“By Rational Ambition” (continued)
After some monologue that shows where he is on economics, Yoritomo continues – “Ambition is a sure and swift means of influence. This is, in the first place, because men have always a tendency to follow the man who draws them in the direction of light and progress…because it is almost always from the following of the ambitious that those are chosen to attain honors and fortune.”
Would follow someone with no ambition? Would you expect to “attain honors and fortune” by doing so?
Having a vision for the future and the courage to follow it (ambition) will attract people to you, and these people will be more open to your influence than if you had no vision and took no action. That’s easy to understand.
The Shogun continues, making a point that successful people do not want to drag after them the incapable or the weak, so the weak will up their game to keep up with him. Successful people like to see people on their team advancing as he does. People will hitch their wagon to someone they can gain from.
“It is in his power to be able to employ this influence profitably for disseminating good and the love of the better around him; it is in his power to instill in the hearts of the devotees aspirations toward a noble end; it is in his power always to put them on their guard against intrigues which would have the effect of diminishing the beauty of their ambition.”
So an influential leader has the power to influence others in important ways for good. I looked up the word “intrigue” because I don’t use that word.
Intrigue – a crafty and involved plot to achieve your usually sinister ends.
So he says a leader can put his followers on guard against intrigues. The next sentences it seems were written about me and my quest against my intrigues – private equity firms.
“There is beauty between the ambitious man and the intrigue all the difference that separates beauty from ugliness. This first proceeds with head erect, toward a definite goal that he has long and maturely decided to choose; he disdains paltry methods; he seeks only to attain the end that he has set before himself.”
“He goes, without concerning himself with the stones in the road, his heart full of confidence, sustained by faith in his star which he never loses from view, notwithstanding the clouds that hide it from time to time.”
“The intrigue, on the other hand, rarely raises himself above the horde of mean desires and paltry jealousies. Unlike the ambitious man, he acts with no other end in view than in procuring for himself money or pleasure.”
Is that to say that we should despise money and seek after poverty?
“Not so,” says Yoritomo, “for the poor man exercises little influence over the multitude.”
Again, Yoritomo makes a distinction between rational moral ambition that includes the lifting up of others against the lower form that seeks to get ahead without regard for others.
Tomorrow we will finish up these thoughts on “Rational Ambition” from the book “Influence – How to Exert it”.