It's not the case for everyone, but for a lot of people, participating in something that they perceive as bigger than themselves is really important. They want to leave a tiny mark that goes beyond their own life in some way in terms of reach or in terms of time.

Sometimes it's religion, sometimes it's patriotism, sometimes it's a certain political/ideological movement, sometimes it's a professional guild, sometimes it is advancing technology, sometimes it is advancing art, etc. Could be any number of things.

Mine is mixed, but it's basically the intersection of technology and human rights. I want to support technologies like Bitcoin and Nostr and others that empower individualism and human rights. People should be able to engage in transfers of information and commerce largely unrestricted. They should be able to protect themselves from currency dilution. They should be able to do this regardless of their race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or whatever, as long as they are not actively trying to hurt others. It should require probable cause and the allocation of deliberate resources and time by authorities to prevent bad people from doing these things, rather than being automatically applied to everyone as a matter of course. And this can't really be asked for; the technology has to be built and shared so that the burden of difficulty is on those trying to make it otherwise.

And for me, that means educating people about these technologies, providing capital or economic guidance to people these technologies, otherwise doing whatever small part I can to help improve the success or adoption of these technologies.

Other than that, I just want to leave my little slice of the world better than I found it. I want to help rather than hurt. I want to beautify rather than destroy. I want to unify differing views through objectivity and open talk and help create collaboration and coexistence, rather than sow unnecessary division. This doesn't scale as well and can't win as decisively as technology can, so it's mainly just my side thing.

What's yours? What is the thing(s) that you want to participate in that are bigger than yourself?