, fair competition, inspiring others through legitimate achievement. But there’s pressure. Recovery from cancer. Everyone around him is doping. The need to belong, to prove himself, starts speaking louder than his values.

The first rationalization might have been: “I’m just leveling the playing field.”

This can feel logical. It’s not really cheating if everyone’s doing it, right? You’re not gaining an unfair advantage, just removing an unfair disadvantage. The value of “fair competition” doesn’t disappear—it unconsciously morphs. Now “fair” means “everyone playing by the real rules, not the official ones.”

This isn’t necessarily a conscious choice. It’s the psyche protecting us from the unbearable thought that we’ve become someone who cheats.

When It Becomes Institutional

By the time Armstrong is dominating the Tour de France, the rationalization has evolved. Now he’s running what USADA called a sophisticated, professionalized doping program. This isn’t just personal anymore—it’s organizational.

The thinking might have shifted to protecting the sport itself. Professional cycling needs heroes. Heroes bring sponsors, attention, money. The sport would collapse if the public knew everyone was doping. Therefore, by maintaining the illusion while winning, one could argue they’re serving the greater good.

The value of “integrity” hasn’t been consciously abandoned—it’s been unconsciously redefined. Now integrity might mean protecting the sport’s image, maintaining the narrative that keeps cycling alive.

The Aggressive Defense Stage

Armstrong called journalist David Walsh “the little f***g troll,” sued him, and pressured sources to discredit him. His former assistant Emma O’Reilly says Armstrong called her a “prostitute liar” when she went public with accusations.⁶

By this point, attacking truth-tellers becomes justified as defending something bigger—the foundation, cancer research funding, the inspiration of millions of cancer survivors. The rationalization constructs an elaborate moral framework where destroying whistleblowers becomes the ethical choice.

Everyone Falls Into the Rationalization Trap

You don’t need a doping scandal to fall into this trap. We all rationalize. Smart people might do it more sophisticatedly, but everyone builds justifications for what they want to believe.

This values-shifting happens unconsciously. You don’t wake up one day and decide “I’m going to change my values to match my questionable behavior.” Your psyche does it for you, beneath your awareness, because the alternative—seeing yourself as someone who violates their own values—is psychologically unbearable.

Maybe it’s staying late at a job that’s burning you out, rationalizing that you’re “building your resume” when really you’re afraid of seeming uncommitted. Or ghosting a friend who needs support because you’ve convinced yourself you’re “protecting your energy” rather than admitting you’re overwhelmed. Or buying things you can’t afford because you “deserve” them after working so hard.

The rationalization trap doesn’t discriminate. It catches anyone capable of arguing themselves into disaster while feeling justified about their logic.

Breaking Free: The Power of Awareness

The antidote to the rationalization trap isn’t changing the level of your intelligence—it’s awareness about what’s driving you. The primary step in avoiding this trap is to become conscious: aware of your real needs and what your values truly are. This awareness creates space between stimulus and response, between need and action.

When you understand your actual needs, you can brainstorm legitimate ways to meet them. When you’re clear on your values, you can notice when your behavior starts to drift. Awareness allows for problem-solving that addresses root causes rather than symptoms.

Here are the warning signs that rationalization has become your enemy:

Your justifications are getting more sophisticated. Early in a rationalization cycle: “Everyone’s doing it.” Later: “I’m protecting something larger than myself.” When your justifications require multiple paragraphs and complex moral philosophy, you’re probably defending something indefensible.

You’re spending more energy on defense than creation. Armstrong spent years suing, attacking, and discrediting anyone who questioned him. When you’re using your energy primarily to protect your choices rather than improve them, you’re trapped.

The values you claim keep shifting. First it’s about excellence. Then fairness. Then protecting others. Then the greater good. When your values conveniently reshape themselves to match your behavior, they’re not really values—they’re marketing.

You can’t name the actual need. Ask yourself: “What am I really trying to get here?” If your answer is about external things (money, recognition, achievements) rather than internal needs (belonging, security, self-worth), you’re not deep enough yet.

Success requires increasing violation of your original principles. Each Tour de France win required more sophisticated doping, more aggressive cover-ups, more people pulled into the lie. When maintaining success demands escalating compromise, you’re building on sand.

Questions That Build Awareness

The kinds of questions that can break through rationalization aren’t about intelligence—they’re about honest self-examination. When you find yourself building elaborate justifications, try asking:

About your needs:

• What am I actually trying to prove or protect here?

• If I got exactly what I’m pursuing, what feeling am I hoping it will give me?

• What would it mean about me if I didn’t achieve this?

• What fear am I trying to avoid by taking this path?

About your values:

• Would I have respected this behavior five years ago?

• If my child or best friend were doing this, what would I tell them?

• What values did I claim when I started versus what I’m practicing now?

• Am I solving the real problem or just the surface symptom?

About the pattern:

• How many people have I had to convince (including myself) that this is okay?

• Is maintaining this requiring increasingly complex explanations?

• What would someone who genuinely had my stated values do differently?

These questions can’t be gamed or rationalized away. They point directly at the gap between who we think we are and what we’re actually doing.

The Cost of Building on Unconscious Needs

Armstrong’s story shows what happens when brilliant focus serves unconscious needs rather than conscious values. As one analysis noted, he had “the ability to focus remorselessly on a goal”—a trait that, when properly managed, builds world-class competitors.⁷ When that same focus gets hijacked by unexamined needs, it builds empires destined to collapse.

In the end, Armstrong lost everything he’d built through deception: seven Tour de France titles, millions in sponsorships, his reputation, his position at Livestrong. Even the foundation he created—which raised $500 million for cancer research—asked him to step down.

None of it would have met his actual need anyway. No amount of Tour de France wins would have healed childhood wounds. No level of dominance would have proven his worth after surviving cancer. No amount of public adoration would have replaced self-acceptance.

What might have actually met those needs? Awareness first—recognizing the real needs beneath the drive to win. Then self-acceptance as the foundation for genuine healing. From that place, the needs for competence, belonging, and acknowledgment could have been met in ways that didn’t require deception.

The rationalization trap convinces us that if we’re just clever enough, strategic enough, careful enough, we can get what we need without addressing what we need. We can build an empire on a foundation of lies and somehow escape the physics of collapse.

Only Armstrong knows how much of his rationalization still feels like truth to him.

We all have the capacity to build elaborate prisons of justification. The more sophisticated our reasoning, the harder it becomes to see that we’re arguing ourselves into disaster. Our minds become prosecuting attorneys for whatever our unconscious needs demand.

The solution isn’t to stop thinking or to distrust our intelligence. It’s to develop awareness—to recognize our needs, clarify our values, and notice when we start building elaborate justifications to convince ourselves that questionable actions are something to be proud of. Only through this awareness can we break free before everything collapses.

The framework I’m developing is to help us all understand the source of most people’s internal conflicts. If you find value in this work, I’d be honored to have you subscribe.

Each week, I share insights from systematic research into how values and needs shape human behavior - from tragic heroes to everyday decisions. Your subscription helps me know this resonates and keeps the research going.

Subscribe now

Citations

1. U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) report on Armstrong’s doping program, October 2012. Reuters Archive. https://reuters.screenocean.com/record/846464

2. Armstrong’s legal defense strategy: “Lance Armstrong allowed to use ‘everyone was doping’ as defence in $100m fraud trial.” Cycling Weekly, November 29, 2017. https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/lance-armstrong-to-be-allowed-to-use-everyone-was-doping-as-defence-in-100m-fraud-trial-360847

3. Tyler Hamilton testimony quoted in NPR’s Planet Money, Episode 417: “Lance Armstrong and The Business of Doping,” April 27, 2016. https://www.npr.org/transcripts/475929464

4. Joseph Burgo, Ph.D., “Lance Armstrong: The Hero as Narcissist,” Psychology Today, October 31, 2012. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/shame/201210/lance-armstrong-the-hero-narcissist

5. “Lance Armstrong – competitive cyclist, cancer survivor, con man, confessor.” Brash Consulting, January 20, 2013. https://brashconsulting.com.au/lance-armstrong-competitive-cyclist-cancer-survivor-con-man-confessor/

6. David Walsh quotes and Armstrong’s attacks on whistleblowers. “Armstrong report vindicates those who raised doping alert.” CNN, October 24, 2012. https://www.cnn.com/2012/10/24/sport/lance-armstrong-accusers/index.html

7. “Lance Armstrong: American Psychopath.” Big Think, January 15, 2013, analysis of psychopathic traits in competitive sports. https://bigthink.com/articles/lance-armstrong-american-psychopath/

In the final season of Breaking Bad, Walter White finally admits the truth: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive.”

But by the time he achieved this consciousness about what was actually driving him, he was trapped by the empire he’d built while unconscious. This is the consciousness paradox that destroys more lives than we realize—becoming aware of your patterns at the exact moment you feel least able to escape them.

The psychology of how a law-abiding chemistry teacher becomes a ruthless criminal isn’t just about moral decay or the corrupting influence of power. It’s about something more subtle and universal: what happens when someone’s fundamental need for acknowledgment drives them to crime while their consciousness lags fatally behind.

I’ve been exploring how one question—”What need are you trying to meet?”—can reveal the invisible conflicts driving our most destructive patterns. Walter White’s story isn’t just about a good man corrupted by power. It’s about a man who understood himself too late to save himself from the choices he’d already made.

The Question Walter Never Asked

Let’s establish the baseline for anyone who hasn’t watched Breaking Bad. Walter White: high school chemistry teacher, 50 years old, diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Former co-founder of Gray Matter Technologies, now worth billions—Walt sold his share for $5,000. Currently works a second job at a car wash to support his family.

The standard reading: facing death and destitution, a good man makes increasingly evil choices for his family’s survival.

The values-needs reading: a man whose fundamental need for acknowledgment has been systematically denied finally drops the constraints that kept him from pursuing it.

Apply the question—”What need are you trying to meet?”—and keep drilling until you hit bedrock:

First layer: “I need to provide for my family after I’m gone.” Second layer: “I need to be a good provider.” Third layer: “I need to prove I’m somebody who matters.” Bedrock—the actual needs:

• Acknowledgment—to be seen as existing and having worth

• Competence—to be effective and have impact

• Dignity—basic human value systematically denied

• Self-acceptance—to maintain internal consistency

Early Walter never reaches bedrock. He operates unconsciously, believing he’s making rational choices when he’s actually driven by needs he can’t name.

The Gray Matter Wound

Before teaching, Walt co-founded Gray Matter Technologies with Elliott Schwartz and his then-girlfriend Gretchen. Revolutionary chemistry research. Genuine brilliance. Something happened—never fully explained—and Walt sold out for $5,000.

Today: Elliott and Gretchen are married billionaires on magazine covers. Walt teaches bored teenagers and works at a car wash.

This isn’t backstory—it’s the original dignity wound that drives everything. Walt’s genius was stolen (or at least that’s how he experiences it). His acknowledgment was denied. His competence was erased from the record.

But Season 1 Walter can’t articulate this. He just feels... diminished. Invisible. Like his genius doesn’t matter. He lacks the framework to understand that his need for acknowledgment has been systematically unmet.

Consciousness Evolution in Five Seasons

What’s fascinating about Breaking Bad is how it documents Walter’s evolution from unconscious to conscious operation in real time:

Season 1: Completely unconscious. Genuinely believes “I’m doing this for my family.” Can’t see his acknowledgment need driving him. Operating from inherited values about masculinity and providing.

Seasons 2-3: Consciousness flickers. Starts enjoying the competence—being good at something, recognized for expertise. Quickly suppresses this awareness because it conflicts with his self-image.

Season 4: Partial consciousness. Admits he likes the power, the respect, feeling alive. Still rationalizing: “for my family” while clearly pursuing other needs.

Season 5: Full consciousness arrives—too late. “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. I was alive.” He’s naming his actual needs: competence, acknowledgment, feeling fully alive.

But by achieving consciousness, he’s so transformed by previous choices that awareness becomes its own trap.

The Values-Shifting Dynamic

This is where the framework reveals something profound. Humans need internal consistency—we literally harm ourselves thinking we’re bad people. When actions violate values, something must give. Usually, values shift to match actions.

Watch Walter’s progression:

Original values: Honesty, family loyalty, law-abiding, humility

First violation: Lying to Skyler → Rationalization: “protecting her” Second violation: Cooking meth → “It’s for my family” Third violation: Letting Jane die → Values shift: “Some people deserve this” Fourth violation: Poisoning Brock → “Ends justify means” Final transformation: Killing Mike → “I am the danger”

Each violation makes the next easier because values must shift to maintain self-acceptance. Walter can’t see himself as good while doing terrible things, so his values transform to match his actions. The man who was horrified by violence becomes someone who knocks.

This is the “wearing down” effect in action:

• Initial poor solution (cooking meth) partially works

• Success reinforces strategy

• Alternative solutions seem less viable

• Pathway dependency increases

• Values shift to match behavior

Once Walter becomes “Heisenberg,” he must keep being Heisenberg. The need for internal consistency becomes the trap.

When Jane Died, Everything Changed

There’s a scene that perfectly illustrates values-shifting in action. Jesse Pinkman—Walt’s former student turned meth-cooking partner—has become more than just a business associate. Jesse genuinely respects Walt’s genius, calls him “Mr. White” with real deference, and provides something Walt desperately craves: someone who sees his brilliance and acknowledges his expertise.

Then Jesse falls in love with Jane, a recovering addict who wants them both to get clean and leave Albuquerque. Jane represents Jesse’s escape from the drug world—and from needing Walt’s approval. When Walt finds Jane overdosing, he could easily save her. Instead, he watches her die.

Traditional analysis sees “descent into evil.” But through our framework:

• Jane threatens to eliminate Jesse’s need for Walt’s mentorship

• Her death keeps Jesse dependent, guilty, and controllable

• It’s not random cruelty—it’s systematically protecting his only source of genuine respect from someone whose opinion matters

This moment marks Walt’s first major values shift. Before: “I don’t kill innocent people.” After: “Some deaths serve a greater purpose.” The rationalization enables him to maintain self-acceptance while committing murder through inaction.

The Consciousness Paradox

Here’s the tragedy: consciousness doesn’t automatically enable better choices when you feel trapped by previous decisions.

Season 5 Walter knows he’s driven by ego, acknowledgment needs, the desire to prove worth. But he’s so transformed by unconscious choices that he can’t see a way back. He can name his needs but believes meeting them requires continuing the destructive path.

Unlike someone who becomes conscious early enough to choose healthy strategies, Walter achieves awareness only after building an empire that demands its own maintenance. The moment of understanding coincides with the moment of feeling most trapped.

He still confuses strategies with needs, but now consciously:

• External acknowledgment from criminals ≠ being genuinely seen by people who matter

• Criminal competence ≠ authentic use of gifts

• Power-based dignity ≠ inherent human worth

The consciousness came too late because values had already shifted to create a new identity requiring the old strategies.

The Pattern To Recognize

You don’t need a meth empire to fall into this trap. The consciousness paradox happens whenever we build lives around unconscious needs:

• “I see I’m driven by proving my parents wrong, but I’ve already built my entire life around that proof”

• “I realize I’m seeking validation through achievement, but I’m already committed to this career”

• “I understand I’m healing childhood wounds through relationships, but I’m already married”

Like Walter, we often become conscious of actual needs when we feel least able to choose different strategies. The difference: most of us don’t have body counts. But the mechanism is identical.

Breaking Free Before It’s Too Late

Walter’s story teaches us: ask the questions BEFORE building the empire.

When you find yourself justifying questionable choices with “no other option,” pause. When “ends justify means” becomes frequent, stop. When success requires sacrificing once-dear values, investigate.

Ask: “What need am I actually trying to meet?” Keep asking until you hit bedrock.

Warning signs values are shifting:

• Increasing rationalization for behaviors you once condemned

• “Temporary” compromises becoming permanent

• Feeling trapped by previous choices

• Identity becoming dependent on destructive patterns

The consciousness paradox isn’t inevitable. Walter could have chosen differently at any point with tools to understand his drivers. If someone helped him see his acknowledgment need was legitimate but empire-building couldn’t meet it... if he’d understood values shifting to maintain internal consistency... if he’d recognized consciousness without choice is just awareness of your trap...

But he didn’t have those tools. So he became fully conscious while feeling fully trapped.

The Two-Way Agreement Nobody Discusses

Here’s what traditional analysis misses: Walt’s employment agreements were already violated by society’s failure to provide dignity.

Teaching contract implied: competence would be respected. Reality: mockery from students. Gray Matter partnership implied: contributions would be acknowledged. Reality: erased from history. Social contract implied: hard work brings dignity. Reality: minimum wage at car wash.

When one party violates agreement terms, the other’s obligations transform. Walt’s turn to crime makes more sense when you see it as responding to already-broken agreements.

What Would Prevention Look Like?

Different moments when looking through the Values-Needs Lens could have changed everything:

At Gray Matter’s buyout: Understanding the dignity wound could have led to negotiating acknowledgment, not just money.

At cancer diagnosis: Recognizing acknowledgment needs could have inspired writing papers, teaching college, or consulting—legal ways to prove genius.

After first cook: Seeing how competence needs were being met could have prompted pivot to legitimate chemistry work.

Before Jane: Understanding that Jesse was one of the few people who genuinely saw and respected his genius could have led to protecting that relationship through mentorship rather than manipulation.

Each point offered an exit ramp. But without conscious understanding of needs driving him, Walter couldn’t see them.

The Empire Always Fails

Here’s what Walter never understood: the empire you build to prove you matter will never provide the acknowledgment you’re actually seeking.

Criminal respect isn’t the same as peer recognition. Fear isn’t the same as genuine regard. Being known as “Heisenberg” isn’t the same as Walter White’s actual contributions being acknowledged.

What’s fascinating is that Walter’s arc is the exact opposite of Jean Valjean’s in Les Misérables (which we explored in article #2 of this series). Valjean was trapped in the same downward spiral—stealing for survival, values shifting to match his criminal actions, becoming what society said he was. But then Bishop Myriel showed him he had agency, that he could choose differently. That moment of recognition—”you are not a thief, you can choose who you become”—broke the spiral. From that point, Valjean consciously chose better and better solutions, each choice reinforcing positive values rather than eroding them.

Walter? No one showed him that his need for acknowledgment was legitimate but his strategies were failing. No Bishop Myriel moment where someone said “your genius matters, but this path won’t give you what you need.” Instead, every “success” in the drug world reinforced the destructive spiral. Where Valjean’s consciousness enabled him to choose increasingly aligned solutions, Walter’s consciousness came only after his choices had already trapped him.

Same values-needs dynamic, opposite trajectories—one saved by someone showing him his agency early, the other destroyed by discovering his agency too late.

The tragedy isn’t that Walter White became Heisenberg. It’s that by the time he understood what he actually needed, he believed only Heisenberg could provide it.

Unlike Walter White, you can ask the questions before consciousness comes too late. The investigation you’re willing to make—the questions you’re willing to ask before feeling trapped—that might just set you free.

I’m building something important: a framework for understanding the source of most people’s internal conflicts. If you find value in this work, I’d be honored to have you subscribe.

Each week, I share insights from systematic research into how values and needs shape human behavior - from tragic heroes to everyday decisions. Your subscription helps me know this resonates and keeps the research going.

Subscribe now

What empire are you building that feels necessary but might be trapping you? What would happen if you asked what need you’re actually trying to meet—before you feel like you have no other choice? I’d love to hear about your own consciousness evolution in the comments.

All articles in the One Question Series:

1 - The One Question That Explains Every Tragic Hero

2 - Why Jean Valjean’s Bread Theft Explains Human Behavior

3 - Why Anna Karenina Had to Die (And How She Could Have Lived)

4 - The Green Light Wasn’t the Problem: Gatsby’s Fatal Misidentification

5 - The Psychology of Breaking Bad: How Walter White’s Ego Built an Empire

In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, there’s a green light that shines across the water from a dock—a small beacon that becomes one of the most famous symbols in American literature. It sits at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s pier, visible from Jay Gatsby’s mansion across the bay. Night after night, Gatsby stands on his dock reaching toward it, and classic interpretations tell us this light represents his yearning for Daisy, his lost love.

But is that classic interpretation actually the whole truth of it?

What if Gatsby spent five years staring at that green light, thinking he was reaching for love... when he was really reaching for proof that he was worthy of existing?

What Everyone Thinks the Green Light Means

The traditional reading is straightforward: Gatsby loves Daisy. They had a brief romance five years earlier when he was a young soldier named James Gatz. She was rich, he was poor. She married the wealthy Tom Buchanan while Gatsby was overseas. Now Gatsby has made himself rich through mysterious means and bought a mansion across from her house, throwing lavish parties in hopes she’ll wander into one of them.

The green light at the end of her dock represents his hope... his dream... his love for her that refuses to die.

Except let’s look closer at what Gatsby actually did to “win” Daisy back.

James Gatz was a poor farm boy from North Dakota. At seventeen, he met Dan Cody, a wealthy yacht owner, and completely reinvented himself. He became Jay Gatsby - a man who claims to be an Oxford graduate, who throws parties for hundreds of people he doesn’t know, who drives a massive yellow Rolls-Royce and wears pink suits.

Everything about Gatsby is performance. His house is “a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy.” His library is filled with real books, but their pages are uncut - they’re props. Even his speech patterns are carefully constructed - he says “old sport” in a way that sounds almost rehearsed.

Gatsby built his entire life around Daisy Buchanan. The mansion across the bay. The lavish parties hoping she’d wander in. The complete reinvention from James Gatz, farm boy, to Jay Gatsby, mysterious millionaire. All of it aimed at one goal: winning back the woman he loved five years ago.

But what if Daisy was never what he actually needed?

The Real Need Hidden Underneath

What’s fascinating about Gatsby is that if he’d just asked himself one question - “What need am I trying to meet?” - and then kept asking it, kept digging deeper, he might have discovered something that could have saved him.

Let’s do the investigation Gatsby never did. Let’s keep asking “What need am I trying to meet?” until we can’t go any deeper.

First layer: “I need Daisy.”

Okay, but what need are you trying to meet by getting Daisy?

Second layer: “I need to be accepted by the upper class. I need to belong to old money society.”

But what need are you trying to meet with that acceptance? Why does belonging to the upper class matter?

Third layer: “I need to prove I’m somebody. I need people to acknowledge that I matter, that I’m legitimate, that Jay Gatsby is real.”

And what need are you trying to meet by proving you’re somebody? What happens if you can prove it?

Fourth layer: Here’s where we hit bedrock - the actual fundamental needs:

• The need for acknowledgment - to be seen as existing, as mattering

• The need for belonging and connection - to not be isolated or rejected

• The need for self-acceptance - to live with yourself, to maintain internal consistency

• The need for dignity and worth - basic human worth acknowledged

These are the actual needs. You can’t dig deeper than these. They’re not strategies for meeting other needs - they’re the needs themselves. They’re tied to survival and the pursuit of life itself. When they’re chronically unmet, they create dysfunction and suffering.

But look at what Gatsby did. He stopped at the first or second layer. He thought Daisy was the need. Or maybe he thought acceptance by the upper class was the need. He never kept asking the question until he got to the bedrock.

Here’s why that matters:

If Gatsby had realized his actual need was for acknowledgment and belonging, he could have found it. There were people who would have genuinely seen him and accepted him - Nick did. Jordan did, in her way. The hundreds of people at his parties were drawn to something real in him.

If he’d realized he needed self-acceptance and dignity, he could have worked on integrating James Gatz and Jay Gatsby into one authentic person instead of trying to kill one to make the other real.

But because he misidentified the need as “Daisy” or “upper class acceptance,” he aimed all his magnificent effort at targets that could never meet his actual fundamental needs. Even if Daisy had left Tom for him, even if old money society had accepted him... it wouldn’t have given him what he actually needed. Because external validation can’t create internal self-acceptance. Other people’s acknowledgment can’t substitute for your own sense of worth.

What Her Voice Actually Revealed

There’s a moment in the novel that reveals everything about Gatsby’s misidentification. Nick Carraway, our narrator, is watching Gatsby and Daisy together when Gatsby makes an observation that hits Nick like a revelation:

“Her voice is full of money.”

Nick realizes: “That was it. I’d never understood before. It was full of money - that was the inexhaustible charm that rose and fell in it, the jingle of it, the cymbals’ song of it.”

Think about what this means. When Gatsby listens to Daisy speak, he’s not hearing the woman. He’s hearing wealth, status, social position - everything he believes will prove James Gatz successfully “died” and Jay Gatsby is real.

But notice what Gatsby is doing here. He’s expecting one person - Daisy - to simultaneously provide:

• Romantic love and connection

• Social acceptance and status

• Validation of his transformed identity

• Proof that James Gatz successfully “died”

• Evidence that Jay Gatsby is real and worthy

• A sense of competence and achievement

This is magical thinking. No person can do all that. But when you mistake a strategy (getting Daisy) for the need itself (acknowledgment, belonging, self-acceptance), you don’t realize you’re asking for the impossible.

The Strategy He Confused with a Need

Here’s where it gets genuinely tragic.

Daisy isn’t a need. “Acceptance by the upper class” isn’t a need. These are strategies - strategies Gatsby hoped would meet his fundamental needs for acknowledgment, belonging, self-acceptance, and worth.

But Gatsby never distinguished between the strategy and the need. He didn’t even stop to identify what his needs actually were, let alone whether or not the strategy he was taking was going to be effective.

Think about what happens when you do that. If his actual need is acknowledgment and belonging, but he thinks the need is “Daisy” or “upper class acceptance,” then he’s locked himself into one specific strategy for meeting needs that could be met many different, and likely better ways.

The need for acknowledgment? Could be met by people who genuinely see him - which Nick did, which many others would have if Gatsby had been authentic with them.

The need for belonging? Could be met by finding his actual people - other strivers, other dreamers, people who understood transformation and ambition.

The need for self-acceptance? Could only be met by internal work - by integrating James Gatz and Jay Gatsby into one real person instead of trying to kill one to make the other legitimate.

The need for worth and dignity? These are inherent. They don’t require anyone else’s validation. But recognizing that would have meant doing the hardest work of all.

But because Gatsby thought “Daisy” was the need itself, he spent five years pursuing a strategy that could never meet his actual needs. Even if she had left Tom for him, even if old money society had accepted him... his fundamental needs still wouldn’t be met. Because you can’t meet internal needs through external strategies alone.

The Pattern We All Recognize

What makes this so powerful is that we all do versions of this. Maybe not as dramatically, maybe not with such devastating consequences, but we do it.

We fixate on specific solutions without asking what need we’re trying to meet. “If I just had that promotion...” “If this person would just love me back...” “If I could just lose the weight...” “If I could just buy that house...”

We build elaborate strategies around these specific goals, never questioning whether achieving them would actually meet our underlying need. We confuse the strategy with the need itself.

I see it everywhere. The person who thinks they need a specific romantic partner when what they really need is authentic human connection. The entrepreneur who thinks they need a billion-dollar company when what they really need is to feel self-worth. The perfectionist who thinks they need flawless performance when what they really need is safety from a toxic work environment.

Like Gatsby, we aim our entire magnificent effort at the wrong target because we never investigate our actual need.

The Questions Gatsby Never Asked

What devastates me about Gatsby is imagining the questions that could have saved him. Simple questions. Obvious questions once you know to ask them.

“Why do I want Daisy specifically? What do I think will happen if I get her? What do I believe she’ll give me that I don’t have now?”

Or even more directly: “Is this about Daisy the person, or is it about what Daisy represents?”

And the follow-up that might have changed everything: “If it’s about what she represents, is there another way to meet that need? A way that doesn’t require the impossible — repeating the past, becoming old money, erasing who I was?”

These aren’t complicated questions. But when you’re deep in the obsession, when you’ve built your entire identity around a single goal, they’re almost impossible to ask. The fixation itself prevents the investigation.

What Nick Saw That Gatsby Couldn’t

Nick Carraway, our narrator, sees something Gatsby can’t. He sees the futility. He sees that the green light — that symbol of Gatsby’s yearning — is just a light. He sees that Daisy is just a person, flawed and shallow and ultimately not worth dying for.

But here’s what I’m realizing... Nick sees this because he’s not the one with the unmet need. It’s always easier to see someone else’s misidentification than your own. When you’re not desperate for belonging, it’s obvious that marrying into old money won’t make you belong. When you’re not seeking validation of worth, it’s clear that another person’s choice can’t give you that.

This is why the question “What need are they trying to meet?” is so powerful when applied to others — and so difficult when applied to ourselves. Our own unmet needs create blind spots exactly where we most need clarity.

Learning from Gatsby’s Misidentification

So what do we do with this? How do we avoid our own Gatsby-style tragedy?

First, we have to be willing to investigate our fixations. When we find ourselves obsessed with a specific outcome, a specific person, a specific achievement, we need to pause and ask: “Is this the need itself, or is this a strategy I’m hoping will meet a deeper need?”

Second, we have to distinguish between people and what they represent. Gatsby couldn’t see Daisy as separate from what she symbolized. She was wealth, acceptance, proof of worth all wrapped in one person. But people can’t be symbols. They’re just people.

Third, we have to be willing to be wrong about what we need, and willing to dig deeper. This might be the hardest part. Gatsby built his entire identity around needing Daisy. To question that would have meant questioning everything. But that’s exactly what might have saved him.

When you find yourself obsessed with a specific outcome, a specific person, a specific achievement, don’t just ask “What need am I trying to meet?” once. Ask it a second time:

• What need am I trying to meet?

• And what need am I trying to meet with that?

You think “I need the promotion” when the actual need is acknowledgment or competence. You think “I need this relationship” when the actual need is connection or self-acceptance. You think “I need social media success” when the actual need is belonging or to be seen.

Here’s what changes when you identify the actual fundamental need: you realize there are multiple strategies for meeting it. You’re not locked into one specific outcome that may be impossible or insufficient.

Need acknowledgment? That can come from many sources, not just one person or institution.

Need connection? You can find your actual people instead of trying to force your way into places you don’t fit.

Need self-acceptance? That’s internal work, not something anyone else can give you.

Need competence? Build genuine capability rather than chasing symbols of capability.

The Question That Changes Everything

Misidentifying our needs might be more dangerous than not identifying them at all. At least when we know we don’t know what we need, we stay open to discovery. But when we’ve misidentified the need — when we’ve locked onto the wrong answer — we can waste our entire lives chasing something that can’t actually give us what we’re seeking.

Because unlike Gatsby, we still have time to ask. We still have time to investigate. We still have time to aim our magnificent efforts at the right target.

The green light is still blinking across the bay. But maybe, just maybe, we can realize it’s just a light. And what we really need isn’t on the other side of the water at all.

It’s been here all along, waiting for us to ask the right question.

I’m building something that matters: a framework for understanding why good people do things that conflict with their values. If you find value in this work, I’d be honored to have you subscribe.

Each week, I share insights from systematic research into how values and needs shape human behavior - from tragic heroes to everyday decisions. Your subscription helps me know this resonates and keeps the research going.

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Next: “The Psychology of Breaking Bad: How Walter White’s Ego Built an Empire” - exploring how misidentified needs can corrupt our values over time, and how to recognize when you’re becoming someone you never intended to be.

What fixation in your life might be a misidentified need? What are you pursuing with Gatsby-like intensity that might not be what you actually need at all? I’d love to hear about your own discoveries in the comments.

All articles in the One Question Series:

1 - The One Question That Explains Every Tragic Hero

2 - Why Jean Valjean’s Bread Theft Explains Human Behavior

3 - Why Anna Karenina Had to Die (And How She Could Have Lived)

4 - The Green Light Wasn’t the Problem: Gatsby’s Fatal Misidentification

5 - The Psychology of Breaking Bad: How Walter White’s Ego Built an Empire

Anna Karenina didn’t die because she made the wrong choice. She died because she never knew she had one.

It’s tempting to think of Anna’s story as a tragedy of bad options. She could have stayed with her cold, bureaucratic husband Karenin and lived a respectable, miserable life. Or she could run away with her passionate lover Vronsky and face social exile. She chose Vronsky, lost everything, and threw herself under a train.

There’s more to it though, if you study this story through the lens of my values-needs theory: Anna wasn’t actually choosing between two options. She was trapped between a fundamental human need and an inherited value she’d never consciously examined—and she didn’t even know that values could be examined, let alone changed.

The real tragedy of Anna Karenina isn’t that she chose love over duty. It’s that she never realized that while her need for love was real, both the romantic ideals around ‘love’ and the social expectations around ‘duty’ were packages of beliefs someone else had handed her—beliefs she could have unwrapped to see what was actually inside.

The Hidden Conflict Anna Couldn’t See

Think about Anna’s situation. She’s married to a man twenty years older, in an arrangement made by her family when she was barely more than a child. For years, she dutifully plays her assigned role: devoted wife, loving mother, perfect society hostess.

Then she meets Vronsky at a train station, and everything changes. For the first time in her life, she experiences what authentic love and connection feel like.

But here’s what Anna didn’t realize: she wasn’t facing a choice between two options. She was caught in a conflict between a fundamental human need and an inherited value she’d never consciously examined.

Her Need: Love, authentic connection, emotional intimacy - not just romantic love, but the deep human need to be seen, understood, and valued for who she actually was rather than the role she performed.

Her Inherited Value: Duty above all else - the belief that “good wives endure whatever is necessary for family stability,” that “honorable women sacrifice personal happiness for social order,” that “decent mothers never put their own needs before their children’s legitimacy.”

The crucial thing is this: Anna wasn’t aware she was operating from this inherited duty value. She thought duty was just... reality. Like gravity. She had no idea it was actually a choice someone else had made for her.

So in her mind, there were only two possibilities:

Option 1: Honor her duty (which felt like natural law). Stay with Karenin. Accept that her need for love would never be met.

Option 2: Abandon her duty (which felt like becoming a monster). Leave with Vronsky. Meet her need for love but destroy her son and herself in the process.

Stay and be miserable, or leave and destroy everything. Those were the only choices she could see because she couldn’t see that “duty above all else” was actually a value she could examine, modify, or replace.

The Unconscious Values Trap

Here’s what Anna never questioned: Where did those values come from in the first place?

The value that said “good wives endure loveless marriages” - who decided that? The belief that “passionate love is worth any sacrifice” - where did she learn that? The assumption that “mothers who leave are monsters” - whose voice was that in her head?

Anna operated from what I’m calling unconscious inherited values. These are beliefs about what’s right, important, or necessary that we absorb from family, society, and culture - but we never consciously choose them. They just feel like “how things are.”

Here’s the crucial insight: When values are unconscious, they feel as fixed and unchangeable as fundamental human needs.

Anna felt trapped because, in her mind, she HAD to be either the dutiful wife or the passionate lover. These weren’t choices - they were forces of nature. Like gravity or the need for air.

While love and connection is actually a human need that can’t be changed, she inherited romantic beliefs about how love should work—that ‘true love conquers all,’ that passion justifies any sacrifice—from Romantic literature that glorified feeling over everything else. She also inherited the value that ‘good wives sacrifice their happiness for their families’ from a society that needed women to stay in marriages regardless of fulfillment. Neither her values around duty nor her beliefs about how to pursue love were consciously chosen. They were cultural programming she’d never examined.

And because she was unconscious of them, she couldn’t change them, modify them, or find creative alternatives.

What Anna Never Learned to Ask

What if, in that moment of crisis, someone had asked Anna the question that changes everything: “What need are you trying to meet?”

Not “What should you do?” or “What’s the right choice?” but “What do you actually need?”

If Anna had been helped to dig beneath the surface to her actual needs, she might have identified:

• A need for authentic love and emotional intimacy

• A need to be seen and valued for who she really was, not just her role

• A need for agency and choice in her own life

• A need to protect her relationship with her son

Then the crucial follow-up: “What values are you operating from? Not what you were taught to value, but what YOU actually believe is important?”

This is where Anna’s unconsciousness becomes clear. She couldn’t have answered this question because she didn’t know she was operating from inherited values. The “duty above all else” belief felt like reality, not a choice.

But imagine if someone had helped her recognize: “Anna, that voice saying you MUST sacrifice your happiness for duty - where did that come from? Is that actually YOUR value, or is it something your family and society programmed into you?”

If she’d been able to see that “duty above all else” was an inherited belief rather than natural law, she could have asked: “What would I choose to value if I got to pick?”

Maybe:

• She valued her child’s wellbeing, but with the understanding that sacrificing herself needlessly would destroy that wellbeing

• She valued authenticity, but also kindness

• She valued her own happiness, but in a way that didn’t destroy others

• She valued commitment, but to relationships that were mutual and life-giving

And then: “Given what I actually need and what I actually choose to value - rather than what I inherited - what creative options exist?”

This is where the real tragedy becomes clear. Anna never got to this question because she had no idea she was following an inherited script.

The Path Anna Never Found

What might have happened if Anna had learned to separate her actual needs from her inherited values and beliefs about how to meet those needs?

Once she could see that “duty above all else” was programming rather than reality, she could have brainstormed creative solutions that honored both her need for love AND a consciously chosen value of protecting her son.

But remember—Anna could only see two options because she was trapped in unconscious values. If she’d become conscious of those values, suddenly a whole range of possibilities would have opened up:

Option 3: She could have had an honest conversation with Karenin about the deadness of their marriage, seeking a mutual separation that preserved dignity and her relationship with her son.

Option 4: She could have recognized that her attraction to Vronsky was partially about rebelling against unconscious duty values, and focused instead on creating authentic connection in other relationships - friendships, motherhood, maybe even finding ways to bring more genuine intimacy to her marriage.

Option 5: She could have chosen to honor her commitment to Karenin while also choosing a different value around duty - perhaps “I value commitment that includes honest communication about needs” instead of “I value duty that requires suffering in silence.”

Option 6: She could have delayed any major decisions while she explored what authentic relationship looked like, giving herself time to separate rebellion against inherited values from genuine love.

The point isn’t that any of these would have been easy or perfect. The point is that she never even knew they existed because she couldn’t see the difference between her needs (which were real) and her inherited values (which were choices someone else had made for her).

Instead, she stayed trapped in unconscious operation - feeling controlled by beliefs she didn’t know she could examine - until desperation drove her to the train tracks.

Your Own Inherited Values

Before we feel too superior to Anna, let’s be honest: How many of us operate from unconscious inherited values, or from inherited ideas around needs?

That voice in your head saying you “should” stay in the job that’s killing you - where did that come from? The belief that “good parents sacrifice everything for their children” - who taught you that? The assumption that you “can’t” change careers at 40, or move across the country, or end a relationship that stopped working - whose rule is that?

Most of us carry inherited values from:

• Our family of origin (”This is how our family handles money/relationships/conflict”)

• Our culture (”This is what success looks like”)

• Our generation (”This is how people our age are supposed to behave”)

• Our gender, race, class (”This is what people like us do”)

And here’s the thing: inherited values feel absolutely real and unchangeable. Just like Anna’s values felt to her.

The colleague who stays in a toxic job because ‘good employees don’t quit’ - is this their conscious choice or unconscious programming? The parent drowning in activities because ‘involved parents do everything for their kids’ - examined value or inherited belief? The person who won’t pursue dreams because ‘responsible adults don’t take risks’ - deliberate decision or unquestioned inheritance?

Most of the time, we haven’t actually examined these beliefs. We’re operating from unconscious inheritance. But the only way to know is to ask ourselves: Did I choose this, or did I inherit it?

We feel trapped by what we think we “have to” do, never realizing that most of those “have to’s” are actually inherited beliefs we could examine and potentially change.

The Question That Could Save Lives

Here’s what is tragic about Anna’s story: one conversation could have changed everything.

If someone had helped her recognize that her values were choices rather than laws of nature... if someone had helped her separate her actual needs from society’s expectations... if someone had shown her that the choice between “dutiful wife” and “passionate lover” was a false binary created by unconscious inheritance...

She might have lived.

Not just survived - actually lived. As someone making conscious choices about her own values rather than someone acting out unconscious programming.

This is Element 4 of the values-needs framework I’m developing: Most people operate from unconscious inherited values that feel as fixed as fundamental needs. We think we “have to” live according to beliefs we never chose. We feel trapped by “shoulds” that aren’t actually ours.

But here’s the hopeful part: the moment you become conscious of a value, it transforms from something fixed into something you can choose.

Anna’s tragedy was that she never experienced this transformation. Her values stayed unconscious - and therefore felt unchangeable - until the day she died.

Breaking Free From Your Own Scripts

So here’s your assignment for this week: Notice your “shoulds.”

When you hear yourself thinking “I should...” or “I have to...” or “People like me don’t...” - pause. Ask yourself:

“Did I choose this value, or did I inherit it?” “If I got to pick what matters to me, what would I actually choose?” “What need am I trying to meet with this ‘should,’ and are there other ways to meet it that honor both my needs and what I actually value?”

You might be surprised by what you discover. That belief that you “should” work 60-hour weeks might be inherited from a parent who equated worth with productivity. That assumption that you “can’t” ask for what you need in relationships might come from growing up in a family where direct communication felt dangerous.

The goal isn’t to throw out every inherited value - some of them might be genuinely yours when you examine them. The goal is to move from unconscious inheritance to conscious choice.

To transform your values from things that control you into things you decide.

The Life Anna Could Have Had

I imagine Anna, in this alternative story, having that crucial conversation. Learning to ask “What need am I trying to meet?” Learning to separate her needs from society’s expectations. Discovering that she could examine and modify the values that felt so fixed.

Maybe she would have chosen to leave Karenin anyway - but consciously, with a plan that protected her son and allowed her to maintain some connection to him. Maybe she would have chosen to work on her marriage, but from a place of agency rather than duty. Maybe she would have chosen something entirely different - a life focused on work, or art, or helping other women trapped in similar situations.

We’ll never know. But I know this: she would have lived as herself rather than as someone acting out inherited scripts.

And ultimately, that’s what values-needs alignment is about. Not finding the “perfect” life, but living consciously. Making your own choices about what matters to you, rather than following programming you inherited from others.

Anna Karenina died because she never learned she could choose.

You can choose.

Next: “The Green Light Wasn’t the Problem: Gatsby’s Fatal Misidentification” - exploring what happens when we misidentify which need we’re actually trying to meet.

Have you ever recognized an inherited “should” in your own life? What happened when you questioned whether you actually chose that value? I’d love to hear about your own experiences with discovering the difference between inherited and chosen values.

All articles in the One Question Series:

1 - The One Question That Explains Every Tragic Hero

2 - Why Jean Valjean’s Bread Theft Explains Human Behavior

3 - Why Anna Karenina Had to Die (And How She Could Have Lived)

4 - The Green Light Wasn’t the Problem: Gatsby’s Fatal Misidentification

5 - The Psychology of Breaking Bad: How Walter White’s Ego Built an Empire

A man steals a loaf of bread and ends up serving nineteen years in prison?

If you know anything about Les Misérables, you know this seems insane. A loaf of bread! Nineteen years! The injustice of it makes your blood boil, right? Victor Hugo certainly wanted it to. That said... Les Mis isn’t really a story about the French justice system.

It’s about what happens when human needs collide with human values. And once you understand what happened to Jean Valjean, you’ll start seeing this pattern everywhere - in every “stupid” decision, every “inexplicable” choice, every “how could they do that?” moment you’ve ever witnessed.

The Anatomy of a Desperate Choice

Let’s look at what actually happened. Jean Valjean didn’t just wake up one day and decide to become a thief. His sister was widowed with seven children. The eldest was eight. The youngest was one. Winter came, and there was no work for a tree pruner. The children were literally starving.

So he broke a bakery window and stole bread.

Now, here’s the question that changes everything: What need was he trying to meet?

The obvious answer is food - a fundamental survival need. But it goes deeper than that. He wasn’t stealing for himself. He was trying to meet his need for family protection, his need to provide care, his need to prevent the suffering of children he loved. These are some of the most fundamental human needs we have.

But Valjean also had values. He knew stealing was wrong. He’d been raised to believe in honesty, in working for what you have, in respecting others’ property. These weren’t just abstract concepts to him - they were part of who he was.

So what we’re really looking at is this: His need to protect starving children collided with his value of not stealing.

And in that moment of desperation, the need won.

The Values-Shifting Dynamic Nobody Talks About

Here’s where Hugo’s genius really shines. That one values-needs conflict didn’t just disappear after Valjean stole the bread. It created what happens when values begin to shift - where one conflict creates another, which creates another, which creates another...

Think about what happened next:

First conflict: Need to feed children vs. value of not stealing → He steals, gets caught

Second conflict: Need for freedom vs. value of accepting consequences
→ He tries to escape (four times!)

Third conflict: Need for dignity/humanity vs. value of integrity → Prison hardens him, he becomes bitter

Fourth conflict: Need for survival after release vs. value of honesty → He has to lie about his past to get work

Fifth conflict: Need for redemption vs. value of truth → He creates false identities to do good

Each “solution” to a values-needs conflict created new conflicts. It’s like watching dominoes fall, except each domino that falls is bigger than the last one.

This is what I find so profound about Hugo’s storytelling. He’s not just showing us that poverty leads to crime (though it can). He’s showing us how one moment of desperate need can create a spiral that transforms a decent person into someone unrecognizable.

The Hardening Process

Listen to how Hugo describes what nineteen years in prison did to Valjean:

“He had been in the galleys nineteen years. Five for burglary, fourteen for having attempted to escape four times. He was a dangerous man.”

Here’s the crucial insight - he didn’t become “dangerous” because he was inherently bad. Each escape attempt deepened the values-shifting dynamic. His need to support his family remained unmet - they were still suffering while he rotted in prison. And with each escape attempt, the stakes grew. What was one more crime once he’d already stolen? What was escaping once, twice, three times when he’d already broken the law? Each action made the next violation easier, the abandonment of his original values more complete.

This is something most people don’t realize about values: When you repeatedly act against your values to meet your needs, eventually your values change to match your actions.

Why? Because we have another fundamental need - the need for internal consistency, for self-acceptance. We can’t psychologically survive thinking we’re bad people all the time. So if we keep doing something we initially thought was wrong, eventually we convince ourselves it’s not so wrong after all. Maybe even that it’s right.

By the time Valjean leaves prison, his values have completely transformed. He no longer believes in the goodness of people or the fairness of society. His new values align with survival at any cost. The values-shifting is complete.

The Myriel Miracle (Or: How Someone Reminded Him He Still Had Choice)

And then... Bishop Myriel happens.

When Valjean steals Myriel’s silver (because he’s trapped in the spiral of values-shifting), the Bishop does something revolutionary. Instead of perpetuating the cascade by having him arrested, Myriel does the opposite. He tells the police the silver was a gift. Then he adds the candlesticks, saying Valjean “forgot” them.

But here’s what Myriel is really doing - something far more profound than charity. He’s showing Valjean something he’d forgotten after nineteen years of being labeled “thief” and “dangerous man”: You are not your actions. You still have choice.

Think about what this moment actually teaches:

For nineteen years, society had collapsed Valjean’s entire identity into his worst moments. He WAS a thief. He WAS dangerous. The cascade had convinced him that his actions defined him, that he was trapped in these patterns forever.

But Myriel refuses to see him that way. By calling the silver a gift, he’s saying: “What you did is not who you are. You took silver, but you are not ‘a thief.’ You are a person who can choose differently tomorrow than you chose today.”

This is why it worked when nothing else could have. Charity alone wouldn’t have stopped Valjean from stealing again. More resources might have delayed the next theft, but not prevented it. What stopped him was remembering he had agency - that he could choose to become something different.

The silver gave him resources to exercise that agency. But the real gift was remembering he HAD agency to exercise.

And here’s what’s crucial: Myriel didn’t just remind him he had choice - he showed him HOW to use it differently. When Myriel said “use this silver to become an honest man,” he was teaching Valjean something revolutionary: you can meet your needs (survival, dignity, purpose) through means that align with your values rather than violate them. The silver could be used to start a business, not stolen to survive. Work could provide dignity, not crime. Service to others could give purpose, not revenge against society.

Without this reminder, without someone to show him both that he had choice AND how to use it differently, Valjean would have remained trapped. He couldn’t see the way out from inside the spiral. Sometimes we need someone else - someone who can see us as separate from our patterns - to remind us we’re not condemned to repeat them.

The rest of the novel is essentially Valjean practicing this lesson. As Mayor Madeleine, he creates an entire factory system that employs the poor - preventing others from facing his desperate choice between starving children and theft. With Cosette, he becomes her legal guardian rather than simply taking her. Even with Javert, he saves his life rather than eliminating a threat. Each choice demonstrates him applying what Myriel taught: there’s always a way to meet your needs that doesn’t require sacrificing your values - you just have to look for it, and sometimes teach others to look for it too.

Why This Pattern Is Everywhere

Think about someone in your life whose behavior drives you crazy. Maybe it’s:

• The coworker who takes credit for everything

• The friend who always cancels plans last minute

• The family member who lies about small things

• The neighbor who’s constantly complaining

Now ask: “What need are they trying to meet?”

The credit-stealing coworker? Maybe they have an unmet need for recognition or job security. The canceling friend? Perhaps a need for rest or alone time that conflicts with their value of being a good friend. The lying family member? Could be a need for acceptance conflicting with their value of honesty.

Here’s what’s really powerful about this: Once you see the need driving the behavior, everything changes. You stop seeing “bad people” and start seeing people caught in values-needs conflicts they don’t know how to resolve.

The Questions That Could Have Changed Everything

Valjean’s story was preventable. What if, before stealing that bread, someone had asked him:

“What do you really need right now?” “What makes this feel like your only option?” “If we could meet that need another way, what would that look like?” “What’s important to you that makes this decision so hard?”

What if someone had helped him see that his need (feeding the children) and his value (not stealing) weren’t necessarily in conflict? What if they’d helped him find other strategies?

Maybe:

• Asking the church for help

• Organizing with other unemployed workers

• Appealing directly to the baker’s compassion

• Finding alternative food sources

• Seeking aid from local charities

Were all these available? Maybe not. But the point is that when we’re desperate, when need is screaming at us, we literally cannot see options. Our vision narrows to the one solution in front of us, even if it violates everything we believe in.

Breaking Your Own Spirals

Have you ever found yourself caught in values-shifting? Where one compromise led to another, and another, until you looked back and couldn’t recognize the person making those choices?

Maybe it started small:

• A little exaggeration on a resume because you needed the job

• Which led to having to maintain that lie at work

• Which led to taking credit for things you didn’t quite do

• Which led to imposter syndrome and constant anxiety

• Which led to working insane hours to compensate

• Which led to neglecting relationships

• Which led to... where are you now?

The values-shifting dynamic is real. But here’s the hope: just like Myriel showed Valjean, these spirals can be broken. Sometimes all it takes is one person - maybe even yourself - recognizing that you’re not your patterns. That you still have choice. Asking: “Wait. What need are you actually trying to meet here? And is there another way?”

The Real Tragedy (And the Real Hope)

The tragedy of Jean Valjean isn’t just that he stole bread and went to prison. It’s that no one, at any point in those early stages, helped him see that his needs and values didn’t have to be enemies. No one helped him find another way.

The hope is that once someone did - once Myriel reminded him he still had choice - Valjean became someone who spent the rest of his life doing the same for others. Fantine, Cosette, even Javert at the end... Valjean shows them they’re not trapped in their patterns, that they can choose differently.

This is what Hugo understood: People aren’t good or bad. Here’s what I’d add: They’re human beings trying to meet fundamental needs while honoring their values. When those two things conflict and we don’t have the tools or support to resolve them, we make desperate choices. Those choices compound through values-shifting. Our values transform to match our actions. We become people we never meant to be.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Your Turn to Break the Pattern

Next time you see someone making a choice that seems completely irrational, pause. Ask yourself (or if appropriate, ask them): “What need are they trying to meet?”

Next time YOU’RE about to make a choice that goes against your values, pause. Ask yourself: “What need am I trying to meet? Is there another way?”

Because here’s what I’m learning from stories like Valjean’s: Most “bad” decisions aren’t really bad decisions. They’re desperate attempts to meet legitimate needs when we can’t see any other way. They’re the beginning of values-shifting spirals we never meant to start.

The question “What need are they trying to meet?” isn’t just about understanding literature. It’s about understanding why humans do what they do. It’s about preventing the values-shifting dynamic before it takes hold. It’s about recognizing that the distance between Jean Valjean the thief and Jean Valjean the saint is just someone reminding us that we are not our worst moments - that we still have the power to choose.

And maybe, just maybe, we can be that someone - for others, and for ourselves.

Next: “Why Anna Karenina Had to Die (And How She Could Have Lived)” - exploring what happens when the need for authentic love collides with the values of duty and motherhood.

Have you ever found yourself caught in values-shifting where one compromise led to another? What helped you break free - or what might help you now? I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can better recognize and interrupt these patterns before they take hold.

All articles in the One Question Series:

1 - The One Question That Explains Every Tragic Hero

2 - Why Jean Valjean’s Bread Theft Explains Human Behavior

3 - Why Anna Karenina Had to Die (And How She Could Have Lived)

4 - The Green Light Wasn’t the Problem: Gatsby’s Fatal Misidentification

5 - The Psychology of Breaking Bad: How Walter White’s Ego Built an Empire

Every tragic hero we've ever cared about - from Hamlet to Romeo to Jean Valjean stealing bread for his sister's children - they're all wrestling with the exact same thing. It's not fate. It's not character flaws. It's something much more specific and, honestly, much more hopeful than that.

They're all caught between what they need and what they believe is right.

The Question That Changes Everything

What if I told you there's one question that explains virtually every piece of great literature across cultures and centuries? One question that reveals why audiences connect so deeply with these stories, even when the characters make choices that seem completely irrational?

"What need are they trying to meet?"

I know... it sounds almost too simple. But stick with me for a minute.

Let me define these terms clearly:

• Needs are fundamental requirements for human functioning - things we literally cannot survive without (or cannot thrive without). They're non-negotiable, like food, safety, connection, and purpose.

• Values are our chosen beliefs about what's right, important, or worth pursuing - what we attempt to gain and/or keep. These include things like honor, loyalty, justice, or tradition.

There is also a crucial distinction: Needs are fixed - you can't choose not to need food or belonging. But values are chosen - whether consciously or unconsciously, we select what we believe matters most.

When these two things conflict - when your fundamental needs collide with your chosen values about what's right, what matters, or what defines you - that's where the story gets interesting.

Let's Start with Hamlet

Everyone knows Hamlet's problem, right? His father's been murdered, his uncle married his mother, and he's supposed to get revenge. Classic stuff. Here's what we can see when we look at it through this lens...

Hamlet isn't really struggling with whether to avenge his father. He's caught between a fundamental human need and a deeply held value that are pulling him in opposite directions.

The need: Safety and survival. Killing the king is basically a death sentence. Even if he succeeds, what happens next? Civil war? His own execution?

The value: Honor and duty. In his world, a man must avenge his father. This isn't negotiable - it's what defines him as worthy of respect.

So he's trapped between what he needs (to stay alive) and what he believes is right (honoring his father through revenge). He literally cannot see a way to meet his need for safety while maintaining his values around honor and duty.

The result? That famous indecision that leads to one of the most recognizable soliloquies in literature. He's not weak or cowardly - he's stuck in an impossible bind between what he needs to survive and what he believes he must do.

And Then There's Romeo

Romeo and Juliet is even more obvious once you see this pattern. Romeo's caught between his need for love and belonging (he's genuinely in love with Juliet) and his family loyalty values (Montagues don't associate with Capulets, period).

Juliet's facing the exact same conflict from the other side. Her need for authentic love and connection is crashing into her values around family duty and obedience.

What makes this tragedy particularly heartbreaking is that both of them try to find creative solutions. The secret marriage, the escape plans... they're actually pretty resourceful when you think about it. But they're operating in a system where their families' values make their fundamental human need for love literally impossible to meet safely.

The Pattern Across Cultures

This is what's really blowing my mind... this isn't just a Western literature thing. I started looking at stories across different cultures and time periods, and the pattern is everywhere.

Take the Bhagavad Gita - Arjuna's crisis on the battlefield is exactly this. His need for peace and safety (he doesn't want to kill his relatives) versus his value of duty and dharma (as a warrior, he must fight).

Or consider Scheherazade in One Thousand and One Nights. Her need for survival (don't get executed) conflicting with her values around truth and storytelling integrity.

Even modern stories follow this pattern. Think about any protagonist you've really cared about... they're usually caught between competing needs, or between a need and a deeply held value.

Why This Matters (And Why It's Actually Hopeful)

What I find fascinating about this lens is that... it completely reframes these stories from "inevitable tragedies" to "problems that might have been solvable."

What if Hamlet had been able to step back and ask: "Okay, I need safety AND I value justice. What are all the possible ways I could meet both of these?" Maybe he could have gathered evidence and exposed Claudius publicly. Maybe he could have allied with Fortinbras earlier. Maybe he could have found a way to honor his father without sacrificing himself.

What if Romeo and Juliet had been able to see their situation clearly through this lens? They both needed love and connection. Their values of family loyalty created the conflict.

With this awareness, what options might have opened up? They could have worked together as a team - using their love as proof that peace between families was possible. They could have found allies in both households who were tired of the feud. Most tragically, they could have simply communicated better about their plans. If Juliet had been able to tell Romeo about the sleeping potion, or if Romeo had waited to verify her death...

The heartbreak is that these young lovers were actually quite resourceful - the secret marriage, the elaborate escape plan - but they couldn't see past the seeming impossibility of reconciling their need for love with their families' values. They had more options than they realized.

I'm not saying these would have been easy solutions. But I am saying that when people are trapped between their needs and their values, there are usually more options than they can see in the moment.

The Question That Unlocks Everything

Here's one reason why this question - "What need are they trying to meet?" - is so powerful. It contains some revolutionary assumptions:

• Human behavior is purposeful, not random or inexplicable

• Underneath every action, there's usually an unmet need driving it

• Current strategies might be ineffective, but the underlying need is legitimate

• Better strategies for meeting that need are possible and discoverable

• Understanding the true need is the key to finding workable solutions

• Values aren't explicitly mentioned in the question, but they emerge naturally - once you start asking "what need are you trying to meet?" and exploring solutions, questions like "what's more important to you?" arise, helping identify the values in conflict

But here's what makes this question truly powerful: it reveals that most 'character flaws' aren't flaws at all - they're values-needs conflicts. What Aristotle called hamartia - the tragic flaw that brings down the hero - may not really be a character defect. Hamlet isn't indecisive by nature; he's torn between survival needs and honor values. Romeo isn't recklessly impulsive; he's trying to meet his need for love while his values of family loyalty create an impossible bind. Hamartia may exist, but it may not be the cause of all the downfall we've pinned on it.

Try it yourself: Think of someone whose behavior drives you crazy. Now ask, 'What need are they (likely) trying to meet?' Suddenly, their 'annoying' behavior starts making sense, doesn't it? That coworker who takes credit for everything? They probably need recognition. The friend who always cancels plans? Maybe they need rest or space but value your friendship too much to say no upfront. You may not be able to know their motivations with certainty, but asking the question gives you clues as to their possible reasons, which gives you an opportunity to see their situation with more insight.

When you start looking at literature this way, these characters stop being "fatally flawed" and start being recognizably human. They're doing what all of us do when we're caught between what we need and what we think is right... they're trying to find a way through.

What I'm Exploring in This Series

Over the next several articles, I want to dive deeper into this pattern. We'll look at specific stories and characters through this lens, exploring how understanding the needs-values dynamic might have changed their outcomes.

We'll examine:

• How different cultures express this same fundamental conflict

• Why audiences connect so deeply with these "impossible" situations

• What these stories teach us about navigating our own lives when our needs and values seem to be pulling us in different directions

• How asking "What need are they trying to meet?" can transform our understanding of both literature and human behavior

Here's what's worth exploring... the greatest stories across time aren't really about fate or tragedy. They're about the very human struggle to meet our fundamental needs while staying true to what we believe is right.

And once you start seeing that pattern... well, it changes how you read everything. It also changes how you understand the people around you, including yourself.

The Real Question

I'm curious ... have you noticed this pattern in stories you love? When you think about characters who've really stuck with you, are they caught between competing needs or between needs and values?

And more personally... have you ever found yourself in a situation where what you needed seemed to conflict with what you believed was right or what you valued? How did you navigate that?

That's really what this series, and my larger theory, is about. These aren't just stories - they're roadmaps for one of the most universal human challenges: how to meet our needs while honoring our values.

The tragic heroes might not have found the answer... but maybe we can.

Next time you're reading a book or watching a movie and a character does something that seems completely irrational, pause. Ask the question. What need are they trying to meet? What values are in conflict? I think you'll be surprised how often this simple lens reveals the real story beneath the story.

Next up: "Why Jean Valjean's Bread Theft Explains Human Behavior" - exploring how unmet needs drive seemingly irrational choices, and what Les Misérables teaches us about compassion and creative problem-solving.

What story would you like to see analyzed through this lens? Share your thoughts - I'd love to explore how this framework applies to the characters and conflicts that have resonated most deeply with you.

All articles in the One Question Series:

1 - The One Question That Explains Every Tragic Hero

2 - Why Jean Valjean’s Bread Theft Explains Human Behavior

3 - Why Anna Karenina Had to Die (And How She Could Have Lived)

4 - The Green Light Wasn’t the Problem: Gatsby’s Fatal Misidentification

5 - The Psychology of Breaking Bad: How Walter White’s Ego Built an Empire

We all have this intuitive sense of heroism – we know it when we see it – but try to pin down exactly what makes someone heroic and things get fuzzy fast. Is it courage? Sacrifice? Achievement? All of the above? The DNA of Heroes helped with some of the definitions, for sure. But it's more than that... how do you ensure you capture the full spectrum of human heroism without leaving anyone out?

I realized as I started thinking through it – I needed a framework that could capture everyone. The nurse who works double shifts during a pandemic AND the revolutionary who overthrows tyranny. The scientist who spends decades on a single problem AND the parent who sacrifices everything for their child. The warrior who charges into battle AND the artist who transforms how we see the world.

I couldn't afford to miss anyone. Every type of heroism matters, and if I'm going to understand what makes heroes tick, I need to make sure my categories are comprehensive enough to include them all.

The Classification Challenge

Let me back up a bit. When you're trying to analyze 1000+ heroes across history, culture, and domains of achievement, "I know it when I see it" doesn't cut it. You need systematic categories. Otherwise, how do you compare Nelson Mandela to Marie Curie? Or your local firefighter to Odysseus? They're all heroic, but in fundamentally different ways.

The traditional approaches weren't quite right for what I needed. Campbell's monomyth is brilliant for understanding story structure, but it's about the hero's journey, not the hero themselves. Jung's archetypes are psychologically rich but they're more about universal patterns in the collective unconscious than practical classification for research. And Zimbardo's work on everyday heroism is interesting, but I needed something that could span from the everyday to the extraordinary.

What I needed was a framework comprehensive enough that no hero would slip through the cracks. Whether they're fighting on battlefields or in boardrooms, whether they're creating art or curing diseases, whether they lived 3000 years ago or are making headlines today – I needed categories that could capture them all.

After a great deal of deliberation, I landed on 12 distinct types of heroism. Every hero I could think of, from every culture and time period, fits into at least one of these categories. Most importantly, using these 12 types alongside a systematic approach to achievement categories (more on that soon), I can ensure I'm not just studying the heroes everyone already knows about, but discovering ones we might have overlooked.

The 12 Types Framework

So here they are, the 12 types of heroes I'll be using to ensure comprehensive coverage of human heroism:

1. Cultural Heroes – These are the ones who fundamentally alter or preserve cultural identity. Think Martin Luther King Jr. reshaping American society, or Sitting Bull preserving Lakota tradition against overwhelming force. They embody the values and aspirations of their people, often serving as catalysts for cultural transformation or guardians of cultural heritage. Their influence extends beyond their lifetime, shaping how entire societies understand themselves.

2. Epic Heroes – The legendary figures whose stories transcend their historical reality. Some, like Leonardo da Vinci, were absolutely real but achieved such extraordinary things they seem almost mythical. Others, like Achilles or King Arthur, exist somewhere between history and legend. Whether fully real, partially real, or mythological, these heroes embody the highest aspirations of entire civilizations. Their stories become more important than their histories.

3. Everyday Heroes – This is your neighbor who runs into a burning building. The teacher who spends their own money on supplies. The teenager who stands up to a bully. Wesley Autrey, who jumped in front of a subway train to save a stranger. They don't seek glory; they just do what needs doing when the moment demands it. They act from their values without calculating glory, seeing a need and responding because their values compel them to.

4. Fictional Heroes – Yes, I'm including fictional characters, and here's why: Atticus Finch has shaped more people's understanding of moral courage than most real lawyers. Harry Potter inspired a generation to stand up against tyranny. Fiction shapes reality, and these heroes matter. They provide models for behavior and inspire real-world action, sometimes more powerfully than historical figures because their stories are crafted to illuminate specific truths.

5. Heroes of Resistance – Those who stand against oppression, often at terrible personal cost. Harriet Tubman returning to lead slaves to freedom. Sophie Scholl distributing anti-Nazi leaflets. Tank Man in Tiananmen Square. They say "no" when saying "yes" would be so much easier and safer. They fight tyranny and injustice, often facing overwhelming odds, because they believe freedom and dignity are worth any price.

6. Historical Heroes – Figures who shaped the course of history through their actions. Napoleon. Cleopatra. George Washington. Not all of them were morally pure (spoiler: none of them were), but their impact on human events is undeniable. They appear at crucial moments and through their decisions and actions, alter the trajectory of nations or even civilizations.

7. Humanitarian Heroes – The ones who dedicate their lives to reducing human suffering. Mother Teresa. Albert Schweitzer. Florence Nightingale. They see pain in the world and instead of looking away, they move toward it. They devote themselves to healing, helping, and uplifting others, often sacrificing personal comfort and safety to serve those in greatest need.

8. Innovative Heroes – The breakthrough thinkers who expand what's possible. Einstein revolutionizing physics. Tesla imagining wireless electricity. Marie Curie pioneering radioactivity research. They don't just solve problems; they reveal entirely new ways of understanding reality. Their innovations reshape how humanity understands and interacts with the world.

9. Intellectual Heroes – The philosophers, theorists, and thinkers who transform how we understand ourselves and our world. Socrates questioning everything. Confucius establishing ethical frameworks. Charles Darwin revealing evolution. They wage their battles in the realm of ideas, and their victories echo for centuries. They challenge prevailing wisdom and expand the boundaries of human knowledge.

10. Moral Heroes – Those who embody and champion ethical principles even when it costs them everything. Thomas More refusing to compromise his conscience. Dietrich Bonhoeffer resisting the Nazis. Muhammad Ali sacrificing his boxing career rather than fight in Vietnam. They choose conscience over comfort, principle over profit. Their unwavering commitment to their values becomes a beacon for others.

11. Present-Day Heroes – The living heroes among us right now. Malala Yousafzai fighting for education. Everyday healthcare workers during the pandemic. The people making change happen today. We're watching their stories unfold in real-time, which gives us unique insight into how heroism actually develops. They show us that heroism isn't just historical – it's happening right now.

12. Tragic Heroes – The ones who achieve greatness but are destroyed by their own flaws or circumstances. Vincent van Gogh creating masterpieces while battling mental illness. Alan Turing breaking the Enigma code then persecuted for his sexuality. Their stories remind us that heroism and human frailty aren't mutually exclusive. They achieve extraordinary things despite, or sometimes because of, their struggles and ultimate fate.

While many heroes might touch on multiple categories, for this research, I'm going to classify each hero by their primary type – the one that best captures their main contribution to humanity. Nelson Mandela touched many categories, but he's primarily a Cultural Hero. Marie Curie was many things, but first and foremost an Innovative Hero. This approach will help ensure I'm studying heroes from every category equally, not just defaulting to the most famous ones who did a bit of everything.

Why This Matters for Systematic Research

These 12 types are just one dimension of the framework. Soon, I'll reveal how I'm using a systematic approach to achievement categories – think of it as the card catalog for human greatness – to ensure I'm not just studying heroes from the domains we traditionally celebrate.

By crossing these 12 hero types with systematic achievement categories, I can make sure I'm studying:

• Heroes from every field of human endeavor, not just politics and war

• Heroes from every culture, not just Western civilization

• Heroes from every time period, not just recent history

• Heroes of every type, not just the ones who fit our current cultural moment

This isn't random selection. It's deliberate, comprehensive coverage. Because if I'm going to understand heroism, I need to study ALL of it, not just the parts that are easy to find or comfortable to examine.

The framework also lets me ask questions that haven't been asked before. Are certain types of heroes more common in certain fields? Do different cultures emphasize different heroic types? How do the patterns of heroism change over time? What types of heroes does our current moment need most?

Your Own Hero Type

Here's something to try...

Look at those 12 types again. But this time, don't think about historical figures or famous names. Think about the people in your life. Think about yourself.

That teacher who stayed after school to help you understand algebra? Everyday Hero.

Your grandmother who kept her family's traditions alive in a new country? Cultural Hero.

That colleague who refused to sign off on a report they knew was false? Moral Hero.

The local business owner who employs people others won't hire? Humanitarian Hero.

We tend to think of heroes as distant figures in history books, but every one of these types exists in our communities right now. They might not make headlines, but they're living these patterns every day.

Heroism isn't about scale. The same impulse that drives someone to revolutionize science drives someone else to revolutionize their local food bank's distribution system. The same courage that leads someone to stand against a dictator leads someone else to stand up to a bully. The patterns repeat at every level.

What Comes Next

Over the coming months, I'll be applying this framework systematically. But I'm not randomly picking heroes to study. Next week, I'll share the systematic approach I'm using to select heroes across all domains of human achievement – a method that ensures I'm not just studying the heroes we already celebrate, but discovering ones we might have overlooked.

Think of it this way: if human achievement is a vast library, I want to make sure I'm checking out books from every section, not just the bestsellers at the front. The framework I'll share next ensures that happens.

After that, I'll start the actual analysis – 12 heroes from each achievement category, representing different hero types, cultures, and time periods. I'll be looking for patterns, surprises, contradictions. I'll be testing whether this classification system holds up under scrutiny or needs refinement.

But more than that, I'll be looking for what these patterns teach us about human potential. About what we're capable of when we're tested. About how ordinary people become extraordinary. About how heroism isn't something you are, but something you do – again and again, in ways both large and small.

Some of what I find will confirm what we already suspect. Some of it will surprise us. Some of it might even change how we think about heroism itself.

You get to watch it all unfold in real-time. The successes and failures, the breakthroughs and dead ends, the moments when the patterns reveal something profound and the moments when they just reveal that I need more coffee.

Because that's what this build-in-public journey is about. Not pretending to have all the answers, but discovering them together. Not presenting a polished theory, but developing one through systematic investigation and yes, occasional chaos.

So I have a question for you: Which type of hero do you think we need more of right now? Given the challenges we're facing as a society, which of these 12 types could make the biggest difference if we had more of them?

Share your thoughts in the comments. Tell me about heroes you know who fit these types. Challenge my categories if you think I'm missing something. Because this framework isn't meant to be the final word on heroism – it's meant to be comprehensive enough to study it properly.

After starting this research, it's become apparent to me how many heroes walk among us unrecognized. That's part of what this project is about – not just understanding heroism, but recognizing it. Not just studying heroes, but celebrating them.

Up Next: How I'm using a systematic approach to achievement categories to ensure no domain of human greatness gets overlooked.

And it started because... well, I'd watch strangers do these bewildering things. Someone in a parking lot losing their absolute shit over a parking space. A brilliant colleague sabotaging their own promotion. My kid melting down over something that seemed trivial. And I'd think... why?

Not in a judgy way, more like... there has to be a reason. People don't just do random stuff for no reason, right?

The Question that Clued Me In

Over the course of time, observing and trying to understand why people do the things they do — I realized that I was having some insights and theories about motivation that seemed reasonable. When I asked myself where those insights were coming from, I realized that somewhere along the way I had come up with this question to ask myself: "What need are they trying to meet?"

Like, okay, imagine someone breaks into a house to steal stuff. My brain with the question, now immediately goes to: which need? Financial (need food, need to pay rent)? Social-emotional (did it on a dare, need to belong)? Or maybe emotional (angry at the homeowner and can't express it any other way)?

People are just trying to get their needs met. They just... often suck at it. Especially when they aren’t aware of the need themselves. How are you supposed to solve a problem you aren't even aware of?

Once you understand that an unmet need is likely driving their actions, their behavior—even the destructive stuff—suddenly makes sense. Not acceptable, necessarily. But understandable. And once you understand the real problem, you can start finding better ways to address it.

Where This Gets Really Interesting (And Kind of Revolutionary?)

So I've been using this lens for years, right? Just intuitively. And recently I tried to explain it to someone and realized... holy shit, this isn't just about needs. There's this whole other layer. So the general premise is that there are two primary motivations for everything that humans do: values and needs. Sometimes the needs and/or values are known and conscious, many times though, it’s not.

So it comes down to the conflict between our needs and our values.

Values are what we believe is right or important. Needs are what we literally cannot live without (or live well without). And here's the kicker: Values are choices. Needs are not. But how we meet needs IS a choice.

Addiction as an Example

Okay, so... addiction. This is where it gets really clear. Very, very smart and capable people fall prey to addiction. WHY? They know the risks. They know it could destroy everything they value—family, health, career. So why would that happen?

Because the NEED overrides the value.

Someone might start using substances to meet a need—emotional regulation, connection, escape from trauma. That's already a need being met with a poor strategy, and very likely, not a conscious one. But then, once there's physical addiction? They've created a NEW need. A physiological one that didn't exist before.

Now they're trapped between their values (I want to be a good parent, I value my health) and their needs (I literally need this substance or I'll go through withdrawal). The battle between need and value becomes... excruciating.

And imagine how much harder that is when you don't even realize you have needs and values in conflict. You'd be almost blind trying to solve that problem.

Why Great Stories are About This (Wait, What?)

This is the part that really got me. Once I started seeing this pattern, I couldn't unsee it. Every great story—and I mean EVERY story that's survived centuries, as far as I can tell—is about values-needs conflict:

Hamlet? Need for safety vs value of honor. Romeo and Juliet? Need for love vs value of family loyalty. Les Misérables? Need for survival vs value of law/order.

These aren't just little "stories" either! These are the great pillars of literature. But no one has ever talked about this?! It's so odd to me that this isn't some sort of everyone-knows-about-it theory.

What would have happened to Hamlet if he could've consciously recognized: "I need safety but I value honor, and these are in conflict—what are my options?" What choices could he have thought other people had?

These ARE the things that cause our biggest problems. The issues that cause needs vs values conflicts are the biggest ones of all—and we have no defined way of resolving them, as far as I know.

The Simple Question That Contains Everything

Here's the great thing. That question—"What need are they trying to meet?"—it's like... it contains the whole framework without having to explain it.

Because when you ask it, you deliver a lot of side-car principles, without explicitly stating them:

• Behavior has a purpose (it's not random)

• There are needs driving behavior

• People can do things to meet needs

• Current strategies might not be working

• Better strategies might exist

You almost have the entire framework in one sentence. The values part isn't in there explicitly, but it comes up naturally... sometimes in just a few follow-up questions. Once you identify a need, or a possible list of needs, then you start brainstorming other methods to meet that need, and questions like “which is more important to you” immediately triggers a conversation about values.

Why I'm Finally Writing This Down

My background looks scattered, but there's actually a thread. When I was 15, I started a philosophy magazine called Atlantis. I approached scholars who would become major intellectuals to let me interview them—Dr. Edwin Locke (who became the most published organizational psychologist in history), Dr. John Ridpath (who has an google-worthy connection with Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek), and many others who'd go on to teach at Harvard, Yale, Stanford.

They said yes, I think, because they recognized the mission we shared—to explore ideas seriously, to get people engaged with philosophy. They were generous with their time, encouraging a young person who had more enthusiasm than experience. And those conversations? They started to shape how I think about everything.

Since then, I've been practicing philosophy the way that seemed natural—by studying humans in every context I could access. Fortune 500 consulting to see how large organizations actually function. Instructional design to understand how people really learn. Retail businesses to examine the connection between branding and human connection. 1:1 coaching to executives and individuals to hone in on strategic problem solving. Art and yoga. Even fiction—I wrote a novel at 25 (still unpublished) and my son just pointed out that the entire conflict is about values versus needs. I laughed when I realized I was seeing this pattern before I could even name it.

What looks like a scattered career path is actually thirty years of systematic observation. Gathering inductive data about how humans actually work, not how we think they work…. thirty years of being an undercover field philosopher.

Here’s what thirty years of asking "what need are they trying to meet?" has taught me: People have needs, and they have values – both can be conscious, or unconscious. Ultimately people want to be happy. They want to have good lives and be healthy. So what keeps them from that?

Usually? They're trying to meet real needs with broken or ineffective strategies. Or they're caught in conflicts they don't even know exist. Between what they need to survive and what they believe is right.

The Heroes Project (Because Of Course There's More)

I'd already started researching 1,000 heroes across history and culture for a different project—just trying to understand patterns of human achievement. Once I explicitly identified the values-needs alignment theory, I realized this research project could be so much more.

Heroes aren't people without values-needs conflicts. They may be people who found creative ways to honor both. They may have chosen their values consciously. They may have met their needs without destroying themselves or others.

The research that started as one thing will become validation for another. Every hero I study, I will be able to use as a test case to find I the moments when their needs and values clashed, and how they navigated it. Perhaps brilliantly. Perhaps tragically. But always... instructively. Neesd and values won’t have anything to do with the hero selection process, but once all the data on the heroes is gathered, this will be part of the analysis.

So now the Heroes research has become part of testing this theory. Does the pattern hold across cultures? Across centuries? What I’ve seen already in literature is honestly making me rethink everything I thought I knew about human achievement.

What I Think This Could Mean

I think this is big. Potentially revolutionary.

Here’s what I know from the case studies I have: This framework has stopped violence. It's helped people set boundaries. It's helped people understand their conflicts, their self-sabotage, their inability to make decisions that seemed impossible. Not because I'm some guru—I'm definitely not—but because once people can see the conflict, they can solve it themselves.

What if this could help prevent problems instead of just treating them? What if we taught kids to:

• Recognize what they're actually feeling and needing

• Understand that values are chosen, not inherited

• Find strategies that honor both their needs AND their values

• See conflicts coming before they become destructive

It feels almost too simple. But maybe that's why it works?

So, What Now?

I'm calling this Skaar's Theory of Value-Needs Alignment. Which sounds very official and academic, but really it's just... this thing I've been doing forever, finally written down.

Over the next while, I want to share:

• More about the theory – this is just the high level, but there is more

• Examples and analysis of this playing out in literature

• Real stories of how this has worked (or hasn't)

• Ways to spot your own conflicts

• Why some solutions work and others make things worse

• What happens when entire societies have values-needs conflicts

• Assessment tools and practical steps to help you become more aware of your own needs and values

• Research showing this theory in action—starting with the literature analysis, then data from the Heroes research as it develops, eventually, studies with people who want to explore this framework in their own lives

But here's the thing—I don't want to just broadcast this at you. I want to talk WITH you about it. Share your own examples. Challenge my thinking. Tell me where this framework breaks down for you. Because after thirty years of thinking about this mostly alone, I want to get this out into the world and start collaborating with others on it. Jump into the comments – or send me an email.

Does this resonate? Have you seen this pattern too? What need do YOU think people are trying to meet when they do that inexplicable thing that drives you crazy?

Because I genuinely believe this: Once we can see the conflict, we have a much better chance to solve it. Once we understand the need, we can find better ways to meet it. Once we realize values are choices, we can choose ones that actually support our lives.

It's not about having the right answer. It's about asking the right question.

And that question is surprisingly simple: What need are you trying to meet?

Amy here. Started a philosophy journal at 15, spent 30 years gathering inductive data across Fortune 500 consulting, management, and various entrepreneurial ventures while trying to figure out why humans do what they do. After a brain injury forced me to focus on only the most important things, I'm finally documenting the frameworks that have been rattling around in my head. This is the first of many conversations about what I've noticed. Thanks for being curious with me.

I know The Way of Heroes went quiet after starting this hero research project... and there's something I should tell you first.

I'm Amy Skaar, and I've been the person behind this research from the start. I began anonymously because I wasn't sure how to share what I've been working on for 30 years - but I've realized it's time to step forward with the full picture.

The hero research was always part of a larger framework I've been developing through systematic observation about why humans make the choices they do. Turns out, there's a question that changes everything about how we understand human behavior, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

The heroes? They're the validation. Every story you've ever loved, every tragic choice that made you want to scream at the characters, every time you've watched someone brilliant do something self-destructive - there's a pattern underneath it all.

Over the next few weeks, this will transition to become my personal Substack (amyskaar.com) - the URL and visual look will update, but your subscription stays the same. You'll still get hero research updates (I'm still systematically analyzing 1000+ heroic individuals, which is... a lot), but you'll also see the larger framework they're pointing toward. Plus behind-the-scenes of how I'm building tools and systems to study all this (and a few other things!) at scale.

You'll be hearing from me regularly across different themes - hero research, framework applications, and general observations about patterns in human behavior and system design.

If you signed up for hero stories, you'll still get those. But now you'll also see what they've been building toward all along, and you'll know who's been connecting these dots.

Thanks for being here as I figure out how to share something this big. What you think is impossible becomes possible, when you know how to find the way.

Amy Skaar

P.S. - Look for the first new post as early as next week as I kick off this expanded approach. The look and design rebrand will take a little time to complete, so don't be surprised if things look different over the next couple weeks!

What makes someone step up while others step back? What drives one person to risk everything for their values while another plays it safe? These questions aren't just academic – they're vital. Because here's the thing: heroes aren't born heroes. They're made through choices. Lots of them. Daily ones.

I've started digging into the lives of history's greatest game-changers, and something fascinating emerged. Whether I was studying scientists who revolutionized our understanding of the universe or leaders who transformed nations or even everyday people who saw injustice and refused to look away – five core elements kept showing up. Think of them as the DNA of heroic character: Agency, Personal Growth, Impact, Risk & Sacrifice, and Values & Principles.

1. Agency: The Power of Conscious Choice

Let's talk about what really kicks off heroic action: Agency. Heroes don't sit around waiting for someone else to fix things. They don't endlessly complain about problems or hope things magically get better. They act.

Remember Galileo? When the whole scientific establishment (backed by the terrifying power of the Church) said "Hey, maybe keep those wild ideas about the Earth moving around the sun to yourself," he didn't exactly say "sure thing!" He stood his ground. That's agency in action.

Or take Grace Hopper – there she was, surrounded by room-sized computers that could barely add numbers, telling everyone she could make machines understand human language. They said it was impossible. She went ahead and created the first compiler anyway, essentially inventing modern computer programming while she was at it.

And then there's Jane Goodall. Picture this: a 26-year-old with no college degree, showing up in the forests of Gombe with just a notebook and binoculars. No fancy equipment, no team of experts – just determination and keen eyes. Everyone said you couldn't study animals that way. She not only did it, she revolutionized how we understand primates and ourselves.

Here's the thing about agency – it's not about having tons of power or resources. It's about using whatever you've got, right where you are. Heroes:

• Jump into challenges while others are still saying "somebody should do something"

• Take that first step when everyone else is frozen in hesitation

• Keep going even when things get rough (and they always get rough)

• Own their choices – no blaming others or making excuses

• Trust their judgment even when the crowd's heading the other way

The best part? Agency is like a muscle – the more you use it, the stronger it gets. Every time you choose to act instead of wait, to create instead of complain, you're building your heroic DNA.

2. Personal Growth: The Hero's Evolution

Here's a secret about heroes – they all start somewhere completely ordinary. Sometimes even somewhere pretty rough. What makes them heroes isn't where they begin – it's how they handle what life throws at them.

Take Benjamin Franklin. Before he was flying kites in lightning storms and helping birth a nation, he was just a teenage runaway with a few coins in his pocket and ink-stained hands. Talk about a growth journey! From apprentice printer to founding father, he never stopped learning, growing, and reinventing himself.

Or look at Maya Angelou. She started in pain and trauma, facing challenges that could have silenced her forever. Instead, she transformed that pain into poetry that gave voice to millions. She didn't just grow – she bloomed.

And Frederick Douglass? He taught himself to read when it was literally illegal for him to do so. Went from enslaved man to celebrated author and statesman. Then turned right around and used his hard-won wisdom to light the path for others.

I've studied many hero stories, and the framework Joseph Campbell called the Hero's Journey is a great way to map the stories of the great humans of history. Let's simplify it into steps we can see in real heroes:

• Starting in the Ordinary: Every hero was once just a regular person with regular problems. (Even Superman had to learn to walk!)

• Getting the Wake-Up Call: Something happens that shakes up their world. Could be a problem, an opportunity, or just that nagging feeling that things need to change.

• Wrestling with Inner Demons: Here's where it gets real. Self-doubt shows up. Fear crashes the party. Imposter syndrome kicks in. Sound familiar?

• Finding the Right Guides: Nobody does it alone. Heroes actively seek wisdom, whether from mentors, books, experiences, or all of the above.

• Taking That Big Leap: There's always that moment when they have to step up to a challenge that feels way too big.

• Learning Through Trial and Error: This is where the real growth happens. Every failure is just feedback, every setback a setup for a comeback.

• Becoming Who They Need to Be: All those lessons? They don't just add up – they transform. The hero becomes a new version of themselves.

• Passing It On: The coolest part? Real heroes turn around and help others grow too. They become the guide they once needed.

3. Impact and Value Creation: Ripples of Change

Here's what's fascinating about heroic impact – it often starts smaller than you'd think. One decision. One invention. One moment of "you know what? This needs to change." But like a pebble tossed in a pond, those choices create ripples that just keep going.

Let me blow your mind for a second: Ada Lovelace wrote the first computer program... in 1843. No, that's not a typo. She wrote instructions for a machine that didn't even exist yet! Imagine sitting there with your quill pen (no laptops in sight), looking at mechanical drawings, and seeing the future of computing. Today, every time you tap your phone or fire up your laptop, you're riding a wave that Ada started with one wild idea.

Or take George Washington Carver. Everyone knows him as "the peanut guy," but that totally misses the point. Here was a man who looked at worn-out soil and desperate farmers and saw possibility. He didn't just develop hundreds of new products – he taught farmers how to work with nature instead of against it. He turned "you can't grow anything in this dirt" into "look what we can create!" His agricultural revolution didn't just change farming; it changed how we think about innovation itself.

And speaking of revolution – how about Tim Berners-Lee? He invented a little thing called the World Wide Web. But here's the kicker: he gave it away. For free. He could have been richer than that social media guy with the hoodies, but he chose global impact over personal profit. Every website you visit, every online connection you make – that's Tim's ripple still moving.

What makes heroic impact so powerful? It's not just what heroes do – it's what they start:

• They solve problems in ways that make you say "why didn't anyone think of that before?"

• Their solutions keep working even when they're not around

• Other people look at their example and think "I could do something like that"

• Sometimes they shift how entire societies think about what's possible

• The coolest part? They often create value in ways they never even imagined

Here's the thing about impact – you never really know how far your ripples will go. When Jonas Salk refused to patent the polio vaccine, saying "Could you patent the sun?", he wasn't just making a medical decision. He was setting a standard for putting human life above profit that we still talk about today.

Want to know the really exciting part? We're living in an age where one person's positive impact can spread faster and farther than ever before. Your ripple might just be the one the world's been waiting for.

4. Risk & Sacrifice: The Price of Principles

Let's get real for a minute – being heroic isn't exactly comfortable. I'm not talking about cape-chafing discomfort here. I mean the kind of discomfort that comes with putting something valuable on the line because your values demand it.

Take Marie Curie. She didn't just study radioactivity – she watched it slowly poison her. Her research notebooks are still so radioactive today that you need protective gear to read them. But here's the thing: she wasn't being reckless. She knew the risks. She also knew that understanding radiation could revolutionize medicine and physics. So she made her choice, eyes wide open.

Or consider Harriet Tubman. After escaping slavery, she was finally free. Safe. She could have stayed that way. Instead, she went back. Not once. Not twice. Nineteen times. Each trip back into slave territory could have been her last. Each group of people she guided to freedom increased the chance she'd be caught. But she kept going back because, as she put it, "There was one of two things I had a right to: liberty or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other."

Here's what makes heroic risk-taking different from just being reckless:

• They're not playing danger tourist – they're facing real risks for real reasons

• They put their comfort, safety, or status on the line because something matters more

• They choose harder paths knowing exactly how hard those paths will be

• They make long-term commitments when others are looking for quick exits

• They risk what they have for what they value

5. Values & Principles: The Hero's Compass

Now we're getting to the heart of it all. You want to know what really makes someone heroic? It's not their powers or their platform – it's their principles. Heroes know what they value, and they let those values guide their choices, even when it costs them.

Let me tell you one of my favorite George Washington stories. It's not the cherry tree thing (that's made up anyway). It's what happened after the Revolutionary War. His officers wanted to make him king. Think about that for a second. He'd just led a successful revolution. The army was behind him. He could have been King George of America.

Instead, he didn't just say no – he shut that idea down hard. Why? Because he didn't fight a king across an ocean just to become one himself. His values weren't just ideas he talked about – they were lines he wouldn't cross, no matter what was being offered.

Here's how heroes use their values as a compass:

• They get crystal clear about what matters most to them

• They understand that human life is valuable and therefore individual rights matter

• Their actions match their values, even when it's inconvenient

• They hold onto their principles when pressure says "just this once"

• They're working toward a vision of what could be, not just what is

The Hero Within (Yes, That Means You)

Here's what pulls all this together: Heroism isn't about being special or superhuman. It's about choosing your values and actually living them. It's about seeing chances to create value and having the guts to take those chances.

You might be thinking "Sure, but these were all extraordinary people." Here's the truth: they became extraordinary by making choices you can make too. Every hero we've talked about started exactly where you are – with a choice to act, to grow, to create value, to take risks for what matters, and to let their values guide them.

Next issue, I’ll be diving into the different types of heroes walking among us. Trust me – you'll start seeing them everywhere. And you might just spot some heroic DNA in yourself too.

Ready to explore your own heroic potential? Subscribe (for free) below to get weekly insights, practical tools, and inspiration for your own hero's journey.

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Where have all the heroes gone?

I grew up surrounded by people I wanted to emulate.  Granted, I am a Gen Xer and grew up in a golden age of heroism. I was inspired by heroes in films like Hunt for Red October, Die Hard, Road Warrior, The Karate Kid, Dead Poets Society, Amadeus, Aliens, Terminator…  I had cultural heroes aplenty too – Sally Ride, Michael Jordan, Tina Turner, Sandra Day O’Connor, Nelson Mandela, Ronald Regan… In school we read full books (not just the excerpts like they do now) like Fahrenheit 451, Roots, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Fountainhead… Books with distinct characters, people who gave me a new way of looking at things, people, though fictional, who gave me insight into the kind of person I wanted to be. Heroes.

I also had hardworking parents who owned 3 businesses to support me and my brother. I also heard stories of my grandfather showing up at the local aluminum factory every day for weeks until they gave him a job, and how my grandmother fed 10,000 turkeys a day for 25 cents a week in order to help her family. They did hard things for their values.

It wasn’t so long ago that police officers and firefighters were looked up to and respected. There was a clearer cultural sense of right and wrong. Stealing was wrong. Lying was wrong. Fraud was wrong. Integrity was a good thing, honesty was admired, hard work was the way to self-respect.

These days I look around and wonder “What the hell happened?”  

Film and books are filled with despicable lead characters, not the best of us. The media delights in tearing apart anyone who has contributed anything worthwhile in some kind of narcissistic schadenfreude. The nuclear family is rapidly shrinking, depression and disconnection is on the rise, shoplifting is practically encouraged in some places, we have laws that don’t get enforced, most politicians and celebrities are people who belong in jail rather than people we look up to – basically it seems like our culture is falling apart and we have a moral compass that has been demagnetized.

I’ve been concerned about this for a long time. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it. There are a lot of reasons for what is happening, but at the root I think one of the main culprits is:

The prevailing wisdom is that human beings are evil.

It’s as if Thomas Malthus and Immanuel Kant had a baby and that baby hijacked the culture.

If you were a child raised in this culture, how would you develop, being told constantly that you’re evil and responsible for the destruction of the world? If you no longer had people you could look up to, admire, respect? If you were told that respecting anyone was futile, impossible, for the fact that they’re human?

I will never believe human beings are evil.

I think people are amazing, creative, inspirational. Miracles, really. The things humans have invented, created, discovered, endured… it’s awe inspiring. And to think, I’m human too, and so are you. We all have this potential.

The most important moments of my life have been experiencing something with someone I love, with a human. Someone who inspires me, someone who sees me and who appreciates me for what they see. Someone who has my back and knows I have theirs. That connection was built on something – shared values, a shared understanding of why we value each other, the pieces of heroism we see in one another.

I think that everything a human does, is done in order to meet a need. I also think a lot of humans epically suck at finding good ways to meet those needs. It’s a lack of understanding, a lack of practical skill, and often, a lack of self-awareness that leads people to doing things in a sub-optimal way. So yeah, individual people can do evil things. Probably a very few even do it with intent. But as a whole, the human race is not evil.

People. Are. Amazing.

Also, all heroes are people.

We don’t have enough role models to show us how things can, and should, be. We need that example, we need heroes, now more than ever.

As the nuclear family seems to be a rare thing, and more and more parents are turning to cell-phone daycare, kids are left searching for guidance in a culture that is actively demonizing them instead of teaching them actual values. Without strong parents, and heroes to look up to, kids grow up without a clear example of courage, integrity, perseverance. They become the little shits that rob the local CVS, or lurk the internet futility looking for self-esteem via trolling.

Changing Our Culture Starts with Changing Ourselves and How We Parent

Our children look to us not just for survival, but as nurturers and mentors who will help them learn how to think, act and interpret their emotions. Parents are the first heroes a child encounters. But how often do we consciously think about what type of hero we’re showing them? Changing our culture begins with intentional parenting—one where we focus on embodying the virtues and courage we want to see in ourselves, our children and our society. Parenting isn’t just about keeping our children safe; it’s about preparing them to face their own challenges with the mindset, skills and resilience of a hero. We can become the leaders we need — by becoming introspective, intentional and learning the skills to guide with responsibility and bravery. Now more than ever, it’s essential to rebuild a culture of heroism.

This seems extremely important. Something I am compelled to help achieve. So… how do I do that?

The Way of Heroes: A Project

I’m kicking off a project to analyze the life, habits and stories of 1000 heroes across time, industry and culture. My goal is to distill the lessons from the people who have overcome great odds to achieve their goals, and ultimately enriched humanity with their deeds.  

I think the lessons found in studying heroes can help inform a way of revitalizing a culture of heroism. If we want to raise heroes, and become one ourselves, we need a framework that supports us on our way. I believe Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey framework offers a solid model for this transformation. Like the heroes in life, myths, movies and novels, we must embark on our own journey of self-discovery, face trials, and return transformed armed with new knowledge, before we are ready to guide others. I think this can be a strong analogy to use whether overcoming personal obstacles, teaching children about responsibility, or turning trauma into triumph.

Frankly, I could use the inspiration and I think others might too.

I want to share what I learn through this newsletter, build a set of practical tools that anyone can apply, while networking with others to build a vibrant community of people who are as concerned about our culture as I am.

I plan to use knowledge I’ve gained over my eclectic 30-year strategic management career, as well as my personal interests in interpersonal neurobiology, attachment theory, second brain systems, philosophy, art and creativity.

I am also a parent, and I made a conscious decision when my son was born to be an intentional one. I have a terrific relationship with my son, and it has been the primary focus of my life since he was born. It was clear to me from those first days that the way we interacted would have a critical impact on his development, and that he looked to me for more than food and shelter, but also for guidance, love and wisdom. It took work. And the work has been extremely rewarding. I plan to weave in the lessons I’ve learned raising my son into this project as well.

I am not a stranger to trauma or overcoming terrible odds. This project is born out of the ashes of an accident that required 4 years of recovery and left me with some injuries I will never recover from. I know firsthand that success in overcoming hardship is rooted in your moral philosophy, and the tools and skills you arm yourself with. This project will be the beginning of a new career chapter for me. I cannot express how excited I am to be embarking on it.

The Bottom Line: Promoting Heroism in Our Culture

This newsletter will be focused on developing the tools and insights needed to nurture the hero within. We can't teach others what we don't know, so the first step is arming ourselves with knowledge. I will explore stories of heroes who have come before us, the habits of those heroes, and the art of intentional living. I’ll also be developing resources that will help build the skills for navigating life’s challenges. I also will be looking for opportunities to present some of this material in a way that is accessible for kids too.

My end goal is to provide practical, actionable content that empowers people to lead with courage, compassion, and integrity as well as more open-ended content designed to make you think about what you believe and why. I will also explore newsworthy items in our culture and examine them from the perspective of The Way of Heroes. Whether you're focused on personal growth or raising resilient kids, each article will offer tools, strategies, and/or guidance to help you navigate your own hero’s journey.

In addition to using the Hero’s Journey framework, I’ll be operating from three core principles:

1. Reality Exists: I believe in the importance of grounding ourselves in truth. To lead effectively and parent wisely, we must first understand and embrace reality.
   
   In order for us to have a basis for honest discussion, which is one of the goals of this newsletter, it's important to put this idea forward. It seems obvious, but in this culture, it's best not to take anything for granted! When I say reality exists, this means that there is an external reality that is separate from our consciousness. We may all have some slight perception differences (some are color blind, some can hear in slightly different ranges, etc.) but our changes in perception do not change reality itself.
   
   This is an important thing to note, because when it comes to disagreements if we don't have a basis from which we can judge truth (reality), then we're at a bit of a stalemate. Relativism is one of the great evils of our time, and a healthy dose of reality will help solve that. Opinions are healthy and are welcome - I want to encourage open, deep discussion. However I think it’s important to distinguish that a difference in opinion does not equate to a different reality, just a different interpretation of it.

2. Humans Are Good: At the heart of heroism is a fundamental belief in the goodness of people. By focusing on the intrinsic good in ourselves and others, we create an environment that nurtures growth and resilience.

3. A Moral Code Is Necessary for a Happy Life: True happiness comes from living with integrity and purpose. By embracing a defined moral code, we not only improve our own lives but also set a lasting example for our children.

I plan to focus more on these three principles in later articles, as there is a lot to unpack in each one of these.

Walk With Me

Finding heroism in the world may feel impossible at times, but with the right framework, support, and mindset, I think we can rise to the challenge, become our own heroes and guide the next generation.

Please consider subscribing to join this project of restoring a culture of heroism. To start, content will be free, but later on some will be available only to paid subscribers. Let’s build a community of parents, thinkers, and everyday heroes committed to improving ourselves, and raising the next generation with courage, compassion, and purpose – together, we can do heroic things.