The article is developed in partnership with BetterHelp.
It’s no secret that our planet is struggling. Deforestation, climate change, and worsening pollution levels are causing increasing levels of harm to the Earth every day. Centuries of the human destruction of nature have taken their toll, and the planet may never fully recover.
However, even though almost everyone realizes the danger that the planet is in, human greed, ego, and blind ambition keep us on the route to destruction. This article explores the definition of blind ambition and its role in the destruction of our planet.
Blind Ambition Vs. Ambition
Not all ambition is destructive or harmful. In fact, ambition often fuels the greatest activists to help save the planet! But there is a dangerous form of ambition called blind ambition, which is one of the sources of all the environmental problems we are witnessing today.
Ambition is defined as a strong desire to achieve a goal. Without ambition, we don’t have the energy or motivation to keep going to achieve our dreams. Whether our goals are to lose weight, obtain a degree, or save the planet, we need ambition to keep going when the journey becomes tough.
However, that doesn’t mean we should harm others or engage in immoral practices to obtain our desires. This is what blind ambition does. Blind ambition literally blinds you from the consequences of your actions. Someone with this ambition will not care about morals (or even laws) or how they treat others because it is all for the sake of their dreams and goals. This is the form of ambition that is harmful and gives ambition, in general, a bad name.
Blind ambition leads companies to violate laws, leaders to harass or take advantage of employees, and allows governments to make policies against their planet and people. In all these cases, the people with ambition wanted to achieve a particular result or make more money and didn’t care about the resulting consequences. Unfortunately, these issues are still continuing, which is why it has been so difficult to tackle the most significant environmental problems we face.
For more information on ambition, you can find further reading and resources at the link below:
https://www.betterhelp.com/advice/ambition/
How Blind Ambition Hurts The Planet
Blindly chasing a desire has many consequences. It narrows your focus, encourages selfishness, and never satisfies. Read on to learn more about how these three factors are harming the planet.
Selfishness
Blind ambition fuels selfishness. A person will only see their desires and what they want and ignore everyone else’s needs in the process.
That’s why so many leaders and business people do not care for the environmental repercussions of their actions. They are primarily focused on expanding their business, making more profits, and becoming more successful. Any consequences are dismissed as they can’t fathom looking away from their goal.
Unfortunately, this mindset is often praised in the business world. Having blind ambition and dismissing other people’s criticisms and remarks are seen as promising signs of resilience and confidence. This is the unfortunate side effect of a culture that promotes individuality. People are so focused on their own paths and dreams that they refuse to look at the destruction they cause along the way.
Feelings Of Never Enough
Blind ambition and ego are rarely satisfied when the goal has been obtained. People with blind ambition get a rush from working hard towards their goals and therefore aren’t content when they actually reach them. That’s why there is always another goal to achieve, more profits to get, or more things to produce. There is never an end goal or any peace.
As you can imagine, this feeling of never having enough or achieving enough leads to an increased need for resources. This is why more and more trees are needed as well as valuable gems, power, and water. Businesses always feel the need to produce more and more and are rarely satisfied with just having a few good products.
Narrow Focus
Even if someone’s ambition is not driven by selfishness, it can still lead to a narrow focus. Society encourages people in business to solely focus on a few goals and not get distracted by anything else. But as mentioned before, this narrow focus often means that they don’t take a step back to assess any damage that can be caused by their goals.
Furthermore, this kind of focus prevents them from planning for the future. They are only focused on what they need to do to achieve their ambitions but don’t think about the rippling effects that have on others in the future. For example, a company may need a million trees to make a product but doesn’t plan ahead for the consequences of losing those trees or how to replace them in the future.
Final Thoughts
The dark side of human nature has brought us to the current disaster of climate change. Blind ambition has led to environmental destruction and is the main reason why so many governments and businesses are not taking any positive action to fix the problem. Never has there been such a monumental example of the dangers of blind ambition.
However, if we learn to put aside our blind ambitions in exchange for a healthy ambition toward saving the planet, perhaps our species will continue and create a healthy relationship with this beautiful world.
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