Inspiring the self-server to self-sacrificer transition in fiction, part 3
General patterns for fiction, true moral vs. "show" behavior, and closing observations
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Stories that encourage self-servers to rise to the self-sacrificer level (or beyond) don’t need to cover the same scope as A Christmas Carol and Groundhog Day, as explored in part 2. There are many themes that can serve this purpose: any theme, really, that involves doing psychological battle, as it were, against selfish and egotistical tendencies to then grow into a more expansive and serviceful outlook.
The essential aspects discussed in Inspiring the transition from self-comforter to self-server, part 2 for stories targeted to the self-comforter apply equally well here, as they do to all the patterns:
Characters who are relatable and sympathetic to the target reader.
Situations that pressure those characters to evaluate their strategies for finding fulfillment.
Depictions of the outcomes of the various choices that such characters can make in those situations, following either a heroic arc (change leading to greater fulfillment) or a tragic arc (refusal to change leading to greater suffering).
What differentiates stories meant for one pattern or another are the specific natures of those character, situations, and outcomes. As shown in the directional spirituality diagram we’ve been using, stories seeking to inspire (with motivational inspiration) the self-comforter are primarily sensual and reach toward the psychological. Stories seeking to inspire the self-server are primarily psychological and reach toward the moral. And, as we’ll see with the transition to self-transcender, stories seeking to inspire self-sacrificers are primarily moral and reach toward the spiritual or mystical.
Because the self-server pattern is the most common in our present-day society, it’s straightforward to create sympathetic characters: just base them on most of the people you encounter from day to day. Look at any of the sufferings people endure as they pursue, but fail to find, lasting happiness in selfish and other ego-centric behaviors. Then observe how those who manage to expand their self-identity to include others find a higher level of happiness.
True moral vs. “show” behavior
Let me repeat, though, that true self-sacrifice—which is expansive to one’s sense of self and that effectively defines moral behavior—must not be confused with self-serving “martyrdom.” A parent or homemaker who make a show or martyring him- or herself with the expectation of praise is using that so-called “sacrifice” only as a self-serving strategy.
The same can be said for people who take up a cause not for the cause itself but for personal benefit or greater personal power. Many corporations exemplify this lack of a true moral backbone: they embrace a cause when it serves their “business needs,” that is, when it makes the company more profitable, but abandon it as soon as those needs “change,” meaning that the cause has become a liability.1
Similarly, those who make “sacrifices” in the expectation of earning pity, being comforted (being invited out for drinks, given sexual favors, etc.), or just “feeling better” are really demonstrating the mindset of the self-comforter.
The anti-Israel/pro-Palestinian protests that swept across college campuses in the spring of 2024 provided some clear examples of people in these other patterns masquerading as self-sacrificers. On the surface, the protests appeared designed to put pressure on the Israeli government to change their policy toward the Palestinians in Gaza, which readily engaged sympathetic students. The primary demand of the protesters, too, was for universities to disclose any investments in Israeli companies and American defense contractors and then to divest those holdings—a strategy that apparently helped bring down the Apartheid regime in South Africa some decades ago.
Now, I’m not going to make any assessments here regarding the morality of one side or another (Israel, Hamas, the US Government, various companies and institutions, etc.), nor am I doubting that at least some of the protesters were deeply sincere about the cause and were perhaps also willing to make personal sacrifices. What I’m primarily interested in is whether the call for divestment would actually produce meaningful change for the Palestinians in Gaza.
Unlike Apartheid, which was overwhelmingly despised outside of South Africa, there’s no shortage of investors who’d be happy to buy discounted shares of Israeli and defense companies were many universities to decide to sell. Consequently, neither Israeli companies nor defense contractors would likely notice, let alone to a degree that would somehow force them to put pressure on their respective governments to change policy.2
Why, then, make divestment the central demand? Because I think the truth—and please comment if you think I’m wrong here—is that few people seemed all that interested in making real sacrifices to help the Palestinians.3 The non-student leaders of these protests, for example, seemed primarily interested in exploiting whatever cause of the day garners the greatest sympathy—be it LGBTQ rights, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, or Free Palestine—to increase their own power and influence by arousing mob passions. That’s a clearly self-serving strategy—otherwise, why aren’t the same people also outraged by Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, for example, or any number of other gross violations of human rights around the globe? Why are they not also calling for divestment from those countries along and from non-defense corporations that engage in equally questionable practices?
It also became clear that many of the student protestors simply wanted to feel better about the whole situation because they believed (incorrectly) that their tuition money was funding such investments.4 They thus hid their nature as self-comforters behind masks of righteous anger just as they hid their physical faces behind kaffiyeh scarves. True self-sacrificers, on the other hand, understanding that their education is subsidized by those investments,5 could have calmly approached the administration and said: “We would like to be free from this blood stain. Please determine how much our tuition is subsidized by these particular investments and then raise our personal tuitions accordingly.” Such a noble offer would, I think, have generated far more support for the espoused cause than putting up encampments, taking over buildings, blocking access to classes, and persecuting Jewish and Israeli students.6
The self-sacrificer embraces suffering
The true nature of a person or character is revealed under pressure, which is why stories generally subject characters to great suffering and duress. Stories that seek to motivationally inspire readers toward the true moral behavior of the self-sacrificer must depict characters who find fulfillment through the sacrifice of a meaningful part of their self-identity, of their freedom, and even of their lives for the sake of a principle. To do anything less, which means living with your betrayal of that principle, is indeed worse than death.
That’s why The Robe by Lloyd Douglas is one of my favorite novels, as explained in The fictional character I would most like to be, part 1. The movie Gandhi, which is biographical but could easily be expressed in fiction, also demonstrates genuine behavior of a self-sacrificer—not just Gandhi, but many of his followers.
In the clip below, Gandhi (played by Ben Kingsley), stares the British judge in the face and says:
I have no defense, my Lord. I’m guilty as charged. And if you truly believe in the system of law that you administer in my country you must inflict upon me the severest penalty possible.
Clearly, that’s the gutsy statement of a true self-sacrificer. And I can add that personally, Gandhi so inspired me the first time I saw it that I said to myself, “If doing that much good gets you assassinated, well, sign me up!”
Similarly, the book and movie Hidden Figures, tell the story of the likes of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorthy Vaughn facing and overcoming both racism and sexism within NASA in the early 1960s. I particularly love the scene where Mary Jackson, who is often rather brash, sets that part of herself aside when approaching a white judge for permission to take classes at an all-white high school. Her humble deference before the judge is very much an act of self-sacrifice.
Certainly there are many, many other stories about true self-sacrificers in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, in the anti-Apartheid movement in South Africa, and similar movements elsewhere. I think, too, of what Paramhansa Yogananda said of Gandhi’s satyagrahis in Auobiography of a Yogi:
Epics shall someday be written on the Indian satyagrahis who withstood hate with love, violence with nonviolence, who allowed themselves to be mercilessly slaughtered rather than retaliate. The result on certain historic occasions was that the armed opponents threw down their guns and fled, shamed, shaken to their depths by the sight of men who valued the life of another above their own. (Chapter 44, 1946 edition)'
Character contrasts
Another effective way to inspire readers toward the self-sacrificer pattern is to place a sympathetic self-sacrificer character side-by-side with self-servers and self-comforters who appear to espouse the same principles. Then throw them all into situations that test their commitment to those principles. The self-servers and self-comforters who are just making a show of nobility and morality will readily sacrifice the principle for personal benefit, making “reasonable” justifications or claiming that they “have no choice” in the matter. But they should also suffer in that choice.
The self-sacrificer, on the other hand, should instead relinquish some part of themselves—comfort, ego, convenience, wealth, health, freedom, life, etc.—for the sake of upholding the principle, but then discover a new fulfillment, or even just a reward, that they didn’t expect. That discovery can encourage readers to consider that path for themselves.
An example of this contrast is the movie Legally Blonde 2, where the protagonist, Elle Woods (played by Reese Whitherspoon), holds true to her principles whereas her mentor, Congresswoman Rudd (played by Sally Fields), breaks her promise to Elle for the sake of political expediency, that is, for self-interests of large donors.
Anti-heroic arcs that celebrate a fall
Speaking of morals and morality, it’s worth noting that alongside the tragic and redemptive arcs that we explored in part 1, which clearly identify the descent to a lower behavioral pattern as a tragic thing, and the heroic arcs explored in part 2, which identify the ascent to a higher pattern as a positive thing, it’s wholly possible for a story to celebrate a fall. We might call these anti-heroic stories. When targeted at readers in the self-server pattern, such tales would say, in effect, “Trying to make an honest living and get ahead just isn’t worth it. To hell with it all. Go indulge the senses because that’s where the fun is!” Or they might celebrate the acquisition of power for downward, destructive purposes rather than upward, constructive ones.
Spiritually speaking, because such stories intentionally seek to pull people down to a lower pattern, farther away from God, they must be classified as “materialistic” if not also “satanic.”7
The same classification applies also to stories that praise a self-sacrificer for descending to the self-server level and stories that praise a self-transcender for turning away from God even to embrace something like the political activism of a self-sacrificer. In the latter case, even though the end state of the self-sacrificer is noble enough, it is still a fall because it’s a downward transition.
Closing observations
Before wrapping up this post, you might have observed that I’ve said almost nothing about God, Satchidananda, or anything much that is obviously “spiritual.” That’s intentional: for the most part, self-servers are much more likely to be inspired by models of moral or principled behavior—that of the self-sacrificer—than the mystical behavior of the self-transcender. As noted in Transition points in seeking God, it’s important to respect where people are and help them take the next step up, rather than expecting them to jump all the way to the top.
To inspire a self-server to seek God like a self-transcender, instead of merely using God and religion for self-serving purposes, it’s necessary to expand their sympathies first to other people at the level of the self-sacrificer. I think this is one reason why Jesus said, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” as the second greatest commandment to “Love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,” for how can you pretend to love God, who loves all, if you cannot love others yourself?
(Note: posts on the transition self-sacrificer and self-transcender will come after an interlude.)
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Microsoft, my former employer, for example, though “all in” with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from about 2018, but then laid off their entire DEI team in 2025 due to what they called “changing business needs.” Clearly, then, “business needs” are the highest principle.
In fact, they’d find themselves with an even greater percentage of sympathetic shareholders. After all, the policies enacted by public-traded companies are set by the Board of Directors, who are elected by shareholders. Thus, ceding more control to sympathetic shareholders only cements present policies rather than changing them. That’s why shareholder activism is a much more effective means of enacting change within companies.
Including the neighboring Arab countries who weren’t exactly jumping at the opportunity to take in Palestinian refugees.
One news video even showed a graduate student at Columbia University in New York City complaining that the university wasn’t serving three meals a day to the protestors.
According to Columbia University’s Financial Overview page, for example, Net Tuition (which is paid by students) accounts for 23% of the university’s income; instructional costs account for 39% of expenses. The 16% difference must then come from other sources, which includes investments.
It likely difficult to even calculate the tuition subsidy that comes specifically from Israeli and defense companies, but I’m guessing it’s somewhere in the range of a few hundred dollars. In that case, the financial sacrifice of students would be quite small compared to the political impact.
Naomi Alderman’s, The Power, strikes me as a possible example—I say possible because I read only a few pages here and there and skimmed the rest. But even with that I saw enough physical and sexual violence (such as women raping men and then using their “power” to make the man’s innards explode), which was enough for me. For an overview, see Wikipedia. From what I saw, even though the book puts women in power, it yet seems to glorify the thoroughly power-abusing, masculine characteristic of domination rather than the feminine quality of partnership. This, to my mind, degrades women and feminism as much as patriarchy and sexism, if not more so.