Ambition

One of the greatest and most devastating poisons of a human mind is ambition. Most religions are actually about curtailing or moderating ambition to ensure civilized behavior towards our fellow man. Religions which DO NOT do this are called CULTS and either either modify back to something civilized and controlled or they explode into violence or implode into self destruction, often both. Remember the comet cult in San Diego? And the Branch Davidians? And the Mormons? They eventually moderated like the Catholics before them instead of dying in fire like David Khoresh. If only he'd followed the Uniform Building Code and kept his hands to himself he might have settled down into a religion too. And his compound might not have gone up like a pile of matchsticks. This is what happens when ambition leads you to madness.

I was born and raised in the Bay Area, one of the cauldrons of ambition and while some people were able to reign it in for the sake of decency, most people there do not. Raw ambition runs freely and that level of ego is called hubris, and hubris leads to mania and psychosis. I have seen people go crazy from ambition. I have witnessed suicides and murders develop from ambition, a common story on the evening news. I have watched ambitious men set aside their decency and become depraved over a small degree of power, and I found them pathetic and evil. That greedy corporations humor such beasts is shameful and self destructive. They allow it because they are run by ambitious men, who think the terror inspired by these evil men will enable them even great profits, even more power, even more slavish devotion. Ambition drives this. And this is why most of the companies in America are failing.

Ambition has caused them to push so far past civilized limits that their enduring legacy is to be shunned as the sub-humans they are. Decent people don't stand for it. Decent people have Ethics. I possess those. Ethics can be expensive, because you must curtail your greed, but they pay dividends because those who retain them as well will recognize them and prefer to do business with others possessing Ethics, to avoid being cheated. I've worked for several businesses driven by ambitious people who cast aside ethics and have since suffered legendary failure. The Dot.coms were legendary failures, as the cycle of boom and bust eventually led to an insane worship of Rockstar CEOs. Men who promised the world and usually failed to deliver for long. Investors who make decisions on sound bytes end up broke and the poverty just SPREADS. This too is ambition. Talking up stocks just to sell them off to suckers is still legal, barely, and there are TV networks which do this every business day. Those stocks often collapse in value, so some companies you do the opposite of what they claim and you'll consistently make money. Some billionaire investors ONLY buy stocks they understand. Fancy ponzi schemes have been around for centuries and will continue to be around in the future because the regulatory agencies are unwilling to police them. This is dereliction of duty, and should be treated as a criminal matter. Regulators who slack off should be jailed over it. They allow the ambitious crooks to keep robbing people and get away with it.

The most terrible ambition is the refusal to adapt to the new reality of Peak Oil. The oil is going away. We all have to change how we live in order to live on a much lower energy level. That means shorter journeys, cheaper food (grown closer rather than transported from far away), fewer material things, smaller homes with better insulation, and most important, a willingness to live slower. If the Bay Area has a motto it shares with other big cities, its: "FASTER!!" This is the battle cry of ambition. Its fueled by cheap oil and fast cars and instant information and a world that provides on demand. This is a lifestyle spoiled by easy answers. The Post Oil world has no easy answers and requires a great deal of patience. People with Ethics are already adapting to the Post Oil world, slowing down, leaving the cities behind, accepting lower wages and fewer material things. They are focusing on QUALITY rather than urgency. Stuff that lasts you only have to buy once. Stuff that is cheap you buy again and again. This is important to remember. People with too much ambition and no ethics are like cheap things. They'll fail you. You have to temper ambition or it will destroy you.