I frame it a little differently. “Self” is the scarce resource. Self-sacrifice can be evaluated just like spending/losing (sacrificing) any other scarce and valuable resource. Is the benefit/impact greater than the next-best thing you could do with that resource?
As you point out in your examples, the answer is mostly “no”. You’re usually better off accumulating more self (becoming stronger), and then leveraging that to get more result with less sacrifice. The balance may change as you age, and the future rewards of self-preservation get smaller as your expected future self-hours decrease. But even toward end-of-life, the things often visible as self-sacrifice remain low-impact and don’t rise above the alternate uses of self.
I frame it a little differently. “Self” is the scarce resource. Self-sacrifice can be evaluated just like spending/losing (sacrificing) any other scarce and valuable resource. Is the benefit/impact greater than the next-best thing you could do with that resource?
As you point out in your examples, the answer is mostly “no”. You’re usually better off accumulating more self (becoming stronger), and then leveraging that to get more result with less sacrifice. The balance may change as you age, and the future rewards of self-preservation get smaller as your expected future self-hours decrease. But even toward end-of-life, the things often visible as self-sacrifice remain low-impact and don’t rise above the alternate uses of self.