Description
Every day we're bombarded with methods, mantras, life hacks and coaching sessions that promise us mindfulness, prosperity and wellness. We read countless self-help books to unlock the seven habits, twelve rules or one big secret to living a long and happy life, while time and talent remain some of our most squandered resources. The average full-time worker will spend 80,000 hours at their job: are you making the most of them? Do you truly believe in what you do, day in day out?
Maybe you want to do something else with your limited time on the planet. Maybe your own happiness isn't your only life goal, or you don't want to get to your deathbed with the gnawing feeling you had much more in you. In that case, you'll need a different kind of book.
Internationally bestselling author Rutger Bregman shows us that with moral ambition - the will to make the world a wildly better place - it is possible to be both idealistic and successful, and to change the world along the way. Looking to the great change-makers of history, he uncovers the qualities that made them so persuasive, influential and effective, and shows how we, too, can lend our talents to the biggest challenges of our time, from climate change to gross inequality to the next pandemic. With moral ambition, we can do more than be on the right side of history: we can make history itself.
This is not a self-help book. It won't make your life easier - but it should make it more meaningful. The question is: what will you do with it?
Reviews
Meri's Review from the newletter:
Halfway through the critical decade for climate action, a book with the subtitle “Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference” is bound to garner interest.
Moral Ambition is the third book from Dutch historian Rutger Bregman, whose earlier works Utopia for Realists (2014) and Humankind, A Hopeful History (2020) were both NY Times best sellers. His appeal lies in being a “realistic revolutionary” and in this chatty, wry and highly readable book, Bregman is clearly aiming to expand global capacity for his type. He targets those in what he calls the Bermuda Triangle of talent – consultants, corporate lawyers and financiers, who he believes should be working on the world’s most vexing problems. Instead, these wasted talents are doing the easiest of “right things” (sorting our rubbish, using a keep cup, driving an EV, being a keyboard warrior) but then dumping more complex ambitious progressive values at the door of the workplace each day with the excuse that the mortgage and the private school fees won’t pay themselves. “Bullshit jobs” get some tough scrutiny - influencers, marketeers and lobbyists also fall into this category Bregman says, as they are “all people who could go on strike and the world would be just fine.” It is these people who are being invited to nurture their moral ambition. Moral ambition is described as the nexus of the idealism of an activist and the ambition of an entrepreneur and is accompanied, Bregman says, with a shot of vanity. He cites this “humblebrag” of his personal hero, Quaker abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who wrote that “he’d obediently given up his worldly ambitions to follow the path God laid out for him” as an example. Rubbish, says Bregman, “What could be more momentous than the fight to end slavery?”. So what is his solution to the malaise of the bullshit job? Build a community (Chapter 3 “Join a Cult or start your own”), get informed about what the world really needs from you (Ch7) and do something that will benefit future generations (Ch10). In Moral Ambition our excuses are exposed, our capacity revealed, our passion to do good is ignited…and yet, a morally ambitious paradise has not been entirely well received since publication. There’s been a fair bit of backlash against Bregman’s premise – he’s accused of being “rich and successful enough to be moral”, “A PR machine for elite redemption” and moral ambition is called “a luxury lifestyle pivot” … but even after considering the truth in those accusations, there is still value in work that speaks to a person at the exact right time they need the message. Humanity will never be a homogenised group of like-minded saints working towards the highest purpose with purest intent. And no book speaks to EVERYONE. However, Rutger Bregman shares a convincing perspective with his desired audience – if he can redirect some of the good minds that spend all day trying to make us click on ads into people who want to stand up and be counted in this critical moment for the planet, that’s a worthy outcome.
'An almost indecently readable style' Jonathan Freedland ... 'One of the best young writers we have' Owen Jones ... '21st-century readers are short on prophets, especially the optimistic kind, and will give this one a cheerful hearing' Economis
