[imtringued]

I don't get it. Whatever you call "stakes" is just a personal goal set by yourself. It is by definition imaginary. An athlete cares about winning in sports competitions because he put a lot of work in it. In other words the athlete created his own stakes and conditioned himself to believe a certain thing is important. I don't care because I decided to not create these stakes for myself and therefore athletic performance is not very important.

The survival instinct is also a stake that living things create for themselves.