A Dutch historian has established an incubator for idealistic leadership that he calls the School for Moral Ambition. Rutger Bregman, who confesses to being an indomitable optimist, is the author of a book entitled Moral Ambition: Stop Wasting Your Talent and Start Making a Difference. His non-profit school’s mission is to put that message into practice by redirecting the careers of “high achievers” motivated by money and status towards making the world a better place. The cynical guffaws in corporate boardrooms are already audible. Yet Bregman (37) is starting with an ace in his hand – most people are well-intentioned.
“If people desperately want to work for McKinsey and their main goal in life is to go skiing and have that cottage on the beach, fine. People have the right to be boring,” he told the New York Times, somewhat sneerily. “But I think there are quite a few people who work at Goldman Sachs or Boston Consulting Group who are looking for a way out.”
Bregman’s initiative coincides with the foundation of a US fellowship for “empathetic leadership” by the Centre for American Progress Action Fund jointly with former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. Her premiership was distinguished by exceptional acts of compassion. Most memorably, after 51 people died in mass killings at two Christchurch mosques, she embraced Muslim mourners while wearing a headscarf and pronounced: “They are us.”
In her final speech to parliament, she said she hoped she had demonstrated that a leader “can be anxious, sensitive, kind and wear your heart on your sleeve”. When, aged 42, she announced she was quitting politics because she realised that, after five years, she could no longer give it her best, the dominant narrative was that she had “burned out”. The tone of the commentary was one of incredulity that a politician would walk off the rose-strewn stage just because she felt she could no longer give it her optimum.
For all his Fine Gael conservatism, Leo Varadkar displayed some of Ardern’s spirit during his time as a political leader. He and his partner Matt Barrett welcomed a Ukrainian war refugee into their home and, as a registered medical doctor, the then tánaiste volunteered to administer vaccines on his time off from government work during the Covid-19 pandemic. The vitriol heaped on him by keyboard warriors accusing him of exploiting the crises for self-promotion exposed the depth of cynicism in elements of the public rather than in him.
A tight-lipped Varadkar was asked about his post-politics career plans while climbing a mountain in South Africa for RTÉ’s adventure show, Uncharted with Ray Goggins, broadcast last week. His future includes an advisory position with the international PR agency Penta, whose clients include Microsoft, Google and JP Morgan.
As he struggled up that mountain in hazardous weather, I could not but think this man has more to offer than the jangling of his nerves on the slippery slope of an entertainment show and doling out advice on their public image to mega-rich clients. He is the prototype of accomplished, status-aware people being targeted by Bregman’s mission to lure elites away from their “wasted lives”. The Dutchman’s premise is simple – capitalism has a boundless ability to create highly-paid and socially aggrandising jobs that make little contribution to the betterment of our world. He points to the financial sector as an example, saying 45 per cent of Harvard graduates end up in consultancy or finance. Some of the world’s most lavishly enumerated chief executives are running wealth management and private equity companies. But are they happy?
You pay peanuts, you get monkeys, goes the justification for obscenely bloated salaries. We’ve heard that mantra from bankers whose cupidity helped collapse the Irish economy in 2008. Top talent requires top dollar, they wailed. Top talent’s vision, it turned out, is machines doing the jobs once done by people.
We heard the mantra again in 2021 when a new secretary general was appointed to the Department of Health on a €292,000 salary, exceeding his predecessor’s by more than €90,000. That’s the department ultimately responsible for the €2 billion-plus children’s hospital that has been under construction for a decade. Most recently, we heard it in the case of Brendan McDonagh, the Nama chief executive who withdrew as the putative “housing tsar” amid controversy about his anticipated €430,000 salary.
The political system cultivates the ideology that money is the measure of the man. Donald Trump represents the worst excesses and – let us hope – the dying sting of that mindset. The world’s history of self-interest features a cast from Caligula and the Borgias to Vladimir Putin and Charlie Haughey. Hubris, megalomania and plain greed underlie the greatest existential threats to humankind currently posed by climate destruction and wars. It requires smart influencers willing to prioritise humankind’s needs over their own to turn the tide.
Bregman’s theory is that talented people would be more fulfilled and more admired by concentrating their brilliant minds on the objective of making life better for others instead of accumulating zeros in their emoluments. “She/he was loaded,” hardly compares as a headstone epitaph to “she/he improved life on Earth”. Checking your privilege is no substitute for using it to benefit others.
Former president Mary Robinson has used her international capital to try to save the planet. Jimmy Carter could have chosen to dine out on his reputation for the 41 years after he left the White House, yet he became most respected for the humanitarian work he did for the remainder of his life. The Robinsons and Carters of our age will remain the exceptions unless the cultural reverence for self-interested wealth-creators is turned on its head. That transformation needs a critical mass of converts to the idea that working to make the world a better place for everyone is more rewarding than working to enhance your own place in the world.
Ardern’s fellowship aims to inculcate “pragmatic idealism” by drawing on the human strengths of kindness and empathy. Such values could provide the signposts to exit our zeitgeist of megalomania lorded over by the twin grabbers Putin and Trump and their sycophantic acolytes.
