Premise: Most people spawn into the world, like characters do into a video game, without knowing what the rules of the game are, without knowing what the objective is. Some define it for themselves, some lend and adopt them from their immediate circle. Some try to control their own character, then try to control the game, then they try to control the creator and go all Minecraft on the actual build out of the world.

The Pyramid of Human Meaning is a heuristic and framework—a way to make sense of the unspoken path every person walks.

Most people don’t think about meaning. They assume it’s something you stumble into—like happiness or luck. But meaning isn’t found, it’s built.

And the kind of meaning you build depends on what game you’re playing.

The problem is, most people never question the game they’re in. They get stuck playing someone else’s version, optimizing for goals they never chose.

There are levels to this. Some people never make it past the first. Others chase the second their entire lives, thinking it’s the final level. A few keep going.

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

Level 1: Survival / Playing to not die.

Civilization is only three meals away from anarchy.

At the base level, meaning is simple: stay alive.

Your world is small—food, shelter, security. The basics. Maybe you don’t think about meaning at all. You’re too busy not dying.

100,000 years ago, evidence from sites like El Sidrón (Spain) shows Neanderthals practiced cannibalism, likely out of desperation during food shortages.

In chaotic prehistoric environments, women who attached themselves to powerful men—whether willingly or by force—had access to food, shelter, and protection from rival tribes or wild animals.

Early hunter-gatherer groups didn’t have legal systems. If someone had resources—food, shelter, mates—stronger individuals or tribes often took them by force. Throughout prehistory, if a tribe was defeated in battle, the men were often killed, while the women were absorbed into the victor’s group as concubines. Women who resisted might have been killed, but those who accepted concubinage could continue their bloodline.

Many prehistoric societies killed or abandoned weak babies and elderly people when resources were scarce. This was a brutal but practical way to ensure the survival of those most capable of contributing.

During the Great Depression, meaning for most people was simple: get through the day. The unemployment rate hit 25% in the U.S. in 1933. Millions stood in breadlines. They weren’t chasing passion projects or self-actualization. They just needed to eat.

During the French Revolution, the "peasantry" and "working class" rose up because they were starving. The revolution may have been framed as a battle for liberty, but at its core, people stormed the Bastille because they had no bread.

Today, we take survival for granted. But if you strip away modern comforts, meaning reverts to its rawest form: making it to tomorrow or {xyz} future date. This is part of the reason why humans discount the future, albeit at different rates depending on how secure they are vis a vis survival.

If you strip away against the layers of abstractions that we as society have built to organize society and human behaviour, on a fundamental level, the percentage attribution of why people (and other living beings), organizations (entities, cabals) do the things they do and make the choices they do is usually above zero connected to survival.

Most people move beyond this. But some don’t. If your survival is at risk, it becomes the only thing that matters.

So what? A Swedish girl once called me super reductionist but I think viewing why people make the decisions they do through a survivalist lens can be a really good Occam's Razor-esque mental model to distill down to the core of why people behave the way they do. So many in this world are ruled by fear because it's effective. On an individualized, case by case, situational basis, threatening someone's survival is the fastest path to discern someone's true colours of how they'll behave when it matters. When their backs are against the wall. Also helps as a general heuristic to predict behaviour.

It also brings you great peace to realize that when people behave the way humans occasionally behave, it's not necessarily their fault, there's so much "nature" DNA already programmed in there and if the nurture environments didn't do enough programming into that being to overcome it, then the "nature" rules. It's legit hardwired inside us.

Examples: Girl leaving a guy because he showed weakness or she had access to a "better" man on factors that promote her survival.

Modern society is wrapped in layers of abstraction—laws, complex financial instruments, social norms, technology—but if you strip everything back, the core driver of human behavior is still survival. The difference is that “survival” has evolved beyond just food and physical safety to include social, economic, and psychological survival.

With these new levels of abstraction though, and the increasingly accelerating rate of additions of these levels, the bar of training and inoculation needed to merely survive and thrive since the moment of birth increases. Digital literacy, competency to harness artificially intelligence systems and armies of digital agents, social adaptability, financial literacy, algorithmic influence (people increasingly buy things online and soon AI will buy stuff for them), critical thinking, and the ability to navigate ever-shifting economic and geopolitical landscapes.

The problem is exponential acceleration. The skill sets required for survival in the 1950s are not the same as those needed today, and the gap between required knowledge and actual preparedness is widening.

The time required to train and equip oneself for mere survival keeps increasing, while the margin for error keeps shrinking. Many are left behind because the rate of change outpaces their ability to retool. Survival of the fittest as a model applies, as crude as it is.

The New Hunter-Gatherers: Those Who Can Exploit Systemic Complexity

In the past, survival was about physical resources—food, shelter, and security. Today, it’s about abstract resources—data, networks, and leverage.

• Hedge funds & quant traders are the modern-day equivalent of elite hunters, spotting inefficiencies in the financial ecosystem before others.

• Tech entrepreneurs & AI engineers function as resource hoarders, building moats around knowledge and systems to dominate industries.

• Social influencers & brand builders are the new tribal leaders, commanding loyalty and attention as the currency of influence.

Those who decode complexity and exploit it faster than others are the ones who thrive.

The Growing Divide: The Trained vs. The Untrained

As the barrier to mere existence and upward mobility keeps increasing, so does the divide between:

1. Those who train themselves to manipulate the system (the AI-literate, the financially savvy, the socially strategic).

2. Those who operate under old assumptions of survival (the job-dependent, the digitally illiterate, the unnetworked).

While the cost of learning these skills has dropped (thanks to the internet and AI tutors), the ability to sift through noise, self-educate, and execute is a skill in itself.

Survival Strategies in the New Era

• Hyperlearning – Becoming a rapid absorber of new systems before they reach critical mass (e.g., AI prompt engineering, decentralized finance, neurotechnology).

• Social Positioning – Cultivating networks, ensuring access to opportunities before they are publicly available.

• Capital Allocation Mastery – Understanding where money, power, and resources will flow before they do.

• Leverage Thinking – Identifying where the least effort produces the greatest impact—time is the most limited survival resource.

TL;DR – Survival Still Governs Everything

• Social survival → Status games, networking, clout chasing, relationship strategies

• Economic survival → Job competition, money hoarding, power consolidation

• Psychological survival → Self-deception, coping mechanisms, addiction

• Power survival → Political control, social engineering, elite consolidation

Level 2: Achievement / Playing to win.

 “A man’s worth is no greater than the worth of his ambitions.”

This is where most people get stuck.

At this level, meaning comes from winning. Money, status, career, external validation. It’s about proving yourself—to others, to yourself, to some invisible scoreboard.

This is the level society optimizes for. It’s where all the obvious incentives point:

• Work harder.

• Get promoted.

• Build wealth.

• Be successful.

This level is fun. It’s rewarding. But it’s also a trap. If you never move beyond it, you end up like the billionaire who’s still competing, long after he’s won the game.

Level 3: Connection / Playing to belong.

“The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships.”

At some point, achievement stops being enough. You have money, success, validation. Now what?

You start to realize meaning isn’t something you can earn. It’s something you build with other people.

This is where relationships start to matter more—friends, family, deep partnerships. Meaning shifts from “What have I built?” to “Who am I building with?”

A lot of people stop here. And that’s fine. For many, this is enough. But some keep going.

Level 4: Mastery / Playing to win at playing.

 “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” —Aristotle

Some people aren’t satisfied with just connection. They want more.

This is where meaning comes from growth, excellence, and understanding. Not just achieving, but mastering. Not just knowing, but learning at the highest level.

This is where you get:

• The scientist chasing the edge of discovery.

• The artist pushing a craft to its limits.

• The athlete training not for competition, but for pure self-improvement.

It’s meaning, but it’s still personal. Some people want to go beyond that.

Level 5: Creation / Playing to create and outlast the human body's biology.

“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” —Greek Proverb

At this level, meaning comes from building things that outlive you.

You stop thinking about what you can accomplish and start thinking about what you can create.

This is where legacies are built:

• The entrepreneur creating a generational company.

• The writer whose ideas shape minds long after they’re gone.

• The inventor designing systems that change the world.

People at this level aren’t just playing the game. They’re changing the game itself.

But some people start to wonder if even this is enough.

Level 6: Understanding / Playing to see the game behind the game.

“To understand the limits of your own understanding is the first sign of intelligence.” —Socrates

This is where you start asking bigger questions.

Why does any of this matter? What’s actually going on here? What’s the game behind the game?

You start thinking in abstractions:

• Consciousness, existence, the nature of reality.

• The limits of human knowledge.

• What’s real vs. what’s just a story we tell ourselves.

This is the level of philosophers, scientists, mystics, and system-builders. It’s no longer about what you can do, but what’s true.

For some, this is the final level. For others, there’s one more.

Level 7: Transcendence / Playing to stop playing.

 “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” —Lao Tzu

At this level, meaning stops being about doing anything at all.

You stop trying to optimize, compete, or even build. You let go of personal identity. You stop seeing yourself as a separate player in the game and start seeing everything as connected.

This is where you get:

• The Zen master who no longer chases anything.

• The person who’s completely at peace, no matter what happens.

• The flow-state thinker who operates at a different frequency than everyone else.

Most people never reach this level. And that’s fine. You don’t need to. But once you see it, it changes how you think about all the others.