by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright October 2015
Ambition and fairness are styles of thinking that are often at odds with each other. Some famous examples include unions versus management in the business environment, saving versus partying-away as way of treating the fruits of a windfall, and adjusting prices to meet current demand versus holding them constant at a low price and creating a long line waiting for a turn to purchase -- the difference between gasoline prices and rent control.
This is a section on how these two thinking styles create differences in lifestyles.
The key thinking in the ambitious lifestyle is enjoying working hard and smart to get ahead in life. When getting ahead brings a lot of satisfaction to a person then the ambitious lifestyle choices are reinforced and the person wants to do more to advance their personal standing in terms of material possessions and standing in the community.
One of the signature activities of ambitious thinkers is migrating to a new place in search of better advancing their prospects. This is why in the Industrial Age settings immigrants bring a lot of vigor to the business activities of a community. Included in this particular migrating definition is relocating to meet the needs of a company being worked for.
Ambition is based on the hunter instinct. The village hunters had to wander far and wide to find the best hunting grounds. They had to be independent in thinking and action -- what their peers back in the village were thinking mattered less than what the prey they were stalking was thinking.
The key thinking in the fairness lifestyle is that whatever the community gains should be spread around evenly among community members. If the gain is some kind of special windfall, then it should be spread around in some kind of celebration.
A fall-out of this thinking style is prescriptionism -- there is one right way to do things. And closely related to that is the NIMBY feeling among property owners. (NIMBY = Not In My Backyard!) As in, "If things are going well in the community, then keep doing things the same way. Don't rock the boat."
The virtue of engaging in fairness activities is feeling solidarity with the community. As in, "We are all in this together."
Fairness is based on the semi-nomadic instinct. In the Neolithic Village environment when it was time for the village to move (and this happened regularly) all that came with the village was what could be carried on villagers' backs. Just that, nothing else. Everything else was either consumed in some kind of a leaving celebration, or simply left behind. The instinct this supported was, "We live together, we move together, and when we get to our new home we share what we take with us."
These two thinking styles are both successful in the Neolithic Village environment, so both are supported. But where they work well is quite different. Deciding which is appropriate in a particular circumstance is where the social conflict between them comes from.
An example of this conflict is how to treat merchant activities and its close cousin, finance activities.
Merchants are a variant on the hunter-style thinking. The merchant has to search far-and-wide for trading opportunities and has to constantly deal with strangers in cooperative ways, while constantly risking becoming the target for betrayals of all sorts -- an exciting and different life, indeed.
This is a distinctive combination of lifestyle and thinking, very unlike that of the average villager, or farmer. For this reason merchants have traditionally been seen as distinct from other regular folks and other artisans. This means that if times get scary for the community, they are high on the witch hunting list.
From merchants evolved financiers. They too deal with people and money in strange ways, and keep coming up with even stranger ways as the world gets more complex.
Finance is extreme ambition thinking, which puts it solidly at odds with fairness thinking. An example of this difference in thinking is usury laws -- these are laws designed by fairness thinkers to combat what they see as unfairness in how ambitious-thinking money lenders operate.
This difference between ambitious thinking and fairness thinking permeates social struggles in all ages of history. As with other thinking styles, the complexities of Industrial Age lifestyles amplifies this conflict in thinking, and many institutions are created to harmonize with and facilitate one or the other style.
--The End--