The shape of what matters

Everything you care about has a shape.

Stake-Geometry is a way of seeing the structure of what matters to you: how many things you hold, how deeply, how far they reach, and whether they hold together. It comes with a free self-survey that draws your own shape.

About 15 minutes. Free. Private to you.
Your stake-geometry™
BreadthDepth Reach · timeReach · distance Reach · othersCoherence Opennessillustrative shape

The idea

A naturalistic account of where value comes from, built from a single starting point: if something matters to someone, that mattering is real.

Read the idea →

See your own shape

A guided self-survey that maps the breadth, depth, and reach of what you care about, then draws it as one picture you can revisit.

Take the survey →

The whole picture

An interactive map of the framework: the aperture, the network of others, the tiers of value, and how a shape grows or collapses.

Explore the map →
Where value comes from

Where good and bad live.

Think of something you love. Now picture it gone. That drop in your chest is not an opinion about the world. It is the world mattering to you, from the inside.

That is where good and bad come from. Not a rulebook in the sky, but the plain fact that things can matter to someone. A rock cannot be wronged. A person can, because a person can feel it.

Once you look at value this way, the things you care about turn out to have a structure, and a shape. It can grow over a lifetime, or collapse under grief, fear, or depression. The survey draws your shape. The framework explains why it is worth looking at.

The framework gives this shape a name and hands it to you to measure: your stake-geometry™. Everything else is built from there.
The five dimensions

Five ways a life can matter.

The shape has five dimensions. The survey scores each one and draws them together. Reach is measured three ways, which is why the picture has seven spokes.

01

Breadth

How many different things matter to you at all.

02

Depth

How much any one of them can matter.

03

Reach

How far your stakes extend across time, distance, and abstraction.

04

Coherence

Whether what you care about holds together or pulls against itself.

05

Openness

Whether your commitments update with new experience.

The instrument

See your own shape.

The instrument walks you through what matters to you, one area at a time, then draws it as a seven-spoke shape you can read at a glance and return to as you change.

You create a free account with an email and password, and your answers save to it as you go — sign in from any device and pick up where you left off.

Begin the survey
Private to your account. Export or delete your results anytime.
Your shape (green) and how today's mood colors it (dashed)

Where to start.

New to this

The idea, in plain language

The shortest path into what the framework claims and why it matters.

Philosophers

The argument, step by step

The logical spine, the tiers of value, and where the framework concedes ground.

Clinicians

Collapse, elaboration, and mental health

Reading depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction as changes in shape.

Morality without religion

Right and wrong, grounded

A secular account of morality that does not bottom out in "because I said so."

Stay in touch

Follow the work as it develops.

The framework, the library, and the instrument are all revised in the open. Leave an email to hear when something substantial lands.

No spam. Occasional notes as the framework develops.