Around the turn of the decade, I made a lengthy facebook post, which I’m not linking to, ha. In it, I reflected on my previous decade, and declared the 2020s to be my decade of collective, not individual ambition. I eschewed individualised achievement for its own sake, and embraced working in service of greater, collective goals.
Slightly more than half a decade on, how has that pledge worked out?
The 2010s: my decade of individual ambition
Wind back to 2010. I was eighteen, in my third year of uni, in my second year of working in CSO. My first year of flatting (shout out to the PRC), and the year of the first earthquake. I remember being especially thrilled about getting into NYO for the first time that year.
On the outside, I might have appeared to be a fairly typical uni student. But inside, I had big goals. Graduate with first class honours, get a good grad job, do a Masters’ or even a PhD overseas.
I was vaguely aware of societal issues, but wasn’t politically engaged and the climate crisis hadn’t fully dawned on me yet. In comparison to some people I know, I was super behind! I was largely fixed on personal development. I call it ‘magpie mode’: the habit of collecting shiny things, racking up achievements — sometimes simply because they sparkle.
From individual to collective ambition
I pretty much achieved all my goals. At the end of my PhD, in late 2019, my ambitious part felt very satisfied. A doctorate from Cambridge was the most prestigious bauble my inner magpie could have dreamed of collecting. (Maybe I didn’t have an especially imaginative inner magpie!)
But something had changed in me. I simply no longer cared. Maybe it was the jading effect of the PhD years, but I no longer cared about prestigious things. Mapgie brain: quiet.
At the same time, during the course of the previous decade I’d become involved in climate work, first as a volunteer. Gradually, or all at once, it took over my life.
I had also become a lot more interested in social issues, like inequality, poverty, racism, and colonialism.
My North Star gradually reoriented itself from “achievement” to something like “transforming the world to keep global warming below dangerous levels in a way that puts people, communities, and ecosystems above profit”.
This, evidently, isn’t a personal ambition. That is, it’s not something I can possibly achieve on my own. Rather, it’s an ambition that is necessarily collective in nature.
Hence: making the 2020s my decade of collective, not personal ambition.
I’m not quite sure what bird fits this bill. Maybe the kea, the famous troublemaker. Or maybe the acorn woodpecker, which was the top hit when I googled “socialist bird”. Acorn woodpeckers share wealth (i.e. massive caches of acorns) and raise their kids together. In any case, magpie brain was long gone.
What did I do next?
My first move post-collective-ambition-realisation was to take a postdoc job at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. There, I figured, I could learn a lot more about the big risks facing the planet (in addition to climate), and possibly make a difference. This was perhaps the best first move I could have made. CSER was a fascinating environment, allowing me to pursue my interests pretty freely while exposing me to a lot of socio-ecological problems I hadn’t previously considered.
While at CSER, I realised I needed something more applied — something outside of academia, which in many ways is a hyper-individualised setting. So after two years and a bit of stress I cast around for policy jobs, and landed a good one at IISD. I’ve now been there for just over three years, working on policy in service of a just and equitable managed phase out of oil and gas production and an end to public finance for fossil fuels. Although “I do not dream of labour”, it’s a great job.
Outside of work I’ve been involved in various activities in service of climate activism, trade unions & a free Palestine.
So what have I learned?
- Collective ambitions are easy to state but harder to action. It’s easy to say “I want to fight climate change” or “I want to create a more just world” but harder to figure out how one’s specific skillset and interests can fit into that broad picture (while paying one’s rent!). I’ve been lucky to have been able to slot in somewhere useful after only a couple of years of wondering what I was doing. I think of the work of artists like Tolmeia Gregory in helping people realise that there are many, many different, necessary roles within movements.
- Comrades are necessary (and plentiful). The whole point of a collective ambition is that it is shared. I’ve been lucky to meet many people who share the same ambitions as me. It actually turns out that a lot of people want to make the world a better place. It’s not the lonely endeavour that some might think it might be.
- Kea brain needs joy, too. It can be easy to become quite serious and think that everything needs to be about the struggle. But that just becomes another kind of punishing optimisation. Keas are such joyful, mischievous birds really. Feeding that aspect is essential.
- Rest can be resistance. On a similar note, rest is necessary to recharge. While I don’t think 24/7 Netflix necessarily equals resistance, switching off can both enable more productive and sustainable efforts, and in itself represent resistance to the chronic grinding of this society.
- The collective ambition fades to become part of the background. In my day-to-day life I have day-to-day concerns. Once the big pieces are in place it’s just a matter of execution. It’s only once a year or so I seriously reflect on what I’m doing in life and how it fits in with my North Star. Maybe I should reflect more often? idk.
- External validation/individual achievement is still nice, and needed every so often. I won a prize for my book earlier this year and it pretty much made my year. (The magpie awakened…!) Indeed, the very fact that the book got published by a major university press was quite validating. These things still fit within the individual achievement paradigm. Honestly, though, I think it’s no bad thing to occasionally achieve something on an individual basis, and/or receive external validation for things one has done well.
- It’s not, like, this big noble thing. Working towards a collective ambition is fun and rewarding. It’s not a sacrifice nor a reflection of a particularly noble character. I think society should normalise it a lot more than at present.
Reprogramming the magpie brain
We are socialised to idealise individual ambition and achievement. At least in Aotearoa New Zealand, we are raised on stories of sports stars like the All Blacks, talented musicians like Dame Kiri Te Kanawa or Lorde, explorers like Sir Edmund Hillary or business leaders/entrepreneurs like Sir Michael Hill.
What if we were raised on stories of collective change, of troublemaking, of movements, of comradeship? What if we raised our kids on these stories?
I’m not suggesting that New Zealanders lack such stories — I’m thinking here of the nuclear free movement, or the Springbok tour protests, or more recently the Ihumātao protests.
Maybe it was just that those stories weren’t told in my family’s house. But maybe the issue transcends just my family. I think the latter is more likely.
What I will do differently in the next five years
Honestly, not much. Kea mode is certainly here to stay. I don’t see myself returning to the individual ambition mindset any time soon.
Following the above lessons, I’d like to find more joy in life. Spend more time with comrades. Rest when needed. Not search for external validation, but not shy away from it.
I would like to stop stressing out about whether I am making the biggest difference that I possibly could be. The kea doesn’t care about whether it’s making the most trouble it can. It just revels in the process. This is possibly easier said than done though!
What’s your collective ambition?
In conclusion, enjoy this picture of a kea I took during an early-2020s day hike (ahem, tramp) up Avalanche Peak. See the colour under those wings? (Yes, writing this whole post was a ploy just to post this one photo.)
What collective ambition are you working towards or contributing to? Let me know.
Natalie Jones 