A powerful article about ambition an how we are manipulated by it.
"The freedom to say what I think and command my own time is enough for me.
I would define power as the ability to make other people do what you want; freedom is the ability to do what you want.
Though to be honest, even this seemingly innocuous form of ambition serves an insidiously dictatorial desire: to change what other people think, and how they see.
But the most essential freedom to secure is the power to move freely within the borders of your own skull. Doing what you want is predicated on knowing what you want. The world’s most insidious power is that which infiltrates your own brain, constricting and deforming what’s permissible to think.
The sanest people, I think, are those happily unafflicted with ambition — whether for power, wealth, fame or achievement — who want only to work at some useful job, to love someone and to live in a nice place with some wind chimes on the porch. Maybe a bird feeder.
I aspire to be — someday, if I have the courage for it — less ambitious."
The New York Times
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