Making decisions with guidance from Babylon 5's Key Questions

 

Making decisions with guidance from Babylon 5's Key Questions

by Jen Davies, nerd

Nov 19, 2025

In the metaplot for sci-fi epic TV series Babylon 5 (B5 for short), set on the eponymous space station built by humans as a diplomacy and trade gesture with the rest of the known galaxy, we are introduced to (more than) three sentient species, each of which is characterized by a key question:

Vorlons: Who are you?

Shadows: What do you want?

Humans*: Why are you here?

*This question is gifted to humans by the last surviving member of the most ancient alien species at the peak of the meta-level action in the series.

Let's examine these questions through the lens of the B5 origins of each question and how those scenarios are a lot like real life. As a counsellor I walk people through these questions fairly often, without the sci-fi spin (usually). Then we’ll examine how anyone can use these questions to make better-informed decisions about life.

Vorlons: Who are you?

In the B5 setting the Vorlons are the oldest known sentient, spacefaring species that still survives. They have just one planet, and they don't generally interact with the other species except for rare ambassadors like the one embedded in the Babylon 5 station. Said ambassador is known as Kosh. Just Kosh, and when the station commander presses him in one episode for information about his people he says: “We are all Kosh.” We never get much explanation although we get the idea that the Vorlons are very psychic, we can hypothesize that there's a shared consciousness or hive mind kind of thing happening. In other words, if there are individual Vorlons, what we know is that they feel like they are the same as one another. Their answer to the question they ask everyone, “who are you?”, is unsatisfying to themselves. Although they know their own answer well.

There are many ways we humans can answer this question for ourselves. With my educational background in psychology I am always inclined to spend at least a moment on personality. Personality is a set of characteristics that tend to be fairly stable across the lifespan. These are understood to be about half hereditary, so these factors can even be observed in infants. One of the most researched and cross culturally validated models of personality is the Big Five: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness, Consciousness, and Agreeableness. You can read more about them here. https://www.truity.com/blog/page/big-five-personality-traits

Another helpful thing to know about yourself in order to improve your life and career decision-making is what your strengths are. Those are the basic, unrefined skills that you arrived in the world with. Like personality, these are strongly hereditary and the environment affects how well we learn to express them. One of the best researched models is the Clifton/Gallup model: https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/253715/34-cliftonstrengths-themes.aspx and the groups of strengths include Relationship building, Strategic thinking, and Executing plans/tasks. 

From my 15+ years of experience as a career counsellor, and in the research on what goes into effective career and life decisions, probably the most important factor is values. We will look at those next 

Shadows: What do you want?

The Shadows are another of the ancient sentient species, which has been (unsurprisingly) hiding for thousands of years. Only the Vorlons have firsthand knowledge of them, and other older species had legends about them. Humans are too “young” in this setting to have ever interacted with them before. They are predictably antagonists, and they want to rebuild an empire they once had through proxy states that they control like puppet masters behind the scenes. Their key question, the one they used to figure out how to coerce individuals and people into actions that benefit them is, “what do you want?”

The Shadow representative we get to know, Mr. Mordan, doesn't let his targets settle for small wants, and in the conversations we hear in the most depth he pushes them to express their values. The most dangerous wish that any character makes is by Ambassador Molari, who asks for his people’s empire to be restored to glory. That the galaxy respects and admires the Centauri Empire matters to Molari, and that's a value. Values are broad ideas that are important to us, and things that matter are often tied up into deeply held feelings.

There are any number of values that one can use to make life and career decisions, for example: https://www.careeronestop.org/ExploreCareers/Assessments/work-values.aspx 

As a counsellor I find that one of the best ways to find out what values are important to someone is to ask them about what they want! For example, a lot of people will say they want to make a lot of money, and the key to values is to find out why. Some answers are sweet, like: I want to let my parents retire comfortably. That's valuing family. I want to be able to save a lot of money for rainy days. That's valuing stability. I want to have a nice car/visible signs of wealth. That's valuing prestige. The top people in my field earn the most money. That's valuing respect.

Gifted to Humans: Why are you here?

The most powerful question from a decision-making perspective is this one. Purpose is a key factor in driving us to take the action necessary to accomplish goals, so making choices that align with our sense of purpose and motivations is really helpful. 

How do I figure out my purpose? Some people find it helpful to reflect on it, maybe in writing so you can capture your ideas. Other people find it helpful to talk with others to get different lenses on their ideas. It takes time and some experience with the world helps too. As an example, I always knew that my career would be invested in helping others to grow and improve, and I thought it would be as a counsellor. I realized as I started my career that helping one individual at a time meant that my reach would be limited, so instead I pursued work opportunities where I could influence larger numbers of people through a team, and through teaching. My purpose remains to help people to grow, through the other professionals whose work I am supporting.

In addition to the kinds of reflection already described you could also look for role models: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/seven_ways_to_find_your_purpose_in_life It can be helpful to examine the ways other people you admire approach their purpose. As an example, I had some really good managers early in my career, and I saw how they were leveraging their strong relationship building skills (like mine) for cultivating teams of people, which meant they were having even more reach (growing their team members as well as the clients those team members served). I loved that, so it became part of my purpose. Then I was helped to see that some clients did not have access to the same opportunities as others due to sociological issues related to power and privilege, and it became part of my mission to take action on that too.

There you have it - not only was Babylon 5 advanced in its storytelling (a complete 5-season arc had been written in the hope it would get them all - it got squished into four and then expanded but still: it was there to guide the show and you can tell from the tight coherence), and even the computer-generated graphics at the time, B5 managed to ask really important questions for the characters - and us - to try to answer.

If you’ve never watched B5, I strongly encourage it. The characters are wonderful, and the performances exceptional. These scenes may show you why B5 was such a masterpiece: https://youtu.be/pJmuHNDcXLQ and https://youtu.be/G8gHtX6d2wg 

#babylon5 #scifigenius #careerquestions