My son Ari is playing on his middle school’s E-Sports Team. Each week, he and his classmates log on to play Super Smash Brothers against kids from other schools. Their uniforms are school-branded hoodies with their names printed on the back.
At first, it felt weird. A school E-Sports team? I’d always thought about sports as a physical thing where the coach would run him so ragged outside that he’d come home tired enough to fall asleep in his soup. Sports were supposed to leave him sore and grass-stained, not sitting in a classroom tapping buttons a controller.
But the more he played, the more I understood what was going on. He was learning the same lessons in E-Sports as any other sport: practice, teamwork, the highs of winning, the sting of losing. It had the same ingredients as a middle school soccer team, just translated into a new format. What mattered wasn’t what they were doing, but how they were doing it.
Watching Ari on the team got me thinking differently about sports altogether. I used to believe that sports had some kind of built-in logic—that somehow it made sense to kick a ball into a net or throw a ball into a 10 foot basket. But when I pulled back, I realized that those goals are no more “natural” than deciding who can click fastest. We made them up, and then we strove to be the best at them.
That’s what sports really are: artificial goals. We invent a challenge—get the ball in the hoop, shave a second off your time, climb a rank in Smash—and then we care deeply about it. We try, we train, we push ourselves. And somehow, these invented struggles become meaningful. The goal might be made up, but the effort is real.
But if these goals are artificial, does that mean they’re meaningless? Should we stop caring about sports altogether? Not at all. As it turns out, these artificial goals are key to happiness. In his book Deep Utopia, Nick Bostrom talks about this idea. He imagines a future where AI handles everything—work, survival, creativity, even relationships. And in that world, where there’s nothing left we have to do, Bostrom says we’ll still need artificial goals. Not because they’re necessary in any practical sense, but because humans need things to strive for. We need to choose some goals and test ourselves against them.
Even today, beyond basic food, clothing, and shelter, there’s very little that we actually need to survive. Artificial goals provide the discipline of purpose—but only if we choose them well. By default, we’re stuck with bad artificial goals. We chase promotions we don’t want, obsess over app streaks, scroll for likes, or buy things just to keep up with people we don’t even talk to. But when we choose good artificial goals—ones that align with our values—something shifts.
We start setting challenges that align with who we are and who we want to become. We train for a half-marathon, not to prove anything, but to feel our body get stronger. We learn a language so we can talk to our grandmother in her native tongue. We read fifty books in a year because it makes the world feel bigger. We take on creative projects—writing, painting, coding, gardening—not for recognition, but because the work itself is satisfying. These goals are still made up—but they make us up too. Because when everything is optional, what we choose to care about defines us. They shape our days with intention.
The world of E-Sports may be virtual, but the effort is real. The learning is real. The pride is real. Ari’s playing a sport—just not one we grew up with. But then again, every generation invents its own games. What matters is that he’s showing up, giving it his all, and learning to care about something bigger than himself. And that’s the kind of goal worth playing for.
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