Moral Ambition
Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making A Difference
Rutger Bregman
Translated by Erica Moore
Having read it
★★★★☆
Glad I read it and learned of its principles and guidance (and of a few poor attitudes and approaches I myself have held!) and the encouragement of getting off your high-horse about the purity of doing and achieving things and just getting on with it, is good, old and sound advice.
But, just not quite sure about the book’s worth beyond maybe just being a bit of a sales pitch for the author’s new thing: The School of Moral Ambition (QR code available for this after the book’s epilogue!).
Still, all these decent and productive means and methods can and do really bring alive and assist society and prove that to decentralise many things is a good thing for empowering people and societies, as long as better and more adaptable and resilient frameworks and rules and regulations from the state help that to happen and not wrapped in party political colours or election periods, nor that the market and its rampant capitalism is left to drive those kinds of attitudes and approaches alone but instead is better moulded and driven to be much more materialistic, not its unbidden, patronising and paternalistic current self!
A good passage
The truth is that money and moral ambition need each other. Philanthropy doesn’t have to get stuck in vanity and paternalism. It can lead to real systemic change, as long as you prioritise wisely and keep an eye out for damaging side effects. What’s more, private individuals are in a unique position to support unpopular causes – when government and business steer clear.
A second good passage
Most people don’t want to be saints – and rightly so. We’re on this earth to wonder and to wander, to seek and to sin. We’re here to live life. And it seems saints, in their all-encompassing love for humankind, understand little of what it is to be human.
A third good passage
‘One of the most difficult things,’ Nelson Mandela said after stepping down as South Africa’s president, ‘is not to change society, but to change yourself.’19
But if you manage to do it, and choose to go the moral ambition route, the ripple effect can be enormous. Your behaviour is contagious, so a better world does indeed begin with you. In fact, the fallacy that one individual can’t make a difference relies on a hyper-individualistic view of humanity. Humans are social creatures through and through, and that means your choices can in turn influence the choices of dozens, hundreds, or even millions of other people.