Moral Ambition

Rutger Bregman makes a striking point in his book Moral Ambition: In the year 2025, we as humanity can do better to set more ambitious goals that, if achieved, would benefit us all. Think: revitalization of medicine, engineering, science, discovery, entrepreneurship, and policy making. It is so easy to focus on optimizing an individual’s quality of life (e.g., more income = greater stress buffer, more prestige = greater career mobility and flexibility) and to miss the “humankind forest for the individual trees”. In the West, this is largely the air we breathe: individual optimization over collective collaboration. There are pros and cons of both societal philosophies, but the argument Bregman makes in this book is that more of us could be shaping our careers around common societal goals and values that are not zero-sum propositions. Whether you agree with each of Bregman’s assertions or not, hopefully you will find that this work can challenge your beliefs about what’s possible when more people choose to pursue individual + moral ambition over simply individual ambition.