The Book That Pushed Me to Dedicate My Career to International Development

Reading the book Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference by Dutch historian and author Rutger Bregman reminded me that while most of us want to be on the right side of history, many of us have forgotten what that really takes. Let's get back on track. 

Choose Your Side 

Imagine you are at a dinner party meeting friends of your new partner, and you get asked a simple question: What do you do for a living?

Imagine you say you are an activist.

It is safe to expect you will get praised for saving the world and hear comments about how the issues you are focusing on are important and how people like you are needed.

Later on, your partner will get asked if they think you are ambitious enough and able to take care of a family, since your job is standing somewhere with a banner.

Now, let’s run this scenario again. This time, you are a lobbyist for a big corporation.

You are likely to receive comments along the lines of “Good that our friend doesn’t have to worry about finances then,” followed by a laugh.

Your partner will later be questioned about the moral qualities of a person who works against the public interest.

Are these the two options we have to choose from? Do ambitious people always have to stand on the wrong side of the barricade while those who oppose them are seen as not ambitious enough? Why can’t you be a badass good-doer who is ambitious yet puts their morality first?

The Noble Loser

Bregman offers a simple framework to understand four categories of people based on their level of idealism and ambition. ->

There are two important takeaways from this figure. Firstly, being idealistic and not so ambitious makes one what Bregman calls the “noble loser.”

This concept is a hard pill to swallow, but Bregman claims that “mere awareness spreading is overrated and is often used as an excuse not to work harder for actual change.”

You might object: “Just because you don’t work 80 hours a week to overthrow Big Pharma doesn’t make you a loser. You still, for example, keep raising awareness about why women should have the right to abortion while keeping your regular job. You’re spreading information that is needed for action.”

Bregman argues that this way of thinking makes many people waste their potential for making change and gives them an excuse to do little and feel okay with it. He quotes Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of the founders of Black Lives Matter, who says: “People don’t understand that organizing isn’t going online and cussing people out or going to a protest and calling something out. It takes much more than that” (p. 15).

The Traps of Raising Awareness and “Acting Local”

The Awareness Trap

What Bregman is essentially pointing out is that doing little good is only a little better than being the bad guy himself.

To go back to my earlier point: if you’re posting “educational reels” about the problems of the world to tick your “making the world a better place” box before going back to your nine-to-five, making zero impact, that’s the wasted talent Bregman talks about.

The Local Focus Trap

Another trap people fall into comes with the slogan “think global, act local.” “As if achieving little is somehow a virtue,” Bregman writes (p. 12). The problem isn’t focusing on your surroundings, but that this slogan is often used as an excuse not to think big.

Having been exposed to this emptied “think global, act local” phrase a lot in the past few years, I must say I agree with Bregman’s objections to this motto.

Many of us, myself included, enrolled in the “Global Challenges” program because we wanted to make a difference in solving these problems. We wanted to gain knowledge and skills to one day start effective NGOs like the Against Malaria Foundation, learn how to fight for the public interest, and launch projects like Nader’s Raiders (just a couple of the successful, high-impact projects Bregman discusses in the book).

Instead, under the slogan “think global, act local,” our energy was redirected to fundraising concerts for UNICEF and organizing protests for Palestine.

I don’t mean to say these activities are useless or that they prevent us from pursuing more ambitious goals. But I saw with my own eyes how, over three years, we lost momentum to be the motor behind real change and got comfortable with these small projects.

We became comfortable with being in the UNICEF or Extinction Rebellion group chat as our contribution to making change happen. This isn’t good enough. What Bregman suggests instead is to be in a group chat with four people, figuring out the most effective way to make an impact and putting all your energy there, rather than wasting it on another small project or useless internship with the word “changemakers” on their website.

Focus and Organize

As a historian focused on the history of the successes and failures of social movements, Bregman offers many fascinating success stories and provides the blueprint for a successful social movement.

The main lesson one should draw from these stories is that instead of dispersing your energy to do good as a side job, you should align your professional ambition with a goal that maximizes your impact on the world and not get distracted. He cites Margaret Mead, who once noted: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Just because you do good doesn’t mean you can do little. The problem is that doing the wrong things often generates a lot of money and power. Swimming against this stream requires organization, full-time effort, and the talent you have but have not been employing toward the right goal.

Be a ‘Badass Good doer’

You don’t have to be perfect or pure to be effective at achieving the moral goals you set for yourself.

Bregman points out the problem of many progressives who adopted the intersectionality doctrine: “Want to fight for climate? Great. But what’s your opinion on reparations for centuries of colonialism?” (p. 77). This is one of the five illusions of the “noble loser” that keeps people from being morally ambitious.

Movements that fall for these illusions end up being “100% pure and 0% effective” (p. 77). What we need are “effective idealists” who “may be pie-in-the-sky when it comes to their goals, but they’re pragmatic in making them happen” (p. 69). 

You should see winning as your moral obligation. If your end goal is to end slavery, it’s fine if you use a few dirty practices now and then to get there.

Sometimes we simply lose track of “which ladder of success we are climbing” (p. 1). Nevertheless, it is our moral obligation to keep in mind what we are fighting for, pick the fight where we can do the most good, and do everything in our power to reach these moral goals.

No matter what your focus is, you will find your role to play if you adopt the mindset of the morally ambitious. To achieve true change, we need “someone who writes in academic jargon, someone who brings ideas to a wider public. Someone who’s polarizing, someone who brings people together. Someone who lobbies behind the scenes, someone who lets themself get dragged away by the police. The only kind of person we can’t use in this fight is the fool who thinks good intentions are enough. Someone whose clear-eyed convictions put them squarely on the right side of history” (p. 65).

Don’t forget that “today’s weirdos can be tomorrow’s heroes” (p. 184).