What I Want to Do

We visited my parents for Thanksgiving last week. On my dad's whiteboard he had written "IKIGAI" and underneath it was "the reason you get up in the morning." I spent a long time trying to figure out what the acronym meant. The best I could come up with was "I Know I Got An..." but I didn't know what the end would be. I asked my dad and he said, "You're overthinking this. It's a Japanese word: 'ikigai'" (Wikipedia, "Ikigai").I asked, "What does it mean?" He said, "It says it right there." So what I took to be some cryptic message was in fact as clear as could be.

Others call this idea a "massive transformative purpose." I get an e-mail newsletter from Peter Diamandis and he had something a couple weeks ago about finding others with similar passions (Wikipedia, "Peter Diamandis"). So what is it that I want to do? What is my ikigai?

In the fourth chapter of the Book of the Acts we read "And the whole gathering of believers was of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of his belongings were his own, but they had everything in common" (Wayment, p. 216). Other scripture tells us of other such societies, but scripture doesn't meet the modern historian's standard for sources, and they are quite reticent regarding how these societies came to be. What's more, modern economic theory tells us that such societies are not stable equilibria. People are motivated by self-interest, not altruism.

I want to understand what assumptions and motivations are necessary to create voluntary collectivist/communalist/communitarianist societies. That is my ikigai, my massive transformative purpose. That's why I became an economist and that's what I think about when I don't have to think about anything. I want to discover the economic principles that will allow such a society to exist, grow, and thrive.

Wayment, Thomas A. The New Testament: A Translation for Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City, Deseret Book: 2019.