Dog eat Dog world?

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My view of 'ambition' is that ambition which consists of simply wanting to improve yourself as a person, and be the best you can be for your own sense of satisfaction with your hard work, is a good thing. An actor, for instance, for whom whatever money he makes is secondary and for whom joy comes from slowly perfecting his craft. Anybody who wishes to learn is ambitious in a sense, but this is ambition in its positive form. Ambition in its negative form is what some other posters on this thread have described: wanting to better yourself at the expense of others, to achieve things simply for the purpose of seeing the approval/admiration/envy/jealousy on the faces of other people.

Just ignore it then. Live however you feel is best and don't worry about trying to compete with people, and just laught off people who try and compete with you.



I get the feeling that most of the time I hear people talk about ambition this is the sort they mean. When people describe themselves as ambitous they don't really mean the sort of positive ambition you mentioned, or not in my experience anyway.

But part of the reason some jobs pay more than others is based on demand for labor. People with advanced or specialized skills, as a whole, can bargain for higher pay because less people can do what they do. Also, professor is a bad example because professors don't get paid all that well for the amount of effort they have to commit to their job. Most decide to become professors because they have an intense interest in their field of study and enjoy the prospect of teaching and researching in their chosen field.

I agree though that professional athletes and CEO's make way too much and I think that's due to a cultural bias. Private doctors and lawyers also have exorbitant salaries IMO. There it's a legacy thing where these people think they deserve to have higher pay than anyone else and they just happen to have the power to keep things that way. It hurts everyone because there are too many people who are too much in it for the money and don't have enough compassion.

Yah..the majority of people I meet aren't ambitious; why do you think you hear all the time "it's not fair that this guy is rich and I'm not?" Yeah, it totally is fair.

The masses aren't ambitious; trust me.

Physicians must go through 4 years of undergraduate study as well as 4 years of medical school. They then go on to their internships, then residencies, and sometimes fellowships for the more highly specialized. During the first few years after medical school, the pay is horrible relative to the amount of hours worked. In no other career must one go through the rigorous training that is required of a physician. Physicians also have to deal with 6 figure student loan debt. Doctors save millions of lives and work an incredible amount of hours. They sacrifice themselves for the profession. They deserve their high salaries in my opinion.

the term "dog eat dog world" is an insult to canines. I do however agree with the sentiment.
My preferred phrase would be "human eat human world." It is so much more apt, don't you think?

Ever seen the film "Idiocracy"?

How do you explain that the poorest, least succesful are the ones who *generally* are having the most children? We regularly get stories of trailer-trash types who are illiterate, never worked, live off benefit, yet have 10+ children!! ! In fact, if ever there's a mention of somebody with over 6 children, they are usually very *unsuccesful* at anything other than procreating.

The problem with 'passing on genes' is that there is *no* objective test of 'fitness'. In reality, all you have to do is find somebody as crazy, or crazier, than yourself and turn up one evening with a bottle of wine or two.

Not based on REAL talent or intelligence. Only perceived value, as perceived by a mass of drones programmed by mass media. What REAL use is a professional athlete? Or a supermodel? The bottom line is, what crucial life threatening event would you rather be attended to by a high paid supermodel or a lowly ambulance driver? "Let me through I'm a Supermodel"

I read of 2 adjacent adverts in a newspaper. One was for a "graduate management consultant", salary $200,000 + bonus. 4,000 smart graduates applied for this. Beneath it was a job for an experienced care assistant for disabled children, salary $30,000. Nobody applied for this job. Is a management consultant really worth 6 nurses? Especially when it woul appear that there are so many who have the skill set required.

We do not live in a meritocracy. People get paid based on what they can blag, not what they deserve. Those with connections to the media channels get the most. The modern world is absolutely based on computers and IT. How come the status of the software developers who have built this world gets lower every day, whereas the management consultants who contribute approximately zero of real worth are still blagging enough to be retiring at 35? And what about the financial people who we now know were both incompetant AND dishonest, yet are still filthy rich despite destroying the economy?

We do not live in a meritocracy. You get what you can grab from others regardless of whether they are more deserving or more intelligent than you.

Yeah, I have. Its a good film. What I was suggesting was that to be ambitious and successful is an inbuilt evolutionary drive. What you describe is just a symptom of a modern welfare society. Even as little as 200 years ago things were different - to be wealthy and successful meant you and your children were likely to be healthier and live longer. The drive to have many offspring is to maximize the chances of continuing your line because of much higher child mortality rates.



I know IT consultants who make as much as doctors, and I think the status of the 'geek' professions is growing, not diminishing.

Not true. It depends on quantity of food available and how crowded they are. If you have two rival packs of dogs on an island they they will eat each other as they grow and become over crowded and diminish the other food supply. That island literally becomes a dog eat dog world.

Likewise, I've seen gerbils, hamsters and the like eat their own young. Was the cage too small, was there too much environmental stress on the mother? I was a kid at the time, but it always made me wonder.