How to use your ambition for good | The Gray Area

Summary

In this engaging episode of The Gray Area Podcast, Sigal Samuel converses with historian and author Ruter Bregman about how to channel one’s ambition towards good. The discussion revolves around moral ambition and how to redirect talents and energies towards solving significant global challenges rather than getting stuck in socially pointless jobs. Bregman shares his insights on pursuing meaningful work, the pitfalls of following one's passion blindly, and the importance of joining movements that make impactful changes. The dialogue delves into the nuances of ambition, morality, and impact, with Bregman encouraging listeners to rethink what it means to lead a successful and fulfilling life. You will be inspired by the conversation to consider how your career choices reflect your values and ambitions.

Highlights

• Ruter Bregman advocates for moral ambition, urging people to redirect their talents towards solving global issues. 🌎
• He critiques the idea of blindly following one's passion and encourages aligning career choices with impactful work. 🎨
• Bregman emphasizes the importance of finding work that is both ambitious and idealistic. 🌟
• He introduces the School of Moral Ambition, aimed at fostering impressive talents to tackle significant problems. 🏆
• A light-hearted nod to Sigal Samuel’s past as a novelist, highlighting varied paths to finding meaningful work. 📚

Key Takeaways

• Rethink your ambition to focus on doing good rather than chasing status or wealth. 🌟
• Redirect your talents towards solving important global issues like climate change and pandemics. 🌍
• Think big, don't settle for mediocre jobs; strive for work that aligns with impactful goals. 🚀
• Joining a movement or cult (in the positive sense) can fuel your ambition for social change. ✊
• Knowing when you’ve done enough is subjective and depends on how much you wish to push yourself. 🎯

Overview

In "The Gray Area" podcast, Sigal Samuel engages in a thought-provoking discussion with historian Ruter Bregman on how to use ambition for good. Bregman’s philosophy centers on moral ambition, urging individuals to question the value of their jobs and redirect their efforts towards addressing global challenges. His insights challenge the conventional pursuit of wealth and status, proposing instead a focus on meaningful impact.

Bregman critically examines the notion of blindly following one's passion, suggesting it might lead people astray from meaningful work. He proposes an alternative model where individuals should explore how they can contribute to important causes rather than merely pursuing personal satisfaction. This vision encourages people to seek fulfillment through contributing to societal well-being.

The podcast introduces the concept of the School for Moral Ambition, a platform for talented individuals to unite in tackling significant global issues. This initiative reflects Bregman's commitment to fostering an ambitious and idealistic workforce dedicated to creating substantial positive change in the world. Through engaging dialogue, listeners are invited to reflect on their ambitions and the impact of their career choices.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:00: Introduction and Ambition's Worth The chapter 'Introduction and Ambition's Worth' challenges the conventional notions of success and ambition. It questions the value of striving for achievements that lack personal meaning or fulfillment, such as making PowerPoint presentations, writing unwanted reports, or selling unconvincing products. It highlights a societal pressure to achieve good grades, attend reputable schools, secure prestigious jobs, and pursue high salaries and status. While some thrive in this relentless pursuit, the chapter prompts reflection on what truly brings satisfaction and meaning to life.
• 02:00 - 04:00: Transition to Moral Ambition The chapter discusses the concept of questioning traditional measures of success such as high salaries or prestigious titles, which many find meaningless. It introduces the notion of shifting from mere ambition to moral ambition, which focuses on idealism rather than materialistic gains. The chapter reflects on the advice given by influencers to follow one's passion, embrace smaller scales of success, and engage in actions aligned with personal ideals, like practicing yoga, as a way to find true fulfillment.
• 04:00 - 06:00: Guest Introduction and Book Overview The chapter discusses the concept of channeling ambition towards meaningful goals, particularly those that benefit others. It questions the traditional measures of success and suggests a shift towards a more altruistic definition, especially in times of chaos and injustice.
• 06:00 - 08:30: Discussion on Socially Meaningless Jobs This chapter introduces Sigal Samuel and her guest, historian and author Ruter Bregman. The discussion revolves around the concept of measuring life success not by traditional metrics such as fame or fortune, but by the impact and good we do in the world. Bregman is known for his advocacy for fair taxation policies aimed at billionaires, which he famously vocalized at Davos.
• 08:30 - 12:00: On Being Morally Ambitious The chapter discusses the concept of 'Moral Ambition,' as introduced in a new book by an author named Ruter. The author promotes the idea of not wasting talents on insignificant tasks but instead focusing on making a positive impact in the world. He urges people to be both ambitious and idealistic in their approach to life, aiming to address major global issues like malaria, pandemics, and climate change. The chapter is an exploration of encouraging individuals to channel their energies into meaningful work that benefits society.
• 12:00 - 15:00: Role of Passion in Career The chapter discusses the concept of finding meaning in one's career, focusing on the role of passion. It questions whether work that aids the greatest number of people is the only path to meaningful work and explores various avenues that can contribute to a sense of fulfillment. The conversation is part of a broader exploration into the elements that make our lives feel meaningful, probing whether some paths to meaning are objectively better than others. The discussion features insights from Recker, the author of 'Moral Ambition.'
• 15:00 - 18:00: Framework for Moral Ambition The chapter discusses the concept of being morally ambitious, particularly within the context of modern economies. It highlights a study by two Dutch economists indicating that 25% of workers feel their jobs are socially meaningless or doubt the value of their roles. This statistic underscores the theme of wasted talent and the importance of pursuing work with social and moral purpose.
• 18:00 - 24:00: The Balance of Life and Morality The chapter discusses the high unemployment rates even among highly qualified individuals, such as those who graduated from prestigious universities like Harvard. These individuals often end up in consultancy or finance, which may not be the optimal use of their talents, especially considering the world's pressing challenges. The chapter raises questions about the best allocation of talented individuals in society and the greater good.
• 24:00 - 31:00: The Concept of Moral Circle Expansion The chapter discusses the multitude of global issues such as potential pandemics, deadly diseases like malaria and tuberculosis, and the breakdown of democracy that pose significant challenges to humanity. It highlights the frustration with the underutilization of human talent in addressing these problems. The chapter also touches upon the notion that while morality is crucial, it should not overshadow all other aspects.
• 31:00 - 37:00: School for Moral Ambition and Next Steps The chapter discusses the concept of moral ambition and its place in a well-rounded life. The speaker emphasizes the importance of balancing morality with other aspects of life such as family, friends, music, and art. They suggest that if individuals are pursuing a career, they should aim to do a lot of good through it. The chapter raises a question about whether professions like teaching or social work are seen as morally ambitious enough and acknowledges the number of people in the country already engaged in such roles.

How to use your ambition for good | The Gray Area Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 What do you want to look back on when you lie on your deathb? All the powerpoints you know you hated to make or all the reports you wrote that no one ever wanted to read. All the products that you didn't believe in that you still spend a lifetime selling. Seems pretty sad to me. We're told from a young age to achieve. Get good grades, get into a good school, get a good job, be ambitious about earning a high salary or a high status position. Some of us love this endless climb, but
• 00:30 - 01:00 lots of us, at least once in our lives, find ourselves asking, "What's the point of all this ambition? The fat salary or the fancy title? Aren't those pretty meaningless measures of success?" One proposed solution is to stop being ambitious and start being idealistic instead. You hear this from a lot of influencers. Follow your passion. Small is beautiful. The idea is that you should drop out of the capitalist rat race and do what you love, yoga maybe,
• 01:00 - 01:30 or watercolor painting, even if it makes very little positive impact on the world. But what if instead of trying to be less ambitious, we try to be more ambitious about the things that really matter, like helping others? In an era when there's so much chaos, injustice, and frankly a feeling of widespread despair, it's worth asking, what would the world look like if we start measuring our success not in terms of
• 01:30 - 02:00 fame or fortune, but in terms of how much good we do? I'm Sigal Samuel and this is the gray area. Today's guest is historian and author Ruter Bregman. He's probably best known for what he yelled at policy makers at Davos a few years ago, taxes, taxes, taxes. He's tried to get billionaires to pay their fair share in taxes. And he's also argued for other policies that could make life better for
• 02:00 - 02:30 everyone, like a universal basic income. Now, he's written a new book called Moral Ambition, which urges us to stop wasting our talents on meaningless work and start trying to do more good for the world. He wants us to be both ambitious and idealistic to devote ourselves to solving the world's biggest problems like malaria and pandemics and climate change. I invited Ruter on the show because I find his message
• 02:30 - 03:00 inspiring. And to be honest, I also have some questions about it. I want to dedicate myself to work that feels meaningful. But I'm not sure that work that helps the greatest number of people is the only way to do that. So in this conversation, we'll explore all the different things that can make our lives feel meaningful and ask, are some objectively better than others? Hey Recker, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Good to see you. Your book is called Moral Ambition. Why should people
• 03:00 - 03:30 be morally ambitious? My whole career I've been fascinated with the waste of talent that is going on in modern economies. There's this one study from two Dutch economists done a couple of years ago and they estimate that around 25% of all workers um think that their own job is socially meaningless or at least doubt the value of their job. That is just insane to me. I mean,
• 03:30 - 04:00 this is five times the unemployment rate. And we're talking about people who have often excellent resumes, you know, who went to very nice universities. I'm going to Harvard tomorrow to speak to students there. And well, it's an interesting case in point. 45% of Harvard graduates end up in consultancy or finance. Not saying all of that is totally socially useless, but I do wonder whether that is the best allocation of talent. I mean, these people could go on and do great things. And as you know, we face some pretty big
• 04:00 - 04:30 obvious problems out there. Whether it's, you know, the threat of the next pandemic that may be just around the corner, terrible diseases like malaria and tuberculosis killing millions of people, um the problem with democracy breaking down. I mean, the list goes on and on and on. And so, I've I've always been frustrated by this enormous waste of talent. Um, now, I'm not saying that morality should suck up everything. I'm I'm currently I'm I'm personally a
• 04:30 - 05:00 pluralist. I think that there are many things that are important in life. You know, family, friends, music, art. Uh and you don't want to let morality dominate everything. But I think in a rich, well-rounded life, it does play an important role. And if we're going to have a career anyway, we might as well do a lot of good with it. What about that question specifically about, you know, someone comes to you and says, "I'm a third grade teacher. I'm a social worker. Am I not being morally ambitious enough? So half of the country already
• 05:00 - 05:30 works in these so-called essential jobs. We discover that during the pandemic that, you know, when some people go on strike, we're in real trouble. So my point here is that half of the country doesn't need a lecture from me about being morally ambitious. They're already working in essential jobs. Uh I'm indeed more interested in preaching to my own people um to honestly quite a few of my friends. We used to have to have big ideals and dreams when we were still in university. You know, we wrote these beautiful application essays about how
• 05:30 - 06:00 we were going to fix tax avoidance and tax evasion, how we were going to tackle global hunger and work at the United Nations. And look at us. What has happened? It's it's pretty sad, isn't it? Now we're old and wrinkled and complacent. Yeah. Yeah. Um something has gone wrong, I would say. Um, so that doesn't mean that I don't think anyone can be morally ambitious. Rosa Parks was a seamstress. Leualsa, you know, the
• 06:00 - 06:30 great social revolutionary in Poland. Um, he was an electrician. So, I mean, history is littered with examples of people who weren't very privileged and still did a lot of good, but they don't need a lecture from me. I think um I I'm mainly talking to people who shouldn't just check their privilege, but also use their privilege to make a massive difference. What role does personal passion play in that? You write in the book, don't start out by asking what's my passion, ask instead, how can I
• 06:30 - 07:00 contribute most? And then choose the role that suits you best. Don't forget your talents are but a means to an end. Yeah, I think follow your passion is probably the worst career advice out there. Um, we at the school for moral ambition, an organization I co-founded, we deeply believe in the Gandalf Frodo model of changing the world. So I always like to say that Frodo um, you know, he didn't follow his passion. Gandalf never asked him, "Oh, what's your passion, Frodo?" He said,
• 07:00 - 07:30 "Look, this really needs to be done. This needs to be fixed. You got to throw the ring into the mountain." If Froto would have follows followed his passion, he would have probably, you know, been a gardener having a life, you know, full of second breakfast, pretty comfortable in the Shire, and then the orcs would have turned up and murdered everyone he ever loved. Um, so I think the point here is pretty simple. Find yourself some wise old wizard, a Gandalf. Um, figure out what are some of the most pressing issues that we face as a
• 07:30 - 08:00 species and ask yourself, how can I make a difference? And then you will find out that you can become very passionate about it. It's just don't start with looking at your navl and thinking oh what is it for me just ask smart people out there and become passionate about what they say. So you're saying do the work first trust that the passion will come later. Absolutely. Yeah. And I've got a couple of examples of that in the book. Um, one school I've got a whole
• 08:00 - 08:30 chapter on is called Charity Entrepreneurship. Uh, they've since rebranded as Ambitious Impact, but it's a school that I like to describe as the Hogwarts for dogooders. So, they recruit really driven um entrepreneurial people who want to start uh a highly infective nonprofit and they continuously research this question. It's called prioritization research. thinking about, yeah, what what what are some of the most pressing issues we face? And then they find these founders of these
• 08:30 - 09:00 nonprofits and they basically match the founders not only with each other so that you have a co-founder, but also with these tasks, right? You basically get a get a mission. Um, and one of the most successful charities they've launched is called the Let Exposure Elimination Project. I believe you guys have also written about them. That's right. One of the one of the co-founders is Lucia Coulter. She used to be a doctor at the NHS. loved their work but at the same time she was like can't I do more good right I'm currently working as a doctor in a very rich country mostly
• 09:00 - 09:30 treating patients who are already relatively old it's beautiful work but I want to do more good and you should talk to her now I mean she's incredibly passionate about the work she does okay but so that's a good example so it's not that she completely ditched what she was already doing and her existing passions right she found a way to take her passion for healthcare for global health and sort of put it on a different scale like but still using her existing core passion and skill set. That's a good
• 09:30 - 10:00 point. Maybe we got to be passionate on a meta level, you know, about our higher level goals. You can be really passionate about making the world a better place, helping a lot of people, improving global health, something like that. But it's it's quite risky if you get too attached to a certain intervention or something like that. I think that's a very sure way of massively limiting your impact and you see it a lot sadly. I've been walking around in the world of philanthropy uh for the past two years and it just drives me nuts how many of these rich
• 10:00 - 10:30 people are all the time, you know, they're gazing at their navl and like you don't have to come up with the answer yourself. The research has already been done, right? Why do you have to be the one, you know, who needs to have this epiphany about, oh, right, it's it's the pandas in this specific region that really need our help. Um, they're already Gandalfs and Dumbledore's working on it for you, figuring it out. Exactly. Exactly. And it and it takes a team to to make a big
• 10:30 - 11:00 difference. I think it's it's it can be quite liberating as well to not have to find your passion anymore. I speak to quite a few um you know teenagers and people in their 20s about what they should do with their career and a lot of them find a lot of um relief uh in this message that they don't have to find their passion that there are other people out there who have a job for them to do right and that they can just sign up for it. Interesting. I in your book
• 11:00 - 11:30 there is one ven diagram that caught my eye. It's, you know, these three circles. The first is labeled sizable, the second is solvable, and the third is sorely overlooked. And in the middle where they all overlap, it says moral ambition. Explain that to me. What does that mean? Yeah. So, this is the triple S framework of making the world a wildly better place. Um, and it's connected to this simple point that choosing the cause you work on is probably the most
• 11:30 - 12:00 important question you got to answer. And so at the school for more ambition, we work with this framework um in in in selecting these causes. Take something like climate change for example. Climate change is obviously a very sizable problem. It's very big um threatens a lot of people. It's also very solvable, right? We know what we can do. We've got a huge toolbox, a lot of solutions out there that are waiting to be implemented. Um and then the question is, is it also sorely neglected? And the
• 12:00 - 12:30 good news here is less and less. So you could ask yourself what was the best time to be a climate activist and the answer is not now. Actually 30 years ago exactly that that was the moment. Um so if you again want to maximize your impact if you want to ask the morally ambitious question then the question is okay what would the climate activists of the 70s have done today? Right? Or what is the problem that's currently where climate change was in the 1970s? Um you see what I mean? um that is an entrepreneurial way of of looking at uh
• 12:30 - 13:00 doing good. You you are really looking for the gap in the market. You could also do that within a cost cause area by the way. So if you look at climate change then you can think okay what is the part of the problem that is currently most neglected. Okay so looking at the neglected or sorely overlooked looking at the solvable and looking at the sizable I do wonder about the sizable part of that. Does moral ambition always have to be about scale? Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. It's about
• 13:00 - 13:30 making the biggest possible impact. Um, and if you can achieve your goals during your lifetime, then you're probably not thinking big enough. Look, I'm not saying that everyone has to be morally ambitious or something like that. I'm not like preaching with my finger and saying, "Oh, if you don't live this kind of life, you're a bad person." I am saying if you are ambitious anyway, you know, why not redirect that energy to do a lot of good? I think it will make your life much more meaningful. If you're going to have a burnout anyway, you know, you might as well get that burnout
• 13:30 - 14:00 while you help a lot of people, right? And um the same is true for some people who are very idealistic but not very ambitious. Like wouldn't it be nice to actually achieve a lot? I mean, I personally come from the political left and um yeah, there's this weird leftist obsession but with being pure and irrelevant um right calling out a lot of people, winning the debate in the group chat, but not actually making a difference for the people you say you
• 14:00 - 14:30 care so much about. I think that's what you call in the book the noble loser, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I I guess what I'm wondering is do you believe that there is sort of a moral imperative to do the most good you possibly can do to have the most impact the most scale? Well, obviously at some point you've done enough. Um I talk about Thomas Clarkson, my favorite abolitionist. um he was uh a British writer and activist and when he was 25 he had this
• 14:30 - 15:00 epiphany that slavery was probably the greatest moral atrocity of his time and he was like you know what maybe I can make a difference may maybe I can spent my life fighting this horrible institution and that's basically what he did the first seven years he traveled across the United Kingdom 35,000 miles spreading his abolitionist propaganda everywhere and then he had a total nervous breakdown utter burnout. He couldn't walk the stairs anymore. He couldn't speak. He started sweating profusely whenever he
• 15:00 - 15:30 wanted to say something. And I read that in his memoirs and I was like, Thomas, Thomas, Thomas, remember your breathing exercises. You can take things too far. Now, the reason I say that only at the end of the book because, you know, most of us first deserve a kick in the butt. Um, so yeah, there are some dogooders out there. I think they've, you know, take morality a little bit too seriously. Uh, as I said, I'm personally a pluralist. I'm a father of two young children. I think they're way more important than you know my career. Uh, I
• 15:30 - 16:00 am pretty ambitious, right? Um, I I do want to make um a mark on this world and I think there are a lot of people out there. We are all or most of us are scared of death. Uh, and what what do you want to look back on when you lie on your deathbed? all the powerpoints you know you hated to make or all the reports you wrote that no one ever wanted to read all the products that you didn't believe in that you still spend a lifetime selling seems pretty sad to me
• 16:00 - 16:30 I think this is touching on something really honest which is that I think a lot of the desire for this sort of big impact may actually come from our fear of our own mortality and this desire to leave a legacy that will outlast us so that we feel like in some sense it actually mattered that we lived at all. Um, and I remember dealing with this myself. Um, I'm a journalist now, but before that I was a novelist and I didn't care how many people my work impacted, right? It
• 16:30 - 17:00 was for me really not about scale. My feeling was look, if my novel deeply moves just one reader and helps them feel less alone in the world, helps them feel more understood, I will be happy. M um so I guess my question for you as someone who has personally struggled with this issue of scale is you know are you telling me I shouldn't be happy with that there's the the title of chapter one in your book is literally no you're not fine just the way you are. Mhm. So I
• 17:00 - 17:30 think there is absolutely a place for as the French say arur right is just just music or art for the sake of art itself. I don't want to, you know, let everything succumb to kind of a kind of utilitarian calculus. I think, um, it's better to help a lot of people than just a few people. Uh, so, and as I said, in any rich life, morality does play a big role. Um, I wouldn't want to live in a
• 17:30 - 18:00 society where everyone is like Thomas Clarkson, you know, running around on his horse horse horseback uh, doing morally ambitious work. Uh but on the margins I think in the world today we need a lot of more ambition. We need much more moral ambition than we currently have. Yeah. I mean I personally would not want to end up in a world where everyone is so focused on moral ambition and scale that we like that no one ever writes a novel um because they worry it won't impact enough people. You know, when I was reading your book, I kept thinking of the philosopher Susan Wolf, who has this
• 18:00 - 18:30 great essay called moral saints. And she says, "If the moral saint is devoting all his time to feeding the hungry or healing the sick or raising money for Oxfam, then necessarily he is not reading Victorian novels, playing the obo, or improving his backhand. A life in which none of these possible aspects of character are developed may seem to be a life strangely barren." Yeah. Quite an elitist idea of how to spend your life. by the way, reading a novel and and improving your back end or maybe
• 18:30 - 19:00 just watching Netflix all day. Fair. Fair. But you could swap that out with like reading your favorite book and or like any any hobby, you know, playing soccer, whatever it might be. Um, but basically what she's saying is if you try to make all of your actions as morally good as possible, you kind of end up living living a life that's bereft of hobbies or relationships or all the other experiences that make life meaningful. Um just talk a little more about how you square that with your urge to be morally ambitious. There is some tension there,
• 19:00 - 19:30 right? Talk a little bit about that. There is some tension, but I think that tension is mainly felt by philosophers for some reason and not really by me or I don't know a lot of normies. Um, it's just, um, as I said, for me it's super obvious that life is about many things, including improving your backhand. Um, I'm not saying that people aren't allowed to play tennis anymore. Um, but
• 19:30 - 20:00 we spend, what is it, 2,000 work weeks in our career, 10,000 working days, 80,000 hours. That's a lot of time still left at the job. And as I said, 25% of people currently consider their own job socially meaningless. And a lot of our so-called best and brightest are stuck in those jobs. So, we are living in a world where a huge amount of people have a career that they consider socially meaningless and then they spend the rest of their time swiping Tik Tok. Um,
• 20:00 - 20:30 that's the reality, right? Um, I I really don't think that there's a big danger of, you know, people reading my book and, you know, moving all the way in the other direction. And that's a problem I would honestly like to have. So, you're saying like we're we're currently very far away from this problem of like everyone going full tilt on moral ambition and ignoring everything else in life. And there's only one community I know of where this has become a problem. And as you'll get to them, it's the effective altruism community. In a way, moral ambition
• 20:30 - 21:00 could be seen as effective altruism for normies. Okay. Yeah, I definitely I definitely want to get to that, but I'm going to put a pin in that for a moment because I just want to take the flip side of what you were just saying. You're saying like, okay, I'm not really concerned, Seal, that we're like edging into this world where everyone is so focused on moral ambition. Um, but how do you then actually know when it's enough? I think you used the phrase
• 21:00 - 21:30 earlier like, uh, at some point it's enough, you know. Um, and I I think you know, you you write in the epilogue of the book, morality plays a big role big role in a rich and full life, but it's not everything. And if your inner fire burns bright, no need to stoke it hotter. But to me, that is pretty like fuzzy sounding. How can I know what's enough and avoid pushing so far that moral ambition does take over my life? That that does happen to some people. So, how how can I concretely know like, seigull, you've done enough. Chill.
• 21:30 - 22:00 Well, it it it depends on on how far you want to push yourself. Um, look, there are no easy answers here. Um, I think that at some point when you really start to um to suffer from your moral ambition, that's not where where I would want you to end up. I think you should be fueled for 80% by enthusiasm and for maybe 20% by feelings of guilt and shame. Uh so a little bit of guilt and shame in the mix that's fine. Uh it's actually how you
• 22:00 - 22:30 know this journey started for me. Um you know I published this previous book humankind made quite a lot of money on it honestly which I never would have expected. I always thought that it would be a broke history teacher or something like that. Um and yeah that gave me a feeling of responsibility like huh what does this mean? I actually need to do something um with it. Um, and I also felt a little bit ashamed for spending a
• 22:30 - 23:00 decade in what I like to describe as the awareness industry. You know, I've been saying a lot about all the things that need to happen in the world. A lot of people will know me for shouting taxes, taxes, taxes at Davos, right? Yep. And um I was a bit fed up with myself honestly for standing on the sidelines. To me, what this is indicating is like there's some element of subjectivity here, right? Like the question of what percentage of my life should be focused on moral ambition and what should be like playing the obo or
• 23:00 - 23:30 like you're deciding who to compare yourself to and how much you want to push yourself how much you're okay with having some suffering in your life to achieve a greater goal how much you're like can I push back a little bit I think the question itself sort of presumes that doing a lot of good or making a lot of impact is not going to be a nice experience or something like that that pushing harder will always involve more sacrifices. But if you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, they find a
• 23:30 - 24:00 lot of joy in thinking big. They find a lot of joy in climbing the ladder. It's it's what I always experienced in my career. I love becoming a member of a student society in Utre in the Netherlands where I grew up. Um because I felt so dumb compared to all these older students and I was like this is awesome. I want to learn about philosophy and anthropology and history. And again, when I started my career as a journalist at the
• 24:00 - 24:30 Volkswist and and learning from my older colleagues um and uh when I started, you know, as a writer, I I had these big dreams about, you know, I want to write a book that will speak to millions of people about the big questions of history, like why have we conquered the globe? what makes humans special? Um, and then as I did that, you know, I was in my early 30s, I was yeah, bit bored and looking for the next ladder to climb. So, for me, climbing a new ladder
• 24:30 - 25:00 has mostly been about excitement uh and enthusiasm. Let's let's talk about the effect of altruism piece of this. Some of our listeners may have heard of it, but for those who haven't, it's a movement that's all about using reason and evidence and data to do as much good as possible. I will say I'm not an effective altruist, but I am a journalist who has reported a lot on EA uh because I work for Vox's future perfect section which was sort of loosely inspired by EA uh in its early days. Um so I am curious where you stand
• 25:00 - 25:30 on this. You talk about effective altruism in the book and you do echo a lot of its core ideas uh like this idea that you shouldn't just be trying to do good, you should try to do the most good possible. So is being morally ambitious different from being an effective altruist? Yeah. So I wouldn't say the most good. I was like you should do a lot of good. Okay. Which is different, right? That's not about being perfect, but just about being ambitious. Um so in
• 25:30 - 26:00 the book I study a lot of movements that I admire. As you know I write extensively about the abolitionists, about the suffraettets, about the civil rights, about extraordinary people like Rosa Parks who was such a strategic visionary. A lot of people remember her as this, you know, uh, quiet seamstress, but she was actually a highly experienced activist and and they, um, really planned this whole Mon Mont Montgomery bus boycott. It didn't just happen. I talk about the animal rights movement. I talk about Ralph Nater and
• 26:00 - 26:30 the extraordinary Nater's Raider movement in the 60s and the 70s when Ralph Nater was able to recruit a lot of really talented um young Ivy League graduates and convince them to not work for boring law firms but instead go to Washington and influence legislation. There's one historian who estimates that they've influenced what is it 25 pieces of federal legislation. So anyway, the book is a whole collection of of of studies of movements that I admire and indeed effective altruism is also one of those movements that I admire quite a
• 26:30 - 27:00 bit. I think there's a lot we can learn from them and there are also quite a few things that I don't really like about them. Um so um the main thing I I think indeed what what I really like about them is their moral seriousness. Uh, as I said, I come from the political left, and if there's one thing that's often quite annoying about lefties is that they preach a lot, but they do little. Uh, for example, this thinkle simple thing about donating to charity. I think it's pretty easy to make the case that
• 27:00 - 27:30 that is one of the most effective things you can do, but then very few of my progressive leftist friends donate anything. Yeah. So, I really like that moral seriousness of of EAS. Um, you know, you go to conferences and you will meet quite a few people who have donated kidneys to random strangers, which is pretty impressive. I'm I'm sorry to say uh that I still have both of my kidneys. Um, and thanks to them.
• 27:30 - 28:00 U, but yeah, I admire the people who who really practice what they preach. Mhm. Um I guess the the main um thing I dislike is is probably uh what we already talked about like where does the motivation come from? Um the um one of the founding fathers of effective altruism was the philosopher Peter Singer obviously also one of the founding fathers of the mother animal rights movement and everyone knows him for this um uh you know that that
• 28:00 - 28:30 thought experiment of the child drowning in the shallow pond. Uh I'm I'm I'm pretty sure that he must be really fed up with talking about that ch that thought experiment because like I am already fed up talking about it and it's not even my thought experiment. Right? So that's the thought that's the thought experiment where Peter Singer says look if you are walking to work and you see a little kid drowning in a shallow pond you know you could save this kid your life will be in no danger. It's shallow
• 28:30 - 29:00 but you will ruin your expensive suit or you will muddy your shoes should you do it. And it's supposed to be like yes obviously you should do it and well by compar you know by analogy we have money it could easily save the lives of people in developing countries so you should donate it. Yeah. Thank you so much for helping me out with that one. Anyway, I never really liked the thought experiment because it always felt like a form of moral blackmail to me. It's like now now I'm suddenly supposed to see drowning children everywhere and like oh
• 29:00 - 29:30 this microphone it was too expensive. could have donated that to I don't know right a charity in Malawi or you know I just had a sandwich and you know the peanut butter on it was also too expensive like it's like a totally inhuman way of of I don't know looking at life it just doesn't resonate with me at all but there are quite a few of people who um yeah um instantly thought yes that that is true and they discovered hey wait a minute I'm not alone uh let's build a movement together um and I really like that um
• 29:30 - 30:00 from For me, the historical comparison um is is the the Quakers um the early abolitionists who were very weird as well. Yeah. It was like this small Protestant sect of people who deeply believed in equality. They were some of the the first who allowed women to also preach in their meeting houses. They um would never bow to anyone. And even it was the if it was the king of England, they would never um take an oath because
• 30:00 - 30:30 they were like, "Yeah, we we always speak the truth, so why would we take an oath?" Anyway, they were seen as very weird. Yep. Um and um quite amazing as well, right? The abolitionism sort of started as a as a Quaker startup. So that's also how I see EA as very weird but pretty impressive and and and um I think a lot of people in there have done a lot of good work even though I'd never you know joined the church. It's not for me and there yeah there are some some
• 30:30 - 31:00 obvious downsides to to the ideology as well. Let's pick up on that weirdness bit. Right. So, in your book, you you straight up tell readers, "Join a cult or start your own." Regardless, you can't be afraid to come across as weird if you want to make a difference. Every milestone of civilization was first seen as the crazy idea of some subculture. I'm curious how you think about the downsides of being in a cult. Yeah, cults don't have a great reputation, do
• 31:00 - 31:30 they? No. Um, so I got to give some credit to Peter Theel here. um maybe not um someone that people naturally associated with me um is a venture capitalist very much on the right wing side of the political spectrum. Um he's written this fantastic book uh called zero to one about how to build a successful startup and um indeed one of his advices is to start a cult. Um, a cult is a group, a small group of
• 31:30 - 32:00 thoughtful committed citizens who want to change the world. Um, and they have uh some shared beliefs that make them very weird uh for the rest of society. Now, as I said, I spent the first decade of my career as a journalist and um most journalists think that they should break out of their bubble uh that they should, you know, meet people on the other side of the political spectrum. This is a debate that I used to have with my colleagues. They would say, "Yeah, we
• 32:00 - 32:30 got to make sure that the plumbers read our essays as well." And my response was always like, I you know, I would love for plumbers to read my essays, but currently my friends aren't reading them. So maybe, maybe we can start there, right? Um, and this is um um why I think it sometimes makes sense to actually double down on a cult because um in a cult you can be radicalized and sometimes that's exactly what's necessary. Um to give you one
• 32:30 - 33:00 simple example, in a in a world that doesn't really seem to care about animals all that much, it's easy to become disillusioned. But then when once you do join a safe space of ambitious dog doers, you can suddenly get this feeling like, hey, I'm not the only one, right? There are other people who deeply care about animals as well. And you know what? Uh I can do much more than I'm currently doing. So it can have a radicalizing effect. Now I totally acknowledge that there are all signs of dangers here. Um yeah, like you can become too dogmatic. You can be, you
• 33:00 - 33:30 know, quite hostile to people who don't share all your beliefs. So I do see all of that. I just want to recognize that if you look at some of these great movements of history, the abolitionists, the suffragettes, yeah, they had cultish aspects. They they were in a way, yeah, a little bit like a cult. I want to push a little bit on this question about, you know, cults and dogmatism, but obviously a big downside, as you mentioned, is that you can become dogmatic. You can become kind of deaf to criticism from
• 33:30 - 34:00 the outside. Do you have any advice for people on how to avoid the downside? Yeah, don't let it suck up your whole life. There's this quote from Flabber, the the novelist, who once said something like, "If you want to be violent and original in your work, you need to be boring in your private life." I'm paraphrasing here, but I've always liked that quote. Um, I don't know, it gives you a certain ground groundedness and stability. Um, so maybe surround yourself with other types of people and
• 34:00 - 34:30 other types of pursuits, right? basically be a pluralist. Um, is that I look I don't know. I don't know. Honestly, I don't have like the the perfect recipe here. Um, in in general, uh, it's it's super important to surround yourself with people who are critical of your work, you know, who don't take you too seriously, who can also laugh at you, you know, um, who have a good sense of humor or, you know, who can just see your foolishness and call it out and
• 34:30 - 35:00 still still be a good friend. But this is like general life advice for everyone. Right. Right. Right. Um having a strong dose of pluralism can help counteract um a lot of the the potential pitfalls with with these sorts of ideological movements. Yeah, absolutely. At the same time, you know, I come from such a different place. You know, I I was mainly frustrated with all these people on the left side of the political spectrum saying, "Oh, we need systemic
• 35:00 - 35:30 change. We need to abolish capitalism, overthrow the patriarchy and write, you know, 100 more monographs about it in utterly inaccessible academic jargon. And I was like, come on, can we can we actually do something, right? Can we actually find some effective way of actually making a difference? Well, I think one important question is the question of who should we be trying to make a difference for? Mhm. There is
• 35:30 - 36:00 a very interesting concept that you mentioned in the book uh which is humanity's expanding moral circle. What is that? It's again a term from Peter Singer uh the philosopher who makes the simple case that throughout history our moral circle has expanded. Um so back in the old days we mainly cared about our own tribe and members of our tribe and then you know we got the big religions and we started caring about people who believe the same things and then we got
• 36:00 - 36:30 the nation states and so on and so on and he basically says that moral progress is all about expanding the moral circle and to keep pushing that expansion. Um a couple of years ago I was actually working on a different book. I wanted to write the history of moral circle expansion. That's what I wanted to do because um it's really interesting that a lot of the first abolitionists they already cared deeply about animal rights which makes a lot of sense because once you start expanding your moral circle once you start opening your heart to people who first weren't
• 36:30 - 37:00 included in your moral circle then the question is like why stop at some point and I was writing about that learning about that and I was like huh maybe I should finish this book when I'm 60 or 70 or something um maybe I should be doing this you know, not just writing about it. So that for me that was incredibly inspirational. That's funny. Okay. If the moral circle is like, okay, who's worthy of our moral consideration, who's not, who's in, who's out, you kind of acknowledge in the book, like maybe it's not obvious how to tell, are we
• 37:00 - 37:30 including everyone in in the moral circle that should be included? And you have a few pointers that you offer people um on how to check that they're including everyone that should be included. Do you want to give us like a a little summary, a few pointers? Uh I think that there are some classic signs um that can tell us whether we're on the right side of history. This is one of those fascinating questions that we can ask, right? We can look back on say the Romans who threw naked women before the lions but still thought they were super
• 37:30 - 38:00 civilized because unlike the barbarians, they didn't sacrifice kids to the gods, right? And every civilization throughout history has always thought we are the most civilized. And obviously we think that today as well like any modern day liberal in you know US or or the west in the 21st century will be like yeah there's still bad stuff happening but basically like we've we've figured things out. Um and uh the uncomfortable
• 38:00 - 38:30 truth is that probably we are still committed uh engaged in some really terrible moral atrocities. I mean that's highly likely if you just look at the historical track record. So the question is what will the historians of the future say about us and then I'm not just talking about oh yeah the bad MAGA people or something like no no I'm talking to you directly who's listening to this podcast right now and probably thinks of his or himself as you know a pretty decent person. Then the question is okay what is that? A couple of signs. Well one is we've been talking about it
• 38:30 - 39:00 for a long time. So the alarm bells have been ringing for a long time. That's one clear sign. Uh in the book I give the example of the way we treat animals. And it's not as if these arguments are new or anything. You know, a lot of smart people have said this for a long time. You know, Jeremy Bentham already in the late 18th century wrote that, you know, it's not about whether these animals can speak or reason or do mathematics. No, it's about the simple question, can they suffer? And we've got an enormous mountain of evidence that tells us,
• 39:00 - 39:30 yeah, they can probably suffer really badly. So yeah, if you meet eat meat and dairy today, then you are yeah, that it's quite likely that you're involved in one of those moral atrocities. Um, I've got a few other signs that I talk about. For example, we rationalize these kind of things by saying that they're natural or normal or necessary. This is what Melanie Joy, the psychologist, calls the three ends. And you look at something like slavery, and that's also what we did back then, right? We said it
• 39:30 - 40:00 was natural. Like throughout history, every civilization has always practiced the institution of slavery. Like it's just it's just what people do, right? What are you going to do about it? Uh or necessary. People would say, "Yeah, it was just essential for for the economy. If we would abolish slavery today, you know, the economy will collapse and there will be all kinds of perverse consequences." Um so anyway, it's interesting to look at those signs and then think, okay, what are some of the worst things that may be happening today? I I this is there's sort of a pet peeve
• 40:00 - 40:30 I have about the way people sometimes talk about the expanding moral circle. People um I find typically talk about it as if it's as if moral progress or the expansion of the moral circle is some sort of like linear process. Um I think that's a really good point you're making. So historians call this the wig uh view of history uh you know named after the the wigs the political party in in the UK um few centuries ago which
• 40:30 - 41:00 indeed had this western triumphalism baked into it like we know what's right for the world and we will show the rest of the world you know how to be good how to be moral um and obviously the the fight against the slave trade and slavery was essential to that um so um I I have complicated views on this. There are some people who are like, "Look, it's it's just total BS that, you know, Britain was so important in abolishing
• 41:00 - 41:30 the slave trade because, you know, it was mainly the revolutions in Haiti. You know, it was enslaved people themselves who did it. So, uh, yeah, stop with the colonialist crap." And I think that's just not true to be honest. um people who have been suffering from slavery and the slave trade you know they've always revolted obviously you know from Spartacus onwards um one in 10 slave voyages saw a revolt but the reality is that this system was so horrible and not just in in the west in
• 41:30 - 42:00 the colonies in the Caribbean but in many places around the globe that yeah abolitionism was a long for a long time unthinkable and it was really a new idea that originated uh among Anglo-Saxon uh Protestants, first the Quakers and then also the evangelicals, there's this this new idea that you could actually abolish slavery as an institution. It was really a small group of people who had this crazy idea and then because they did it in Britain and they were
• 42:00 - 42:30 successful in Britain then then that country was able to use its power on the seven seas like the Royal Navy to force a huge amount of other countries to also stop slavering slave trading. So the Netherlands where I'm from, we didn't abolish the slave trade on our own. Like we were making a lot of money and enjoying it quite immensely. But then you know these moralistic British people came along and okay okay we we'll abolish it. And that happened again and again. The the the irony is obviously
• 42:30 - 43:00 that this was again also an excuse for more colonialism. So that you know some new horrors grew out of that that under the banner of anti-slavery a new colonial era dawned and the whole scramble for Africa happened. So I really don't want to you know suggest that there's some natural progress in history right if the arc of justice bends or if the arc of history bends towards justice then it's because like
• 43:00 - 43:30 people do that and if we don't keep bending it it might easily snap back and there's there's really no natural order of things here and indeed in some ways we've we've made uh what's the opposite of progress what's the English word backsliding yeah we've backsliding and I think animals is a is a great example. Imagine a world where the industrial revolution would have happened in India. I mean maybe we wouldn't have happened ended up with these horrible systems of factory farming. Um it could have been so much so much better. Um yeah when I
• 43:30 - 44:00 think about sort of progress I mean I think of it as first of all like who gets to define what's progress. I think that's depends a lot on who's in power and who's defining it. But um I don't see it as a sort of straight linearly going up. I very much see it as a messy squiggle. Um and it's entirely plausible to me that in a 100 years uh we will have expanded our moral circle in some ways and given more rights to certain beings.
• 44:00 - 44:30 Uh even you know for example that we've um we've abolished factory farming and we like are treating animals great even as we're now really uh repressing certain classes of human beings. Uh I'm I'm curious. Do does that prediction sound plausible to you? Oh, no. No. I'm not making any predictions here. I think the the future could be much worse than today. Um for me, that's one of the main lessons of history. Things can change quite radically for better or for worse.
• 44:30 - 45:00 I'm pretty sure then that you would have tal when you would have talked to, you know, most Germans in the 1920s, I mean, they couldn't have imagined like the terrible abyss that was ahead of them. Um, if I look at the US today, I am really pessimistic to be honest. I think there's a real threat of democracy breaking down and I think that things can get much much worse um quite soon actually. Let's talk about what's ahead for you personally. Um, maybe you
• 45:00 - 45:30 have a little more ability to predict that potentially. Um, it, you know, it strikes me with your book like you could have been like, "Look, I'm happy. I'm content to just write a book about moral ambition. Leave it at that, you know. But you did not just leave it at that. You also decided to co-found something that you mentioned earlier. It's called the School for Moral Ambition. What is that and how did that get started? I was at a point in my career where I looked at what I had. You know, I have a bit of a platform. I think I have the
• 45:30 - 46:00 ability to, you know, uh write things that perhaps some people want to read. Um but I also felt this itch um right and felt a little bit fed up with myself. Um and I was hugely inspired by for example what Ralph Nater did in the 60s and the 70s that he was able to build this beacon this magnet for very driven and talented people to work on some of the most pressing issues. Um and throughout history I think we've seen movements that have been successful at
• 46:00 - 46:30 redefining what it means to be successful. Yeah, that was one of the epiphies I had when I studied the British abolitionist movement is they were actually part of a much bigger societal shift that was all about making doing good more fashionable. So I guess that's what we are betting on again. We are trying to build that magnet. We are trying to redefine what it means to be successful. Um so we do a couple of things. Uh one is uh we organize these so-called moral ambition circles. There are groups of five to eight people who
• 46:30 - 47:00 want to explore what a morally ambitious life could mean for them. Um, this is all freely accessible on our website moral ambition.org. And at the same time, we organize so-called moral ambition fellowships. And um you you could see them as small SWAT teams of extremely talented, very driven people who have agreed to quit their job um follow Gandalf and um yeah, work on some of the most important global problems. We got started in Europe. Uh no, no, no,
• 47:00 - 47:30 no, no, no, no. I'm not coming up with with the mission statements. Uh it's actually our researchers who are our Gandalfs. I'm more like the muppet, you know, um like the the mascot, you know, who in the silly silly suit, right? That's me who walks on on the on the field before the match gets started. That's my job. Um but um yeah, so we asked our researchers, what are some of the most important things we can do in Brussels? And to my big surprise, actually, one of the things they advised us is to work on
• 47:30 - 48:00 fighting big tobacco. Uh it's the single largest preventable cause of disease still today. eight million deaths every year and very few people are working on countering it. So we've been recruiting uh corporate lawyers, marketeteers, actually we've got someone in our last cohort who used to work for big tobacco um and now they're applying their skills and their talents to doing a lot of good and uh yeah, we want to we want to scale up this machine. Um obviously the point
• 48:00 - 48:30 is that it is very hard to get into one of our fellowships because we want to make it more prestigious. You went to Harvard. Okay. Well, that's not nearly enough. That's nice. But we we are Yeah, it's it's it's it's quite extraordinary. I think the the groups that we are now bringing together. Um that's I can I think because of two reasons. One because we want to make doing good more prestigious and more success uh yeah more fashionable. The other thing is that we genuinely believe that if you're very selective and that some very
• 48:30 - 49:00 entrepreneurial people can just do so much. Where is the school for moral ambition getting all the funding, getting the money to be able to like pay people to quit their jobs? And yeah, mostly for me now. Oh, so yeah. Yeah, everything I earned with the book is going all into the movement. Um, so um that's been helpful. And we've got a group of entrepreneurs supporting us as well. So these are people who have indeed built their own companies and who are looking to climb, as David Brooks would say, their second mountain. You
• 49:00 - 49:30 mentioned that the the school for moral ambition is highly uh sort of competitive to get in and most of the listeners won't end up going to the school but uh I am kind of interested to hear that you're also promoting these moral ambition circles that people can start with their friends. I will say that uh I personally am not really sold on the idea of maximizing like do the most good possible as my entire guiding philosophy for life. Um, but I am
• 49:30 - 50:00 attracted to the idea of trying to do more good. Um, Exactly. Right. Just more. We're totally on the same page. Yeah. And I very much think I could enjoy kind of just sitting with five or six friends on a regular basis and trying to challenge each other to be more intentional about whatever the values are that we do believe in, right? Yeah. So, yeah. Maybe maybe one way to say this by the way is that when I talk to some of my banker friends, I'm not inclined to talk about
• 50:00 - 50:30 all these drowning children in shallow ponds, right? Uh I'm also not inclined to talk in a more leftist way and say, "Oh, you're so bad. You're so greedy." Um what I've discovered is that it's much more effective to say something like, "Oh, wow. You're so talented. You're so experienced. um and this is what you're doing. Boring and that hurts them much more uh in my experience. Uh and it's also
• 50:30 - 51:00 honestly what I believe. Um yeah, people really don't like to be boring. Um so, you know, I I will say uh this conversation has been far from boring. I really enjoyed chatting with you um and reading your book. Uh it's called Moral Ambition. Uh Ruter, just want to say thank you so much for being on our show. Thanks for having me.