[Retra]

I mean, if you were trying to be ambitious only to serve your own happiness, then I'd say you were doing it for the wrong reasons in the first place. If that isn't you goal, a promise of tranquility and joy is hardly a sufficient reason to give up your ambitions.

[white-flame]

Isn't tranquility and joy only serving your own happiness, too? I mean, it's literally less involved with others' social and financial positivity than pursuing business, even if you're only in business for your own success.

[Retra]

Sorry, I don't see how your comment applies to what I said.

[fenwick67]

Why else would somebody be ambitious other than the pursuit of happiness? Survival? Genuinely curious.

[JoshCole]

Wanting to make a contribution to something larger then themselves. Wanting to accomplish something meaningful. Wanting to test themselves. There are a lot of different reasons completely unrelated to happiness that someone might have for being ambitious.

On the whole, being ambitious and being happy are likely going to be in opposition to each other before the ambition is accomplished. A lot of things worthy of being described as ambitious are extremely hard by definition. There are likely to be many failures on the way. Perhaps years worth of failure. Perhaps someone's ambition will leave them crying themselves to sleep at night because they may never accomplish the goal and they hate that. Or perhaps their entire body is a mass of bruises or every muscle is sore because of how hard they are pushing their body.

[nether]

Yes, ambition usually requires sacrifice. I think the odds of really making it are vanishingly small though. It could be like daytrading, where 1% actually succeed and 99% lose a lot of money and sleep. Most people would find those odds insane, yet articles like this promote chasing that far-off, remote chance of a payoff. Accepting an average life is for the sane and reasonable, just as investing in index funds means accepting average returns.

[xxSparkleSxx]

But if they derive happiness from contributing to something larger than themselves, they are still working for their own happiness. No?

[edanm]

To help people / the world.

Thank God we had ambitious people working to create vaccines, help feed the world, etc.

[hawski]

We are reaching border of philosophy.

Helping people / the world survive better?

[obastani]

For example, because they believe in a cause -- this might still be pursuit of happiness in an abstract sense, but it's not pursuit of happiness in the immediate "I want fame/money to be happy" sense.

[white-flame]

All these peer responses actually agree with you.

Why would people pursue noble, philosophical causes? Because it makes them happy to see those pursued. Why would somebody want the world around them to be better? Because it makes them happy to see the world be a better place. Why would somebody sacrifice of themselves to see a loved one better off? That's kind of the definition of love, that they're happy that their loved one is better off.

This gets more tautological than philosophical.

[Retra]

You're trivializing people's motivations. People don't do things simply because it makes them happy. They also do them because they feel compelled to, even if it would not make them happy. People are even sometimes forced to do things because they don't have any other option, or because they don't know of anything better to do. Reducing all of this to varying degrees of happiness is sloppy and usually inaccurate.

[white-flame]

Like I said, it gets tautological. What is the difference between a compulsion, a desire, and a want? All could be defined as "that which would make me happy". And as fully acknowledged in some of my descriptions above, it's not that one ends up better off, but that one appreciates something happening for its own sake. All of these seem to be equivalent. None of it is trivialization, it's simply a cloud of motivation in which there aren't easy-to-draw lines of distinction.

[pharrington]

Somebody would be ambitious because they're told to be ambitious, and because they see everybody else telling everybody else to be ambitious. Primates imprint from their environment.

[cm2012]

To make sure you can help the people you love. It is horrible to watch someone else suffer from something that a little bit of inconsequential money could solve.

[Retra]

You say "the pursuit of happiness", but I said "the pursuit of your own happiness." I can pursue the happiness of others.

[greenwhite]

ambition in the context of self sacrifice can be quite powerful

[newbear]

Can you provide me an example of this? I like the idea but don't want to misunderstand it

[greenwhite]

Sure, I think this will probably just be reaffirming what you already interpreted the idea as but basically I think that the notion of humans being able to perceive self sacrifice in an abstract manner (as opposed to traditionally killing other humans as a means of sacrifice and whatnot) gave us the ability to perceive 'the future' in a sense.

An example would be the parents in poor family working very hard day in and day out to ensure that their children go to college and secure future prosperity. That's just one example but you can think of countless different scenarios where people sacrifice a bit of their present to capture an ambitious future - or to make that present sacrifice in the name of ambition and future success.

I actually heard all of this in a video but I can't for the life of me remember who said it, and it was put infinitely better than my explanation. If I remember I will let you know!