The camel, a strong animal who can walk in the desert for days without food, water or rest has a weak spot for a particular desert thistle. They desire it so much that they just cannot resist it, they have to bite and chew on it the minute they see it. Over time, the thistle scratches, tears, and lacerates the camel’s mouth causing severe bleeding. The taste of its own salty blood mixed with the sweet taste of the thistle makes the camel even more infatuated so it continues to chew on the thistle until the bleeding is so severe that it dies from it. This is harese, an old Arabic word from which the words for ambition, greed, craving, desire, and passion are derived.
This is harese, an old Arabic word from which the words for ambition, greed, craving, desire, and passion are derived.
Zulfu Livaneli’s Disquiet, a riveting novel about the refugee crisis in the Middle East, starts with this parable. The camel’s harese story is a metaphor for human greed, ambition, and desire. The infatuation, the passion, the desire and greed cause the camel to be attracted to the thistle so much that it is intoxicated by its own blood, so overjoyed by the short-term feeling of satisfaction and tempted by the allure that it is blind to an imminent catastrophe lurking - even when it’s its own self-destruction.
I write these lines as the death toll from the two recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria are in the 25000s as we speak and continuing to rise. We all know earthquakes don’t kill people; bad buildings do. So what went so wrong that some 4000 buildings collapsed and many more were severely damaged? What kind of greed and desire for more money, quicker, wider construction, what kind of short-term satisfaction and ambition for higher status was in the minds and hearts of the many involved from the contractors, to the architects, from engineers, government officials, lawyers, local offices, to real estate agents, sellers, buyers, renters - and the list goes on - that in an area with well-known earthquake risk, the protocol and best practices were not followed and ended up in a devastating tragedy?
So what went so wrong that some 4000 buildings collapsed and many more were severely damaged?
Last week, I wrote about the environment created by the tech layoffs that are continuing to impact many these days. So far, around 70,000 people have been made redundant in the tech industry in the last year. The tech companies have all said that they had hired for a different economic reality in the past year. So what went so wrong that these brilliantly successful companies with brilliantly experienced financial evaluation and estimation teams (human and AI included!) all got it wrong and over-hired by large amounts? What role did focus on short-term pleasures, infatuation with momentary abundance, passion for a glamorous image and popularity play in perceiving an economic reality that in fact did not turn out to be the actual economic reality? What stopped these companies from being more prepared for an economic downturn?
So what went so wrong that these brilliantly successful companies with brilliantly experienced financial evaluation and estimation teams (human and AI included!) all got it wrong and over-hired by large amounts?
As the stories behind fraudulent start-up founders like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, Charlie Javis of Poverup unfold in the news today, one cannot help but wonder what got into these young, smart, Ivy-League educated individuals from seemingly good families and relatively comfortable lives, that they had to lie, deceive, and scam other people, to cause them and their families harm, in the end leading to their own self-destruction? What role did greed, euphoria, destructive ambition, and unhealthy passion play in these cases? How did these people who were once highly-respected and praised cross the line from healthy determination and eagerness to unethical and immoral actions caused by greed? Did they know they were crossing the line?
How did these people who were once highly-respected and praised cross the line from healthy determination and eagerness to unethical and immoral actions caused by greed?
Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies, portrays a Scottish general and his wife’s quest for absolute power. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Macbeth starts off as a well-respected and loyal nobleman known for his bravery, intelligence, and compassion. He has one fatal flaw, however: ambition. He does whatever it takes to become King, in the process partaking in immoral acts, dishonesty, betrayal causing hurt and pain. At the end of the play, Macbeth technically has achieved all he wanted but has also destroyed himself and his family in the process. With his wife gone and not being able to have children, Macbeth realizes what his excessive ambition has cost him: the destruction of all he holds dear. Many innocent people are killed, and Macbeth dies known as a tyrant and a traitor.
Ambition, of course, is a good thing at its core! We consider ambition to be a fundamental quality of a leader. It gives you energy, drive, purpose and direction. Most people who have done great things in life and succeeded in various areas have ambitious qualities. But is there a point when ambition is no longer good? How much is too much? According to the Harvard Business Review article How Ambitious should you be?, “...fostering a healthy level of ambition is not easy, and amidst so much uncertainty, it may seem like a low priority. Well-balanced ambition leads to creativity and innovation, greater levels of performance, and deeper levels of joy and satisfaction… In excess, however, ambition damages reputations, relationships, and can lead to catastrophic failure…”
"In excess, however, ambition damages reputations, relationships, and can lead to catastrophic failure…”
Earthquakes are black swan events, occurrences characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight. Nassim Taleb argues in his 2007 bestseller, The Black Swan, that “because black swan events are impossible to predict due to their extreme rarity, yet have catastrophic consequences, it is important for people to always assume a black swan event is a possibility, whatever it may be, and to try to plan accordingly.” The dotcom bubble of 2001, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the crash of the housing market in the USA in 2008, September 11 terrorist attacks, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the Great Depression are some examples of black swan events.
Should we be doing more to curb our human weakness for dopamine-induced overambition, overconsumption, overpower?
“The result”, says Taleb, “is people develop a psychological bias and "collective blindness" to them. The very fact that such rare but major events are by definition outliers makes them dangerous.” I am no earthquake expert, a construction engineer, a CEO or a financial advisor, but I can see the collective blindness and am impacted by it, as we all are. So I ask: If it wasn’t for the blindness caused by blind ambition and desire, would the government officials sign off on the planning permissions for the thousands of collapsed buildings, including those their families ended up living in? Would the camel keep chewing on the thistle that causes it to bleed to death? Would an entire industry overhire, overspend, and signal ability to make tough decisions to their investors by laying off thousands of people overnight when the economic climate changes? How can we make sure to think of the black swan events as a possibility and plan accordingly? How can we collectively learn from the black swan events when they happen so we don't fall into the same trap next time? Should we be doing more to curb our human weakness for dopamine-induced overambition, overconsumption, overpower? What checks and balances can we put into place to protect ourselves from our collective blindness?
I don’t have the answers, there is no one answer, they will vary from individual to individual. I do ask the thought-provoking questions, however, because I know we can all do better - individually and collectively.
DONATE NOW TO HELP EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS IN TURKEY AND SYRIA
Connect with me at leadrisecoaching@gmail.com if you have any questions / comments / experiences you want to share on ambition and greed
#ambition #overambition #blackswanevents #techlayoffs #Turkeyearthquake #Syriaearthquake #refugeecrisis #dobetter #fraud #greed
댓글