Ambition is a desire, a minimally planned desire. A desire without a plan is just a dream, something you imagine but don’t put into practice. Through practice, ambition becomes a goal. The ego, in its most traditional definition, is what dictates desire and, therefore, ambition. Our nature as an individual being is the primary source of the ego.
Maybe if we lived in a colony and not in a society, in the biological sense, things would be different.
Everyone always wants something, so everyone has a purpose; the issue is that most people let themselves be guided by immediate desires. This difficulty in thinking long-term is one of the great human psychological biases. The question of why this condition exists remains open; I’m not a fan of evolutionary psychology arguments, mainly because of the fallacies it often generates, but my intuition points to the answer being there.
We are individual beings who adapt to living in social collectives. This duality always generates nuances that are difficult to navigate. The only consciousness and experience I have access to is my own. The only existence I can be sure of is my own. But I still experience other people, realities, and perspectives through the collective, or rather, my interpretation and awareness of the collective. That’s why, in theory, solipsism tends to reign because it’s not intuitively falsifiable. Still, in practice, in everyday social life, it easily dissolves.
Problems begin when the individual cannot recognize the value of the collective for their own individuality. Once you start living life only for yourself, when your ambitions become an end and not a means to improve the collective itself, the ego becomes the center of everything and phenomena like selfishness and egocentrism colonize engagement.
Selfishness is putting all your desires and interests above everything else, while egocentrism is not only putting yours but also the desires and interests of others in your favor, in such a way that the perception generated is that everything around you happens for your ego.
Thus, egocentrism is selfish. However, selfishness is not necessarily egocentric.
On the other end of the spectrum is altruism, which puts the desires of others above everything, including your own individuality. I consider here that altruism is just as harmful. While one subtracts everything, the other gives everything. One should seek to live in a middle ground.
Ambitions should indeed be individual, but the benefits generated by them should always aim at the collective. Ambition for the collective leads to unrestrained altruism. Ambition for the individual for the individual leads to selfishness. Thus, ambitions are not necessarily selfish; they should indeed be directed toward the ego, but the end they lead to should be the collective.
The best way to have ambition without becoming selfish is to constantly remember for whom you are doing things; this also avoids self-titling conversations. Exercises that meditate on humility and gratitude are the most recommended.
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Existentialism Career Personal Guidelines Personal Philosophy