Thursday, March 01, 2007

Long overdue definition of "ambition."

From Wiktionary:

Noun
1. An eager, and sometimes an inordinate, desire for preferment, honor, superiority, power, or the attainment of something. (material copied from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913))

This is the kind of ambition I'm talking about. Not something exclussive to the clowns on the Apprentice. "an eager desire for... something."

I think that if we're honest we all cary around an image of who we want to be. That includes a desire for... "something." Right? The problem is why do you want it? Sometimes the answer is easy. I want to eat because I'm hungry. But sometimes the answer is more difficult. That's becuase the value is symbolic to us not utilitarian. And that's what I mean by "meaning" in life. Not some grandious concept, but simple symbolic "meaning" we assign to the things we want. The mundane thing I think all of us deal with when we look for a new car or a job or a house.

And that's the relation between Ambition and Religion. Both are a matter of believing in something that can't be proven. A leap of faith. It's about believing in something because we WANT to, not becuase it's true. Both are symptoms of the same human need: for meaning.

A day in the life of little Timmy

"Eat up up Timmy, your poo is getting cold."
"Ok, mom."
"And Timmy! don't you put your fork down on that table! You mind your manners and thrust that fork back into your bloddy eye socket where it belongs!"
"Awe, do I have to?"
"Timmy, you don't give your Mother guff!" Said Dad. "Timmy, you know that bloody oozing eyeballs are a proud tradition with the men in this family."

The flesh burning hot coals were particularly flesh-burningly-hot that morning on the way to the "Plato School of Coal Mining and Personal Dismemberment." The smell of his burning callases wisked TImmy away to a magical place in his memory. He thought of the day when his grandfather came up from the mine amid a pirade of flesh searing, moans and dancing ponies. Timmy admired his grandfather's devotion to duty. As was expected, after a life of toiling for the Lizard Man boss, Gramps severed all of his limbs but his left leg and hobbled out of the mine to present them to the Boss. Someday Timmy hoped to make the family proud: somehow he'd find a way to even chop off his left leg: now that would really be something.

A few years ago, the family wasn't so sure about Timmy's father. He went through a rough period where he got into some trouble, and we weren't sure he was going to pull through. He went off and became a musician, and gave up good honest dismemberment work altogether. When he came back to the fold the whole family was so proud. Timmy imagined how the same might happen to him. What if he didn't get into the Academy? He imagined how he might turn down a wrong path, the feeling was so VIVID. Eventually, perhaps he'd come back to the mine, and take a wife. Maybe he'd even become a councilor for troubled youth who were headed down the wrong path. He'd be able to really understand those kids. Maybe he'd even become a famous councilor, and lead a whole generation of kids back to the mine...."

 
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