Ambition is a desire; the desire to increase your status and do better.
Behaving ambitiously can be rational even if you don’t have any ambition; if you wish to earn a lot of money to give to charity for instance, ambitious behaviour can be beneficial.
However, if your goals don’t coincide with those that ambitious behaviour can help, there’s no reason to seek ambition.
tl;dr: ambition is neither rational nor irrational. It is, like all desires, arational.
I think I agree with you. But don’t you have some control over your desires? Most people are enslaved by their status seeking. I can’t stop laughing at those guys with brand new expensive basketball shoes who carefully wipe away every smudge! It’s the same for McMansions, Jaguars, Ralph Lauren clothes, and even MacBooks. If you fancy yourself a reasonable person, then you have to question your pursuit of status.
I think I agree with you. But don’t you have some control over your desires?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
More importantly, sometimes you don’t want to.
Imagine that all you want is status. Literally, your sole desire is to increase your status. Would it be rational to change that desire?
Well, will changing that desire help you win? Will it help you achieve your desires?… Will it help you increase your status?
Probably not.
However, you do have a point. If you desire primarily to be content in your life, but also desire to increase your status, you might be better off to get rid of the second desire, and just be content. Your primary desire might over-rule your secondary desire.
Possssssibly. Status is a lot more optional these days, when the living is easy and Western civilisation has a problem with too much food, than it’s ever been before in human history. So a desire for status within the tribe may not be presently optimal in terms of one’s other goals, but I do think it may be strong enough to actually count as a terminal goal, or damn close.
The problem you’re describing is like seeing all those fat people because their bodies still want to put aside stores for the hard times even though there’s way enough food.
Ambition is a desire; the desire to increase your status and do better.
Behaving ambitiously can be rational even if you don’t have any ambition; if you wish to earn a lot of money to give to charity for instance, ambitious behaviour can be beneficial.
However, if your goals don’t coincide with those that ambitious behaviour can help, there’s no reason to seek ambition.
tl;dr: ambition is neither rational nor irrational. It is, like all desires, arational.
I think I agree with you. But don’t you have some control over your desires? Most people are enslaved by their status seeking. I can’t stop laughing at those guys with brand new expensive basketball shoes who carefully wipe away every smudge! It’s the same for McMansions, Jaguars, Ralph Lauren clothes, and even MacBooks. If you fancy yourself a reasonable person, then you have to question your pursuit of status.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
More importantly, sometimes you don’t want to.
Imagine that all you want is status. Literally, your sole desire is to increase your status. Would it be rational to change that desire?
Well, will changing that desire help you win? Will it help you achieve your desires?… Will it help you increase your status?
Probably not.
However, you do have a point. If you desire primarily to be content in your life, but also desire to increase your status, you might be better off to get rid of the second desire, and just be content. Your primary desire might over-rule your secondary desire.
Possssssibly. Status is a lot more optional these days, when the living is easy and Western civilisation has a problem with too much food, than it’s ever been before in human history. So a desire for status within the tribe may not be presently optimal in terms of one’s other goals, but I do think it may be strong enough to actually count as a terminal goal, or damn close.
The problem you’re describing is like seeing all those fat people because their bodies still want to put aside stores for the hard times even though there’s way enough food.