Friday, December 21, 2007

On Ambition

It's good for you if you like it, but do remember it's not there because you like it.

Economic growth is no longer a matter of choice. It's no longer optional. It's a political imperative. Similarly, and consequently, ambition is not optional for individuals anymore.

A tree that bears fruits is a good tree. An animal with a bulging udder is a good animal. The more fruit, the better the tree; the more the milk, the better the animal. 'Good' is a purely utilitarian concept, which reduces existence of a living being to mere usability. By the same token, if I don't have fruits, flesh or milk for others, and they tag me 'bad'. But why must it bother me? Do we live to please others? Perhaps yes. That's why we die to be good student in institutes, good employee in organization, and good consumer in market.

Do ambitious people live a better life? Or a more meaningful life? I don't think so. I don't think Alexander was great, and I don't think his life was meaningful. Ambition is just an acceptable and a more sophisticated term for greed. Fathered by a complex, it further fathers complex. It spreads like a communicable disease. That's what ambition is - a communicable disease.

Besides, I often feel that the ambition that we call ours is not really ours. We carry out someone else’s ambition like our own, and worse - at expense of our own. The question to be asked is – whose ambition is my ambition?

Coming back to growth, it's like love making or rape depending on the consent of the other. One is led to thinks why someone would be so much interested in others' growth? Whose growth is it?

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