Modern society suffers from the mass misallocation of ambition caused by social conditioning and the externalization of ambition. This is where ambition has been misconstrued to mean the pursuit of a career in a handful of specific “high ambition” fields (e.g. finance, consulting, tech & law) instead of the general pursuit of excellence in one’s chosen path, even if it lies outside of these fields.
Instead of seeking paths aligned with our natural gifts, we chase career paths which are socially glorified, prestigious and validating to our ego. Introverts pursue extroverted careers, disowning and rejecting the unique advantages that comes with their introspective nature. Extroverts chase down introverted roles in the name of a higher salary and respect, resulting in a soulless life, lacking in meaning and joy.
This leads to irrational talent-to-career distributions where certain paths like finance and consulting are stacked full of competition, as every graduate piles in for the hopes of fast riches and prestige. On the flip side, most blue collar jobs being considered “low value” have a distinct shortage of talent to file those roles, leading to a lack of real productivity in the economy.
True civilizational progress requires a return to divinely aligned vocation, stewardship of one’s gifts and first seeking what is aligned with their nature, not what gives them prestige in the eyes of their peers. People must stop acting from scarcity, status-chasing and money chasing, and instead start by asking themselves who they are, what they were created to do, and pursue a life aligned with that rather than seeking what looks good in the eyes of others.
How ambition has been corrupted
Nowadays, “ambition” has been corrupted to mean something along the axis of pursuing an entrepreneurial venture, climbing the corporate latter or a career in a “high value” career like finance, consulting, tech or law.
Anything less than a six-figure salary and sitting in a cushy Grade A office building in Manhattan, the City of London or San Francisco is considered a signal to others that you “lack ambition”.
In the Bible, however, ambition was never contained to mean “you’re only ambitious if you pick a career from this handful of highly prestigious career paths.” Instead, ambition was accessible to all people and all roles. This was true regardless if you were a king, farmer, merchant or servant. Ambition simply meant to faithfully multiply your God-given talents to express divine truth through that path. Let’s call this “divinely rooted ambition”.
In the modern world, this would look like:
- If you’re a stay-at-home mum, then faithfully using your divine gifts of nurturing, patience, and motherly love to raise kids as best as you can, in alignment with divine truth.
- If you have a natural talent for aesthetics, drawing and design, then using those talents to express divine truth through the channel of art and design.
- If you have a brain that is whacked out on contrarian and independent thinking, then expressing truth in the world through those talents, perhaps in the role of a philosopher.
The problem today though is that society has bastardized the meaning of ambition and judges some paths as more “moral” or “valuable” than others. If you work in finance, tech or consulting, then you are revered as ambitious, intelligent and hard working. If you merely work as a taxi driver or toilet cleaner, then you’re considered unambitious, unintelligent, and likely lazy and entitled.
The result is a mass hypnosis among young people who believe that if they pursue anything less than a career at the Goldman Sachs, Google, or McKinsey, that they are somehow less worthy. It also creates a disillusioning divide, where many vital and vocational roles — such as tradespeople, carers, and factory workers — are unfairly disrespected or looked down upon.
When there is bifurcation in society where the top half of jobs are considered worthy of praise and prestige, and the bottom half are scoffed at as “low value”, it causes those who normally would be highly competent, and find joy in those jobs, to reject them in favour of some divinely misaligned “prestigious” path instead.
As a result, we have a job market where everyone is scrambling to get into MBB, FAANG or Investment Banking, regardless of true personality fit for the role in question.
Divine calling & vocation
This mindless pursuit of what society deems as “prestigious” and “high status” is the consequence of the denial of our own divine gifts. We inadvertently tell ourselves and our creator: “No, what you’ve given me isn’t good enough. I’m going to go this other route instead.”
This is why many introverts falsely believe their introversion to be a disadvantage, abandoning it altogether and trying to fit into the corporate-sanctioned template of the “extroverted, talkative team player”, instead of applying their introversion in a field which directly rewards it.
The word “vocation” comes from the Latin vocāre, meaning “to call.” Your vocation, then, is not just a job or career — it is the divine calling you’ve been entrusted to steward in this life. A true vocation isn’t chosen through the logical deduction of what is “efficient” or “high paying”, rather, it is received only when we block out the noise of the external world and listen intently to what is inside.
When we do listen and heed the call, we align ourselves with divine will. Our live becomes effortless, we find bliss in the work that we do. Our job no longer feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. We feel that we were somehow meant to do this job — not only are we excellent at it, but it feels right on a soul level. Most importantly, our soul tells us that we’d rather continue to do this job, even if it pays less, even if it’s less prestigious and even if it’s less socially validating than some finance or consulting job.
The “introversion is bad” myth & over-weighting of certain traits.
Introversion is not bad. Indeed, we live in a society and culture that promotes extroversion, loudness and confidence as the ideal, but that’s because you likely live in a country that overemphasizes verbal swagger and brashness over real value and substance. Not all countries are the same.
Just because confidence and charisma is highly revered in the Anglo-American world and modern corporate culture doesn’t mean that it is the absolute ideal in all situations. In roles which demand constant human engagement such as sales, customer support and management it is necessary and advantageous. However, in roles which require deep introspective thought, it is actually a liability.
The West fetishizes extroversion and “soft” skills like team work and communication. But in Chinese culture, real results beat extroversion because results matter more than talk. This is why Chinese employers don’t care if you have fifteen different extra-curriculars under on your CV and if you were the president of the debate society, they care if you can actually get shit done.
The critical mistake that the West made was to misattribute the ability to speak confidently about something, with actual ability. Hence, the prevalence of highly paid corporate leaders and managers who are verbally dominant and confident, but grossly incapable. It’s salesmanship over real substance.
"Talk doesn't cook rice." — Chinese Proverb
Ultimately, the problem is we live in a Western world that deems certain traits as “superior” than others. This usually means traits like introversion, introspection and independent thinking are thrown by the wayside. Introspective and quirky personalities are taught to disown themselves in the name of conformity to the Western corporate machine. We’ve forgotten a fundamental truth, that every strength comes with a corresponding weakness.
Highly extroverted types may be confident and brash, but are usually bad at deep thinking and logical analysis.
Highly introverted types are often excellent at deep thinking and logical analysis, but poor in communication and leadership.
This isn’t a deficiency, but the natural distribution of talent and divine gifts within society. The key is to recognize the diversity of gifts among people, and allow everyone to take a place in a role that is naturally aligned with their gifts — with dignity — instead of shaming some traits as lesser than.
When the world overweight's the extroverted class, and underweight's the introverts, what results is a dysfunctional society which is all talk, but no substance. Think the United States. This is a country which spends billions every year marketing how amazing it is, yet is crumbling from the inside out.
On the other hand, countries like China which respect the talent of introverts build mind-boggling infrastructure, leads the world’s green revolution, invents radically innovative new technology and looks like it’s living in 2050 already.
Why this misallocation occurs
Over the past couple of decades, the world has become more globalized and connected. With the advent of social media, even more so. Most people think that unfettered globalization and connectedness is a good thing. However, there is a clear problem which occurs — people are overexposed to external stimulus.
When our eyes and our minds are glued to our phone and we’re being indoctrinated by social media influencers telling us that “this career is desirable because it’s high paying and prestigious” we’re subtlely being conditioned to conform to their expectations and beliefs. It’s not just the content that we’re being conditioned to believe that’s a problem. The act of seeking guidance for our life decisions from those outside of ourselves is the real problem here.
As a result, our intuition becomes suppressed and we fail to hear God speaking, and guiding us. We end up pursuing paths which are misaligned with our true nature. After years or decades, eventually we wake up and realize that we were on the wrong path all along. We might have been “successful” in the eyes of our friends and family, but deep down, our soul craved something more, yet we already invested years into that false path and now it’s too late.
You see, when our focus is on the external world — what others are doing, how much success they’re having, how revered they are by others — it’s simultaneously not focused on God and his guidance for us.
When we see someone talking about how they make $200k a year as a software engineer at Google and our ego thirsts for the same money, status, and prestige, it’s fogging up our field of view and we cannot see that God may be calling us to a different path entirely.
This lust for wealth, status and prestige is largely attributed to the false notion that things outside of ourselves can truly fulfill us. When we pursue something just because of money or status, we’re indicating to the divine that we are not already whole, complete and unconditionally loved.
If God made us to be perfect and designed us to spec, then who are we to deny the weird quirks that he gave us, even if society dismisses or rejects us for it.
Growing up with a highly introspective and skeptical mind, I was very shy and had no desire for high school popularity contests and status chasing.
Was I rejected and made fun of for it? Yes.
Did it hurt me deeply into the depths of my soul? Again, yes.
Did I therefore reject my gift of introversion, deep thinking nature and skepticism to fit in with the world? Yes, and that was my big mistake.
“It is not humility to insist on being someone that you are not. It is as much as saying that you know better than God who you are and who you ought to be. How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man’s city? How do you expect to reach your own perfection by leading somebody else’s life; his sanctity will never be yours; you must have the humility to work out your own salvation in a darkness where you are absolutely alone.” — Thomas Merton
Self-improvement should be about refinement, not transformation
The world of self-improvement, like the corporate world, will love to make you believe that who you are isn’t good enough. That you’re dysfunctional and need to change who you are. This is a huge mistake.
Self-improvement should never be about changing someone’s fundamental nature but refining that person’s nature to be the best version of who they are.
Think about it like refining metals. Like how iron ore when smelted becomes refined iron, and silver ore once refined becomes silver bullion, our goal should be to refine who we are, not change who we are.
The periodic table is a great mental model for life. It lists 118 of the key elements on earth. Each one has a valid and specific purpose. Iron is used for construction and manufacturing, gold is useful as a store of monetary value, lithium for batteries and oxygen for life support in hospitals.
What if instead of accepting their own individual nature, each element wanted to become gold because of the prestige and glamour that surrounds it? Then we’d have a dysfunctional world that no longer works.
Hermetic philosophy, they talk a lot about the process of spiritual alchemy. This is where one becomes purified and refined under the flame of life, to become a purer, more refined version of who they are.
There are four stages to alchemy: Nigredo, Albedo, Citrinitas and Rubedo. Each one takes us through the process of dissolving impurities, not our core essence. At the end, we become a shining, refined version of our true selves, not someone else entirely. This is also corroborated by the idea of true will in Thelema which is the divine unique purpose each individual has been gifted in their lives.
In my own life, when I felt rejected as a teenager for being who I authentically was, I accepted their rejection to mean I must reject my innate traits of introspection, deep thinking and refusal to bow to mainstream norms.
- I began chasing the wrong friends.
- I began pursuing women who weren’t a good fit.
- I began acting like a conceited, arrogant, money-hungry douche bag.
I lost myself, because I accepted and believed what other people said about me. Of course, at the time I didn’t see it in that way. I saw it as “self-improvement”.
After all, what’s wrong with becoming more confident, learning to make friends and money?Nothing, however the problem arose when instead of seeking aligned friends, women who were a good fit and making money in a way that felt right **to me, I forewent all of that to chase “cool” friends, “hot” women and “quick” ways to make money, which was fundamentally misaligned with my nature.
So whilst self-improvement can be a good thing, don’t buy into the belief that there is something fundamentally corrupted or defective about you.
The goal isn’t about becoming extroverted, if you’re a natural introvert.
Nor is it about becoming a brash arrogant douche bag, if you’re naturally compassionate.
Nor is it to delude yourself into enjoying leading and managing others, if you’re someone who simply enjoys the craft of creation.
The goal is simply to refine who you are:
- To no longer allow introversion to hold you back from meeting the right friends
- To no longer allow your compassion to hinder you from asserting strong boundaries
- To no longer allow your love of creation to impede on you from being financially rewarded for your work
Who you are isn’t flawed, it just needs a little cleaning up.