On Ambition

The Reasonable Equilibrium

With 7.8 Billion people sharing the planet with you, its preposterous to think that you, in particular would have any significant impact on the world, The odds are wildly against your favor.

Mediocrity, even with all the clout it gets, is statistically the most probable place for you to be. and There’s nothing wrong with that,

living an unremarkable life is not only the most likely but also the most sensible thing to do, following a path laid out in front of you through conventional wisdom is the most reasonable, logical and the most reliable path to life. After all, its laid by the wise who came before and minimizing risk is the best way to guarantee linear growth and keep society in equilibrium.

The Unreasonable Exponential

But humans didn’t just become the strongest species on their planet with Linear Growth.

We may have had some unfair evolutionary advantages compared to our fellow earthlings, like an abnormally large prefrontal cortex, opposable thumbs, and impeccable and intricate motor skills. But our biggest advantage by far, is our ability to deceive ourselves.

The Deception

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw

The Idea of Ambition is dumb, of all the people smarter than you, richer than you, with more opportunities than you, Its unreasonable to think you’ll do anything substantial.

But people do anyways.

its through their ability to deceive their own stupid little hormone governed brain that they believe their stupid cause, whatever it may be, is worth perusing or that they would succeed at all.

But most staggering of all, is that they don’t even care about the odds. They want to succeed, sure they hope to, but the material success isn’t what drives them.

They do what they do, because they can’t bear to not. They execute on their dream not because they think it’s the best strategy but because not doing so wont be a life worth living…

As dumb as the construct of ambition may be, its the biggest catalyst of the tremendous progress humanity has achieved thus far.