Ambition And The Lack Thereof

Tuesday, July 21, 2026

The older I get the more I realize that William Shatner’s TV version of James T. Kirk in Star Trek, The Original Series (ST:TOS) was awfully wise about how people actually work.  Only the old, like myself, or the nerdy, like myself, pay much attention to the  ST:TOS anymore.  The stories have been expanded and retold.  The multiverse has been introduced and it has been 60 years.  It was very much a product of the late 1960’s when it was released.  Many of the most memorable stories are stories of the old, staid, Captain and his crew encountering young, idealistic, aliens or scattered earthlings – either in pursuit of some utopian dream – only to have Captain Kirk point out that “Man stagnates if he has no ambition,” as their utopian ideals crash upon some rock or the other – or against Kirk and his starship.  It seems that despite history and the many speeches of Captain Kirk about our need for ambition and struggle, we still chase utopia.

On the surface, this repeated plot line of ST:TOS seems a shot across the bow of the hippie culture of the day.  And in some cases, it was a direct shot.  But it was also arguing with the utopian idealism that is sold to the masses as socialism and communism.  I wonder where such media is these days?  I thought about it a lot as I read this analysis of the Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) platform.  You know the DSA, that group that seems to have taken over the Democratic Party – the “communists” everyone keep talking about.  It is a document of utopian nonsense.  The subhead says it all, “The socialist candidates being swept into power want to dismantle American life.”  As you read through the analysis you know that is an excellent summation, but that summation lacks a certain, and I think necessary, depth.

This lack of depth is illustrated by the current, and now decade long, leadership crisis in the U.K.  The U.K has spun like a top between its independent grit, see Brexit, and its desire to spin into the socialist miasma that is, in many ways, Europe under the EU.  The latest leader, doomed to serve a short term I am sure, seems to stand for little or nothing save, things need to be “better” somehow.  What the situation in Britain makes quite clear is that dealing with the political issues is inadequate to deal with the sense of “things are just not as they should be.”  More than just political change is needed as political change after political change has failed to produce the results people seem to want.

So what is needed?  To at least start to answer that question, let’s turn to Arthur Brooks – America’s leading expert on happiness.  He spends his weekly feature in The Free Press this week analyzing his incessant travel schedule and its effects on his happiness.  He writes as if his travel schedule, necessary to his professional success, is antithetical to his happiness.  I find these musings fascinating since this is also the man that, sixteen years ago, proclaimed “earned success” as the key to happiness.  Why then would an activity so necessary to that success produce unhappiness?  He approaches this in terms of life being full of contradictions and the key to happiness is then to make the most of them.

But I also wonder if he should not take a lesson from himself those sixteen years ago and from James T. Kirk.  We are meant to be ambitious.  We are meant to accomplish things.  In my near-retirement I work, on average, ten hours a week.  Not much really, not after the schedule I kept during my full working days.  But days when I produce nothing end with me sitting in front of the TV or with a book lamenting the unproductivity of the day.  And so I fill my days with productive diversions – I build furniture, I grow corn, I paint. (After a fashion – does paint-by-numbers really count?)  There is always a household chore that I can drag out a bit, making it harder than it really needs to be just so I can say I did something useful that day.  I find happiness by continuing to be productive, just not economically so.  To put it bluntly – hobbies, hobbies, hobbies.

Brooks concludes in this fashion:

Someday, I hope, I will be grounded. The prospect makes me panic a little, because I will not yet have found exactly what I’m looking for. I will still itch. In my most lucid moments, however, I think I yearn for that grounding, because a still, small voice whispers to me that when I finally stop seeking, my soul might then be found by the divine love that I craved all along. And there, I will finally know peace.

Finding peace in God’s grace is indeed the goal.  But I am not sure it is the peace that Brooks expects.  The more I know God, the more intimate I become with Him, the more apparent my unworthiness of His grace becomes.  The more I accept His grace, the more driven I am to be worthy of it.  My ambition remains and gains urgency, it just adjusts direction.

The Apostle Paul says at the beginning of his letter to the church in Rome:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Our ambition is one way God makes plain to us our need for Him.  Kirk had a point.  Without ambition we stagnate, and we are not meant to stagnate.  Utopian dreams are not just economically disastrous and politically corrupt – they defy our humanity.