Moral Ambition

“Be a good person.”

We’ve all either given that advice to our kids or received it thousands of times. Most people might interpret it as “Be nice” or “Be kind to others.”

Rutger Bregman is thinking a lot bigger than that. You might remember Rutger from his books Utopia for Realists or Humankind or his TED Talk on Universal Basic Income. Now, he’s out with a new book, Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. To his credit, he’s put his money where his mouth is, starting a fellowship program, The School for Moral Ambition, and donating all proceeds from the book to the school. He’s also moved to New York City from the Netherlands. I interviewed Rutger on the podcast this week.

“What we do with our jobs is one of the biggest decisions we make, as the average career consists of 2,000 workweeks,” Rutger notes. “But millions of people are stuck in mind-numbing, pointless, or just plain harmful jobs. This is particularly true for some of the most educated, who wind up financiers or consultants.”

If you’ve kept up with me for a while, this might sound familiar. I wrote a book in 2014 called Smart People Should Build Things that argued that too many American college grads were heading into finance, consulting and law and that more should head to startups that were solving problems in Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore, New Orleans, Birmingham and other cities. I started a fellowship program, Venture of America that recruited recent graduates to pursue these paths.

My version of “be a good person” was “head to an emerging city and help build a company and create jobs.” So what is Rutger’s?

“We need more people solving the real problems of our time, like address climate change, prevent the next pandemic or fight Big Tobacco. There are smart people who have sat down and figured out what we could do that would do the most good across the planet. Those are the projects to which the School for Moral Ambition will be sending people. We call it ‘Hogwarts for do-gooders.’”

His book opens with a quote from Leo Rosten, “I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be ‘happy.’ I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have it make some difference that you lived at all.” It’s hard to argue with that. He then goes through how various movements have taken root and grown in different societies.

I’ve liked Rutger for a long time, since meeting him at TED 8 years ago. I particularly admire Rutger rolling up his sleeves to try and build the school. I came at it from the other direction, where I was an entrepreneur who had started an org and then wrote a book to try and make the case and spread the word. Rutger has gone the other direction. “I was tired of just writing about these problems. I thought that I should walk the walk and start building the solution myself. It’s been very energizing.” I wish more authors took a similar plunge. It’s a lot easier to commentate than to solve the problem.

That said, I think that a lot of the changes Rutger wants to see will eventually require government and politics to improve. There are massive problems that eventually require nation-scale resources to address. Take poverty, for example; philanthropy isn’t big enough. That’s how I went from fellowship founder to your friendly neighborhood presidential candidate and democracy reformer. If you want to solve some of these problems, you have to get government to become more rational and productive. It’s daunting, but also necessary.

When I get asked what I do, I sometimes answer, “I’m an all-purpose do-gooder.” For most people, trying to be a good person won’t involve some massive life change but to be a little bit better where you are and in what you do. Work a little harder, contribute a little more, donate a little more, volunteer more, be more present, be a better friend or partner or parent.

One of the darkest elements of today’s economy is that we want people to do the right thing while funneling resources to the opposite. The fastest way to riches today is to automate away millions of jobs via AI.

Rutger’s books are about how people are good and utopia is more achievable than we believe. Is he right? His books sell better in Europe than in the U.S. We could definitely use more of his thinking here.

For my interview with Rutger, click here. For his book Moral Ambition click here. To check out or apply to the School go to moralambition.org. To see what Forward is doing to reform politics in your state click here – it’s an ambitious undertaking.