We spend years climbing ladders only to realise, too often, they’re leaning against the wrong wall. Rutger Bregman’s Moral Ambition puts that unease into words. He asks us to stop wasting talent on hollow pursuits and start making a difference where it truly counts.

At the heart of his argument is a simple quadrant:

• Low ambition, low idealism: jobs that barely matter.
• High ambition, low idealism: the ambitious elite who win at the wrong game.
• High idealism, low ambition: the well-meaning but ineffective.
• High ambition, high idealism: the sweet spot—those who use their drive for impact, not just income.

The uncomfortable question: which box are you in?

The Allure of Hollow Success

Most of us don’t start out chasing emptiness. We want to succeed, to prove ourselves, to belong to the elite. But too often, that ambition gets funnelled into the “Bermuda Triangle of talent”—finance, consulting, or high-gloss marketing. Work that polishes corporate giants but leaves society untouched.

From the outside, it looks like power and prestige. On the inside, it can feel like you’re running a treadmill in a gilded gym—fit, fast, and going nowhere.

Reframing Ambition

Moral ambition isn’t about quitting your job to go live in a hut. It’s about asking whether your effort, intelligence, and creativity are solving the problems that matter.

Imagine redirecting the same energy that builds quarterly shareholder reports into rethinking food systems, renewable energy, mental health, or education. Imagine lawyers, designers, coders, and marketers applying their best skills not just to sell but to solve.

The book’s examples—abolitionists, consumer advocates, medical campaigners—show how ordinary people became extraordinary not by being smarter, but by being oriented toward impact.

A Personal Detour (Briefly)

I’ve spent 25 years walking my own winding path: first in the service of corporate bigwigs, then in smaller ventures, to working with NGOs pro bono, and now some work in the wildlife space. Only in hindsight do I see it: I’ve been inching from the hollow quadrants toward the one Bregman celebrates. I’m not there yet—the quadrant isn’t a destination you arrive at once and for all. But I do feel myself moving closer, especially through efforts to address the human–snake conflict. That work, while small in scale today, holds the potential for real systems-level impact. I wasn’t consciously chasing “moral ambition”—the shift has been gradual, imperfect, and ongoing.

I share that not as a pat on the back, but as proof of possibility: careers aren’t fixed. Quadrants are not prisons.

The Question for You

Bregman’s book forces a confrontation: what does your ambition serve?

Are you optimising your career for status, salary, and safety—or for impact, meaning, and legacy?

The world doesn’t lack talent. It lacks talented people who dare to aim their ambition beyond themselves.

Moral ambition is a choice. Not an easy one, not a one-time one, but a choice nonetheless. One that redefines success not as “winning bigger,” but as making better.

Your quadrant is yours to change. The only question is: will you?