On Ambition
For those of us that live in the West, our age is one where achievement, impact, and ambition are its highest values. Evidence of this can be found everywhere, from the declining birth rate, to the high flying rhetoric of Silicon Valley, to the philosophy of “workism”. I’m talking about things like this:
It can even be found in the domain of ethics — effective altruism, even Engaged Buddhism — the current vogue is to maximize one’s positive effect on the world.
Readers of this substack will know that I’ve repeatedly expressed concern and skepticism regarding this view (see: here, here, or here). From my own struggles with workism in the past, I think this ambition has a few different emotional sources:
Need to feel worthy or loved - This is straight out of the Drama of the Gifted Child. The idea is that some people’s parental environments teach them that they are only worthy of love if they are exemplary in some way. People internalize that and spend their lives compulsively seeking achievement to fill that hole1.
Fear - You can also internalize a sense of insecurity that seemingly can only be resolved by some form of achievement. The fear could be a fear of being a bad person (in the case of ethical ambition). It could be a fear about the future of humanity (e.g. fears of AGI, or global warming). Or it could be a fear about one’s tenuous place in society, caused by widening inequality, the intensifying of competition in late capitalism, or the housing crisis. There is no shortage of objective reasons why one might be afraid and think that huge gains in esteem or material wealth might assuage that fear.
Greed - Of course greed is a ubiquitous human impluse not unique to our own age, but one could argue that social media and a subsequent increase in various forms of social comparison has exacerbated this tendency.
Now, it might be easy enough to stop here, but life is more complicated than that2. In the Tantric view we say that everything is included - that every human impulse, every part of our own Shadow, can be liberated as a force for the benefit of all sentient beings. In that spirit, I want to suggest we find a way to rehabilitate ambition as a force for good, and not simply dismiss it so we can all go tend our proverbial gardens.
Because we have to contend with the fact that aspiration and ambition can also be extremely positive. A few years ago I watched a video lecture from Agnes Callard about her work on aspiration3. She categorized some normative ethical theories as being about the “top” or “bottom” of morality. Some ethical theories are about the top of morality — they contend that you can be better by doing more of something, e.g. maximizing happiness globally in utilitarianism. People who maximize good more are better than others that maximize less well4. Other moral systems are about the bottom - they set a floor of dignity or rights that all human beings share in by virtue of being human, e.g. deontological theories like Kantian ethics. Her point was that there’s an irresolvable tension there — that the top of morality can trample on individual rights, and the bottom of morality leaves no room for aspiration or greatness. This is a great way of characterizing bigness/smallness as I’ve put it.
A similar idea can be found in Chinese philosophy - the notion of heaven, earth, and humanity (Tian, Ren, Di). As Chogyam Tungpa puts it in his book Shambala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior5:
Heaven, earth, and humanity can be seen literally as the sky above, the earth below, and human beings standing or sitting between the two. Traditionally, heaven is the realm of the gods, the most sacred space. So symbolically, the principle of heaven represents any lofty ideal or experience of vastness and sacredness. The grandeur and vision of heaven are what inspire human greatness and creativity. Earth, on the other hand, symbolizes practicality and receptivity. It is the ground that supports and promotes life. Earth may seem solid and stubborn, but earth can be penetrated and worked on. Earth can be cultivated. The proper relationship between heaven and earth is what makes the earth principle pliable. You might think of the space of heaven as very dry and conceptual, but warmth and love also come from heaven. Heaven is the source of the rain that falls on the earth, so heaven has a sympathetic connection with earth. When that connection is made, then the earth begins to yield. It becomes gentle and soft and pliable, so greenery can grow on it and humanity can cultivate it.
Chögyam, Trungpa. Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (Shambhala Classics) (p. 145).
As humans we stand between these two views - the grounded, practical, receptive, small view of the earth, and the vast, sacred aspirational view of heaven. So how do we resolve this tension? How can we harness the view of Heaven in a way that maximizes its benefit, without destroying ourselves or undermining the foundation of human dignity?
The first thing you have to do is let the self get out ot the way. As I wrote about in my essay about Buddhist ethics - you start by coming from awake awareness. You work through and liberate the energy of the personal traumas / karma that animated your ambition in the first place. And then with that liberated energy, manifesting as beneficent space, you look around and see how your unique position and capacities can translate to the benefit of others. You might find that your capacities can help enable good at some kind of scale - of the five Buddha energies, this is Ratna. Maybe you can build something of use - if so, you shouldn’t avoid that. But it’s not going to be out of fear, or greed or a need to be loved. To act from self in that way is to invite personal and interpersonal problems and potentially act in ways that harm the very people you are trying to help.
I want to further suggest that the idea of situatedness, this earth energy, can, in fact, also be brought to bear on ambition to clarify it, and make it more effective. In fact, in the entrepreneurship space6, if you read what many guides to starting a business tell you (e.g. The Mom Test), what they are saying is that to be successful you need to start small. Specifically, what you need to do is to suspend your own pre-existing, high-level, zoomed out beliefs about a situation, and instead get really really close to people and understand them as well as you can. You are supposed to go super deep into their worldview and mindset and really understand the problem they face and how they are currently coping - i.e. “start with a problem.” It could be that in the end the solution ends up having a huge impact - it’s not that one should resist the idea of scale, but that’s not where you start out. Now of course, as one scales one might find that the impact doesn’t scale along with it — the field of developmental economics and public policy are littered with interventions that seemed good in a field study and then failed when expanded. This is not a panacea - but you have a much better chance of succeeding if you get as close to people as you can.
Of course anyone who has been through this kind of trauma knows that you have to grieve the lack of love you received and that you can’t heal past lacking with present day achievements.
To say something nice about EAs - there’s some real moral entrepreneurship there, and it’s done some really great things. People are donating their kidneys to strangers!
I spent way too much time trying to dig up the video of her talk - it was at MIT I am pretty sure, but I couldn’t find it.
Reminds me of that line from Silcon Valley (the TV show): I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do.
Problematic teacher, of course, but this book is profound — there’s a reason Michael Taft and Charlie Awbery hail it.
Didn’t think you would go to a Buddhist blog for startup advice, did you?
Ok first of all, I want to thank you for writing and being open and courageous. You are asking a great question.
The first thing I wonder is what happens when we look closely at the aversion at being a virgin / desire for sex and deconstruct it a bit. Fair warning, this probably won't feel good. What is that feeling exactly? Is it a desire for sensory pleasure? I doubt it's just that but my experience is that there are pleasures as good or frankly better than sex available to an individual. I think it's more than that though. Is it a desire for intimacy and connection? That too seems like there are other avenues of fulfillment but maybe it's not the same as romance. Is it about a feeling of shame or stigma? Is there anger as well, a feeling of it being unfair or having been wronged? Is there sadness or grief at the way things are? Really feel into that feeling, if you are able to. Feeling those feelings is essential. Depending upon which feelings are present, there are different ways you might work with it, both on the practical and somatic/energetic level.
On the somatic level, you might find as you work with these feelings and experience them as intimately as possible, that you can endure them. They aren't actually harming you in any fundamental way. They can't actually harm you. In fact they can be the doorways to wisdom and self betterment ultimately.
The view from emptiness/wisdom is to see these emotional manifestations as not entirely real. They are stories we tell and labels we give to an ever changing swirling set of experiences. Now in practice this is tricky as fuck, I admit- but broadly the Buddhist move is to be able to first let go of your desire. That doesn't mean trying to squash it - you are letting it be as it is. But you aren't grasping at it and embellishing it or fixating on it either. Letting go is a kind of equanimity. It's always most difficult to let go of unfulfilled as opposed to fulfilled desires because of the mind's tendency to build up the unknown. And there's a paradox here too - it's when you are able to accept things for how they are that the possibility for change emerges. And annoyingly it has to be real acceptance. Not acceptance with a knife behind your back, secretly hoping for change. In the long long run you may even come to see your challenges as the doorways to liberation but right now that may look cruel , naive or stupid, understandably so.
On a relative level then you have to deal with all the difficult feelings though. Most obviously first by grieving your loss, finding the tenderness and love at the bottom of it and then creating a foundation for loving others via self love. Buddhist compassion practices, like tonglen or metta are good for this. Then with that foundation you can work on more relative aspects of things that will conventionally make one more attractive. Theres a grain of truth in the advice to become desirable. That might involve learning to listen deeply and knowing what true friendship is. Participating and contributing meaningfully to a community. Cultivating deep interests and hobbies. Whatever you are capable of and contributes to your own inner dignity and self respect. Never coming from that instrumental place to the extent that is possible. I'm trying not to overindex on this Jordan Peterson pull your pants up stuff. I think this kind of stuff is secondary. It's like with Buddhist ethics - these qualities naturally emerge more and more as you work with it on the ultimate level.
And on the other side of it, regardless of whether you remain a virgin or not - the energy of that desire can be liberated, not destroyed, and channelled in a positive way as a force for real intimacy and connection between you and other people.
Pretty timely, as I have several big ambitions, that have nothing to do with those in the chart. Most relevant is (let's just put it out there) figuring out how to stop being a 35 year old virgin. This stuff about liberating the energy of past traumas seems very relevant here, as I do feel a lot of energy and pain from my shadow regarding regarding the barriers that have made everything interpersonal be so difficult for me.
Now, I'm not asking for help regarding my particular predicament (though if you have advice it would be appreciated), but I'm wondering about where the rubber meets the road regarding what you said here and in the article on ethics regarding the broader problem of people in my boat, the incels.
How does Buddhist ethics help someone like that? My impression of them is that there is a lot to work through in their shadow. They kind of remind me of the homeless drug addicts I work with, people who were just relentlessly pummeled by life.
It's just that I feel discussions like these are often too abstract, and I feel would benefit from being grounded in something more concrete. Did you ever write about this process of working through the energy of personal trauma?