Ultimate Sacrifice or Ultimate Gift and How Each Mind Acts in the Great Play of Life
In this four-part essay, I give examples of how the four minds of the quadrune mind model of human nature can be observed as they function in various day-to-day circumstances. In the final part, I’ll describe how actors of each mind would perform their parts on the stage of life, as an elaboration on Shakespeare.
Note: The topic headings above are from our earlier evolutionary model of the minds. The examples below represent our later corresponding developmental categories of minds: Reptilian Mind/Infantile Behavioral Mind; Old Mammalian Mind/Childish Emotional Mind; New Mammalian Mind/Adolescent Intellectual (Cognitive) Mind; Human Mind/Grownup Spiritual Mind; and Pre-Human Minds/Immature Minds (all minds and “mind” except the Grownup Spiritual Mind).
Ultimate Sacrifice or Ultimate Gift
“Ultimate sacrifice” is usually understood as giving up one’s life in service of something worth dying for. The “ultimate” part cannot just be about dying, though. Everyone dies, sometimes in great service for others, without much fanfare by the public.1 However, death as “sacrifice” is often made by patriotic people for widely-held, highly idealistic reasons. Idealism is an identifying trait of the adolescent mind. Many adolescents go to war with seemingly high, noble ideals,2 such as the “warrior ethos.”3 Dying well as an adolescent patriot may mean to die bravely in combat to “protect American freedom,” or for any other ideological reason held by their side in the battle. On the other hand, for the Grownup, dying well can be the ultimate gift to the living.
Adolescent Intellectual (Cognitive) Mind
Death as a Sacrifice. The adolescent is willing to die for their ideology, but more important to the military and the nation is the adolescent’s willingness to kill another human being. The ultimate sacrifice is not death, but a human being’s willingness to forgo their human nature as a spiritual caretaker of living creatures and the earth in order to bring death to another human. Or, if slain in combat, to have invited another human to be the killer.
This death represents humanity as divided in ways that are worth going to war over. It reinforces nationalistic, ethnic, and religious ideas of victimization and deprivation or exceptionality and privilege. It is a privilege, indeed, almost Godly, to deem that another human being is worthy of being killed, like an animal.
This is Death as the Great Divider of humanity.
Grownup Spiritual Mind
Death as a Gift. There is another way to view death. From the Grownup’s spiritual mentality, a human’s purpose in death is to die well; not as a “sacrifice,” but as a gift.
The Catholic spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, writes about “dying well.”4 People are dying everywhere, all the time. He offers an approach to our own death with a sense of solidarity with others. It is the most human act we all have in common.
Nouwen states that our great question of life is not how much more can I get before I die, but how much more can I give before I die? He describes how his sister-in-law, Marina, approached death from cancer. As her illness worsened, she increasingly expressed herself through painting and poetry. Her poetry, shared with family, doctors and nurses, and her circle of friends, was her gift to help them approach her death intimately with her.
We can leave a legacy by what we accomplished and how we lived, but perhaps the greater gift is to leave a legacy by who we are and how we died.
This is Death as the Great Unifier of humanity.
How Each Mind Acts in the Great Play of Life
A film director once said that he could make a movie of anyone’s life as either a tragedy or a comedy, depending on where he chose to begin and end the story.5 We do the same thing influenced by, and influencing, whether we see our life as tragic or comic. What we expect of the future, and how we live in the present, greatly depend upon what our culture teaches us to value of our shared historical past. With the selected memories we preserve of our own life, they give us the “beginning” of our life, and our imagination gives us the “ending.” Together, they give us our purpose in life, which is to make the future conform to the meaning of our story, which is the meaning of life! This confirmation would then justify and validate not only our actions of our lifetime, but also the actions and lives of all our significant predecessors. It tells us where we belong in history.6
If we believe that we already know how “The Story” ends, then we have reached a foregone conclusion about what the story “means” to us. And probably, what it should mean to other people. Religion can provide a narrative for our “foregone conclusion” of the meaning of life that we want, and need, it to have. No further distressful mental exertion is required on our part. Doubts are eliminated. We are 100 percent certain of how we should act, feel, and think in every situation, even if we do not do it. Everything that happens in the world can be understood in light of the ending that we already know. And the ending is guaranteed.
Could Shakespeare be right? Is the world merely a stage we all playact on, or was he just being theatrical? Shakespeare must always be taken thoughtfully. After all, he has been credited with inventing the human.7 We can extend and refine his idea. We can typecast the world’s actors by their levels of consciousness into different kinds of life’s plays.
Adults who behave like infants do not know that there is a story. There is no prologue and no epilogue. There is no character development. They do not move about the stage interacting with various other characters, moving the plot along. There is no plot. Only they exist, as an “actor-stage unity,” in tableaux. Everything else, including the people on stage and in the audience, are props, which substantiate the actor’s vital role as a permanent, unchanging stage fixture. The status quo is the play.
Adults who emote like children are stars of an exciting drama. They are part of an ongoing conflict between their group of actors and another group of actors (sometimes never seen on stage). The beginning of the play sets up who they are and who, or what, the adversary is. There is always an adversary, otherwise there is no drama to the play. The outcome is held in suspense, but they may have an important role in the ultimate success of their side. They might be the heroic conqueror or the heroic martyr or the heroic terrorist. The approval by some members of the audience is vital to them.
Adults thinking like adolescents on stage mistakenly believe they have written the play. The beginning and ending points of “their” play are set based on the ideological point they want the play to make. The story can function quite apart from “real time.” The play is expected to turn a fine profit. The inherent distinctions among the actors, stage, and the people in the audience are not functionally clear. Consequently, any potential effects the play may have on the audience are generally considered irrelevant, if considered at all. Perfunctory content warnings are provided.
Grownups do not just take on a role. They also make costumes, props, and scenery. They take their role seriously, but not themselves. They understand that the play is not fully scripted but is largely improvisational. The beginning and ending of their play can be imagined by the Grownup, but its meaning is considered suggestive with room for other interpretations. They take responsibility for the content of their play but do not try to control the audience’s reactions. The people in the audience are expected to dynamically interact with the actors on stage.
Grownups know that everyone in the audience is the star of their own play, as well. Plays that may be heroic, tragic, comedic, farcical, or absurd. But always plays that deserve attendance. Shakespeare was partly right. We are all actors, but we are also directors, stagehands, and playwrights. And critics. We have our favorite plays, and plays that offend us or make no sense to us. It might be wise for us to be humble in our criticisms. Our own play may be offensive or nonsensical to others, as well.
Spiritually conscious adult human beings know that the end of one story always has in it the beginning of another story. But it is a story that Grownups accept as one they will never know. It may extend their own story, negate it, or make their completed play irrelevant. In any case, they will not be around to ghostwrite the next story. Living well with that understanding is a sign of living “inside” of life as it comes, and goes, instead of being on the “outside” of life trying to force the plot and, therefore, the meaning of the story for everyone.
In the end, the Grownup recognizes that playacting creates real emotions and real meanings for real life: The play’s the thing, after all. And the entire universe is our stage.
- For example, see “Colina, J. (2018, February 20). 10 People who gave their lives for others in 2017. Aleteia. [Here are examples of the best use of religious institutional resources to enable “spirit persons” to be Healers to those of us who are among the most suffering. Aleteia is a magazine of Catholic spirituality, lifestyle, and world news. The story profiles 10 Roman Catholics who “lived, or are living, Jesus’ words in depth: ‘No one has greater love than he who gives his life for his friends’ (John 15:13).” In these examples “friends” included people who are unknown to the individual and outside of their “group,” but, as the Grownup mind would dictate, are considered friends simply as human beings.]
- James, W. (2002). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature: Being the Gifford lectures on natural religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. New York: Modern Library. “[T]he fact remains that war is a school of strenuous life and heroism; and, being in the line of aboriginal instinct, is the only school that as yet is universally available…. What we now need to discover in the social realm is the moral equivalent of war: something heroic that will speak to men as universally as war does, and yet will be as compatible with their spiritual selves as war has proved to be incompatible.” [Pp. 400-401].
[“Holy” wars conveniently blend physical heroism and “spiritual” values, as those values are understood by religious worldly warriors. For an excellent essay by William James on this issue, see James, W. (1910/2000). The moral equivalent of war. In J. C. Oates (Ed.) & R. Atwan (Co-Ed.). The best American essays of the century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Pp. 45-56]. - For example, see Soldier’s creed & army values. (Updated 2023). Old Dominion University. Under Integrity tab: “Do what’s right, legally and morally.”
- Nouwen, H. J. M. (1994). Our greatest gift: A meditation on dying and caring. New York: HarperSanFrancisco.
- Similarly, Charlie Chaplin said, “Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in long shot.” Quote Investigator concludes that the source of this quotation is “a Chaplin quote that Richard Roud, director of the New York Film Festival, borrowed to introduce the program notes for the gala.”
I have been unable to identify the source of the director’s statement, which I came across many years ago. - For a deep scholarly examination of humanity’s freedom to create our past and future and its political consequences, see Gould, R. R. (Fall 2018). Democracy and the vernacular imagination in Vico’s plebian philology. History of Humanities, 3(2), 247-277. “This essay examines Giambattista Vico’s philology as a contribution to democratic legitimacy. I outline three steps in Vico’s account of the historical and political development of philological knowledge: first, his merger of philosophy and philology, and the effects of that merger on the relative claims of reason and authority; second, his use of antiquarian knowledge to supersede historicist accounts of change in time and to position the plebian social class as the true arbiters of language; third, his understanding of philological knowledge as an instrument of political change, and a foundational element in the establishment of democracy. In its treatment of the philological imagination as a tool for bringing about political change, Vico’s plebian philology is radically democratic and a crucial instrument in the struggle against the elite from antiquity to the present…. In its creativity, philological knowledge contests the Cartesian reduction that, in Vico’s view, deprives human beings of thefreedom to create their pasts, as well as their futures [Emphasis added].… [Vico] saw that the metaphysical order legitimating class oppression was grounded in power dynamics that had evolved over time. He detected this structural inequality in the etymology of the word man (vir), which originally referred not to any member of the human species but solely to the nobility.”
[Emphasis in the original. I believe Gould’s essay clearly has many interesting implications in support of the quadrune mind model. The human “freedom” to create humanizing perspectives of our pasts and futures becomes our responsibility in the quadrune mind model].
For a related view of the people’s place in history, see Zinn, H. (1980/1999). A people’s history of the United States: 1492-present. New York: HarperCollins. For example, “To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators, and to deemphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves—unwittingly—to justify what was done…. The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)—the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress—is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance… [and] represent the nation as a whole…. It is as if there really is a ‘national interest’ represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media…. If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past’s fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.” [Pp. 9 and 11]. - Bloom, H. (1998). Shakespeare: The invention of the human. New York: Riverhead Books.