Rutger Bregman is a Dutch historian who has written on of the best books about universal basic income with Utopia for Realists (which I highly recommend reading). He followed this up with Humankind, a strong and much needed push back against the pervasive idea that humans are predominantly selfish and cruel. I highly recommend reading both of these books. I also love that he went to Davos and used that stage to be openly critical of the World Economic Forum. Over the weekend I read his latest book Moral Ambition.
Like his two prior books, Moral Ambition is important and deserves to be widely read. It pushes back hard against setting one's sights on climbing the ranks of investment banking or corporate law. More broadly it challenges people to believe that they both can and should make the world a better place. This is also something that Gigi and I deeply believe in. Rutger cites Margaret Mead's famous dictum "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." In the book he provides some concrete suggestions for how to get going on that journey, as well as what it takes to make a difference. There is also a strong and well deserved pushback against a fair bit of dogma, such as purity tests, that have made a lot of recent movements so utterly ineffective. There is also a nicely balanced chapter on effective altruism. Finally the book places the urgent need for moral ambition into the context of our power as humanity in the anthropocene, something that has also been central to much of my own thinking and writing.
The book does, however, have a significant shortcoming. It dramatically overindexes on nonprofits as the mechanism for channeling moral ambition. One could easily come away from reading the book and think that this is the only acceptable mode and maybe this is what Rutger believes. My own work with entrepreneurs in climate, healthcare, learning, however, suggests different. If you are morally ambitious, startups can provide an incredible vehicle for societal change. Historically they have been major contributors to the diffusion of innovation into the world. It is also interesting to note that Rutger paints an entirely positive picture of the influence of Ralph Nader (other than excoriating him for handing the presidency to Bush over Gore). But today we are reckoning in the US with how the legal paths that Nader's Raiders have opened up have contributed to slowing down development of crucial projects (the central topic of Abundance). This opens up another avenue for moral ambition that the book ignores: entering politics or government. While our existing structures are mired in incrementalism, that won't change unless morally ambitious people run on platforms of radical change. Because the alternative is what we have got in the US, a morally corrupt person has seized that mantle.
Bottom line: Read Moral Ambition for its exhortation to make a difference, but then think for yourself what the best way to make that difference is.
