What motivates people to want to be part of or to champion grandeur causes outside of themselves?

 

Margaret Heffernan in Uncharted How to Navigate the Future calls these cathedral projects where potentially insoluble questions are being solved all over the world.

“What they will find, whether they will discover anything, how long it will take, how much it will cost, and how much value will be produced: all of this is uncertain; it can’t be planned, predicted or forecast.”

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world's largest center for scientific research. CERN is a cathedral project, a phrase borrowed from Stephen King to describe projects that are destined to last longer than life time as symbols of faith and human imagination.

For many people, finding such a purpose is important for the fulfillment of their life, leaving their stamp for a little bit longer than others.