ReThinking: How you can do more for others with Rutger Bregman

Summary

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Podcast Summary: ReThinking: How You Can Do More for Others with Rutger Bregman

Podcast: ReThinking (TED)
Episode: How You Can Do More for Others with Rutger Bregman
Date: August 26, 2025
Host: Adam Grant (with Anna as moderator in the Wharton Series)
Featured Guest: Rutger Bregman, Dutch historian, bestselling author, founder of the School for Moral Ambition

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the concept of "moral ambition," a powerful blend of idealism and drive that Rutger Bregman argues is behind some of history's most significant progress. Through thoughtful debate and candid discussion, Adam Grant and Anna guide Rutger through questions about reconciling personal ambition and making a difference, the pitfalls and promise of channeling talent for social good, and practical advice for those who want to do more for others. Rutger’s new book, Moral Ambition, frames much of the conversation, offering historical context and modern application for listeners eager to live more meaningful and impactful lives.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining "Moral Ambition"

• Intersection of Idealism and Entrepreneurship

  • Rutger Bregman describes "moral ambition" as a rare combination of activist idealism and entrepreneurial drive. These are the ingredients, he claims, of real-world change makers.
  • Quote: "You don't do good things because you are a good person. It's the other way around. You become a good person by doing good things, and that can be infectious as well." — Rutger Bregman [02:27]

• Historical Examples:

  • The British abolitionist movement, as opposed to less-effective continental European efforts. In Britain, ambitious elites used their resources for social change.
  • Quote: "The reason we remember them is because they used what they had, their capital, their network, their talent, … to make a massive difference." — Rutger Bregman [05:36]

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2. Reconciling Ambition and Morality

• Is Ambition a Vice?

  • The group addresses the stereotype that ambitious people are less moral and moral people lack drive. Rutger’s thesis is that both can and should coexist.
  • Quote: "[Moral ambition] is an invitation to do something much more interesting and much more meaningful with your limited time on this earth." — Rutger Bregman [07:21]

• Material Success & Its Limits:

  • Discussion acknowledges that wealth can buy happiness up to a point, but emphasizes that meaning and legacy come from impact, not accumulation.
  • Quote: "You have the freedom to be boring, but moral ambition is an invitation to do something meaningful." — Rutger Bregman [07:21]

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3. Practicality, Pitfalls, and Career Choices

• Pursuing Good Without Burnout

  • Rutger cautions against excessive self-sacrifice but urges listeners to push beyond comfort and routine.
  • Quote: "Sure, there are limits, but I think a lot of people can actually do a lot more." — Rutger Bregman [06:23]

• On Banking, Consulting, and Talent

  • Anna challenges Rutger about shunning high-status career paths. Rutger jokes about the "Bermuda Triangle of talent" (consulting, corporate law, finance) absorbing ambition, but agrees skills and networks gained early in such paths can later serve social good.
  • Quote: “It does make sense if you’re young and really ambitious, you want to go to a place where you feel really challenged.” — Rutger Bregman [12:00]

• The Problem with "Earning to Give"

  • Cautions about joining problematic industries solely to donate later (“earning to give” strategy — see Sam Bankman Fried).
  • The work environment can profoundly shape values; joining with the best intentions doesn’t guarantee a future commitment to moral ambition.
  • Quote: "Finance is such a problematic environment that it changes you as a person, so you may not be the same a decade later." — Rutger Bregman [16:43]

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4. How to Actually Make a Difference

• Starting Small Versus Aiming Big

  • Anna recommends focusing on gaining skills early in your career, Rutger agrees but urges urgent action if clarity is present.
  • Quote: “If you can accomplish your goals during your lifetime, then you're just not thinking big enough. So thinking big is important.” — Rutger Bregman [37:08]

• Community Matters

  • Having a strong community of like-minded people (“moral ambition circles”) helps maintain values and ambition, providing support and accountability.

• Practical Advice for Listeners:

  • Find “Gandalf” figures—people who have deeply considered what needs to be done—and join big, urgent causes (“throw the ring into the mountain” rather than just “find your passion”).
  • Start with smaller, concrete acts that build your capacity and character over time.

• Quote: "If you don’t know what needs to happen, just find yourself a Gandalf." — Rutger Bregman [18:53]

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5. Learned Helplessness vs. Cowardice

• Motivation Crises:

  • Anna draws a distinction between cowardice (paralyzed by fear) and learned helplessness (paralyzed by futility).
  • Quote: "The former is fear, the latter is futility. Don’t you think those are different empirically?" — Anna [25:28]

• How to Overcome Helplessness:

  • Show people their behavior can make a difference; remind them of moments when their actions have mattered before.
  • Quote: “Remind people that they have been able to make a difference in the past.” — Anna [25:30]

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6. The Role of Guilt and Shame

• Pro-Guilt, Cautious with Shame:
  • Guilt can motivate compelling prosocial action, but shame tends to provoke withdrawal or aggression.
  • Quote: "For me, the right mix is probably like 80% enthusiasm and 20% guilt, but it’s got to be in the mix a little bit." — Rutger Bregman [28:45]
  • Parenting: Emphasize teaching children the impact of their actions rather than simply enforcing rules.

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7. The Lightning Round [34:41]

• Worst Career Advice:

  • Rutger: "Follow your passion. No one cares about your passion."
  • Anna: "So don’t follow your passion — follow your compassion." [34:53–35:02]

• Hot Take:

  • Rutger: “I don’t believe in free will.” [35:13]
  • Promise of future debate with Adam on this perennial philosophical question.

• Advice for Aspiring Changemakers:

  • Dream big but break aspiration into small, actionable steps (echoes “small wins” research by Karl Weick).
  • Build or join supportive circles to nurture ambition and social impact.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "You become a good person by doing good things. And then that can be infectious as well." — Rutger Bregman [02:27]
• "We have the freedom to be boring." — Rutger Bregman [07:21]
• "Consultancy, corporate law and finance: it’s this dark chasm that sucks up so much talent and we never hear from these people again." — Rutger Bregman [10:04]
• "If you don't really know what needs to happen, just find yourself a Gandalf." — Rutger Bregman [18:53]
• "If you can accomplish your goals during your lifetime, then you're just not thinking big enough." — Rutger Bregman [37:08]
• “Don’t follow your passion — follow your compassion.” — Anna [35:02]

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Highlight | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 02:27 | Rutger on becoming a good person by doing good things | | 04:45 | British abolitionist movement — how elites made moral ambition work | | 10:04 | The “Bermuda Triangle of talent”: consulting, law, finance | | 16:43 | The risks of "earning to give" and work environment on values | | 18:53 | The Gandalf-Frodo model for finding meaningful work | | 25:28 | Distinguishing cowardice and learned helplessness | | 28:45 | The role of guilt vs. shame in motivating moral action | | 34:44 | Lightning round: worst ambition advice, pro-compassion, free will | | 37:01 | Practical advice: dream big, break it down, build accountability circles |

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Moral ambition is about combining the drive of ambition with the intent of morality for outsized social impact.
• It isn't enough to have good intentions—channel your skills, talent, and resources, ideally within community, for the greatest good.
• Don’t wait for clarity to do good; start small but dream big.
• Build your skills but challenge yourself to connect them to meaningful causes over time.
• Emotions like guilt (not shame) can power the desire to improve oneself and the world—don’t shy away.
• Surround yourself with others who share your values and hold each other accountable.

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Final Thought

Rutger Bregman’s challenge — and encouragement — to listeners is clear: Reimagine your ambition as a force for moral progress, and take concrete steps, big or small, to leave the world “wildly better,” not just a little better.

Transcript

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[Rucker Bregman]

Discover [e-mail] that really is what moral ambition is. It's not about just saying, oh, you should check your privilege. No, use your privilege. Use what you have to make a big difference.

[Adam Grant]

Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking My Podcast with Ted on the Science of what Makes Us Tick. I'm an organizational psychologist and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking. Rucker Bregman is a Dutch historian and best selling author.

[Anna]

His new book is called Moral Ambition.

[Adam Grant]

And he's also the founder of the School for Moral Ambition, an organization of driven entrepreneurs and idealists looking to combine forces for good.

[Anna]

I hosted him in the Authors at.

[Adam Grant]

Wharton series for a discussion and debate.

[Anna]

About how we can do more for others.

[Rucker Bregman]

You don't do good things because you are a good person. It's the other way around. You become a good person by doing good things, and that can be infectious as well.

[Anna]

Let me start by just saying when you sent me an early PDF of this book, I was completely fascinated by the idea that morality and ambition could go hand in hand, because normally we think about them as either independent or even opposites. Ambitious people lack morals in American society frequently, and moral people sometimes are seen as lacking ambition. What gave you the idea that these two things could actually coexist?

[Rucker Bregman]

I was just fascinated by the great moral pioneers of the past. I wanted to write this big book about the abolitionists, the suffragettes, the civil rights campaigners, the animal rights activists. Maybe you know, that book by Peter Singer, the Expanding Circle, in which he makes a philosophical argument that over the centuries our moral circle has expanded and that that has been one of the main drivers of moral progress. And I wanted to write the historical version of that, basically tell the stories of the people who did that. And then I started working on the first part about evolutionism. And I learned so many lessons about who these people were and what they had in common. And I indeed discovered that they had something that I started to call moral ambition, which is this rare combination of the idealism of an activist and the ambition of an entrepreneur. And when that comes together, the magic happens.

[Anna]

I think it's a brilliant way to get people who both have clear principles and also a lot of drive to think about how to put those two things together. When I was reading Moral Ambition, I was thinking about Enron, one of the great corporate scandals of what early 21st century? I remember one of the sort of the foreshadowing comments that Enron was going to go down in flames was Ken Lay, the longtime CEO. He had a comment from his business school professor, if I remember correctly, that said, very ambitious, maybe too ambitious. And I thought, if you study those cases, the solution to the excess ambition problem is to dial down ambition. And I think what you're encouraging us to do instead is redirect it. Exactly, exactly. So talk to us about how. What does it mean to pursue moral ambition?

[Rucker Bregman]

You know, I studied the British abolitionist movement. I spent a lot of time studying that one. And the reason I was so fascinated by it was that most movements against the slave trade and against slavery were utter failures. So I'm from the Netherlands, and in the Netherlands, it was a bunch of Calvinists who got nothing done. You know, they were idealistic, but not very ambitious and not very effective. In France, there was a bunch of writers and intellectuals. Well, you can predict how much they got done. In Portugal, there was pretty much nothing. In Spain, there was very little. In the US Obviously, it took a civil war in the end. And abolitionism was Extremely unpopular before that. It was only in Britain that it became this huge movement. And the interesting thing is that it started among elites. It was a countercultural revolution among elites who wanted to redefine what it means to be successful. The British Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded by 12 individuals. One was a writer, one was a lawyer. But 10 out of 12, they were entrepreneurs, people who had built their own companies, who had scaled their own companies, who knew how to get shit done. But the reason we remember them today is not because they were rich. Now, the reason we remember them is because they used what they had, their capital, their network, their talent, basically their precious resources and their precious time on this earth to make a massive difference. And that really is what moral ambition is. It's not about just saying, oh, you should check your privilege. No, use your privilege. Use what you have to make a big difference.

[Anna]

So how do you think about the problem of, I have career goals that I want to achieve. I want to be conventionally successful. I want to be able to support my family. And also now you're saying I need to be ambitious about the amount of good that I do.

[Rucker Bregman]

So you can take things too far. Right. We don't want all of you getting a burnout or, like, give all your wealth away so that you have to live under a bridge somewhere. Sure, there are limits, but I think that a lot of people can actually do a lot more. I mean, you're a psychologist, right? We know that there are diminishing returns to certain status symbols. And for me, with wealth, it has always seemed so obvious to me that this is, like, a fairly shallow way of pursuing success. And at some point, I was also, personally, I was like, okay, what's the next thing? How can I really leave my mark?

[Anna]

Our own Matt Killingsworth has published some research showing that we used to always say, yeah, income has diminishing returns for happiness. His data suggests that was wrong. And in fact, people who get richer and richer actually tend to get a little happier. Do believe that. Yeah, yeah, but you're saying we should forego that.

[Rucker Bregman]

But it's not, like, purely linear, right?

[Anna]

No, it probably does taper a little.

[Rucker Bregman]

Yeah, yeah. I'm not like, oh, you shouldn't care about money. You shouldn't care about material possessions. I mean, I like my new shoes. I bought them for today. But, yeah, at some point, it becomes a little bit shallow, I would say. And I guess that's also my message to really ambitious people out there. It's like, look, if this is really what you want out of life, right? You really care about, you know, going on a ski holiday as often as possible, having the biggest possible house, you know, being the richest person in your circle of friends, then, sure, you live that life, right? This is a free country. But, like, you have the freedom to be boring. But moral ambition is an invitation to do something much more interesting and much more meaningful with your limited time on this earth, because this is true for everyone. We're going to die. That, for me is the most essential fact of life. It's very short. That's also one of the main messages in this book, like, no matter how wealthy you are, your precious time on this earth, that's your most valuable resource. How do you want to be remembered?

[Anna]

So I found that to be a really compelling argument, and it reminded me a little bit of some research that Jeremy Frymer led years ago looking at what do moral exemplars do differently from the rest of us. And not surprisingly, the people that we tend to put on a pedestal as role models tended to be much higher in concern for others than their peers, but they were also higher in ambition than their peers. And I think that is the fundamental point that you're making here. I think it gets really complicated when it starts to get practical. Okay, so one of the questions I was grappling with here is, isn't the road to hell paved with good intentions? Haven't we seen tremendous amounts of harm of people who thought they were making the world better and actually made it worse? So if you take the call to do more seriously, how do you know whether you're actually doing better?

[Rucker Bregman]

I would say that this book is grounded in a philosophical, ethical tradition that goes back all the way to the abolitionists who deeply believe that everyone's equal. For me, it's more grounded in history. I see a certain moral progress in the last two centuries. And I think it's if you believe in that deep equality of all humans on Earth that we all have the same dignity and the same worth, then, yeah, we're not nearly done yet. Because we still live in a world where 15,000 kids die every day and where 85% of the world population lives under the US poverty line. It's such an unjust and unequal world, and there's still a lot of low hanging fruit that brilliant, ambitious, driven people can do to make this world not a little bit better. I've always hated that phrase, like, oh, make the world a little bit better. No, make the world wildly better. That's what we can do.

[Anna]

Are you suggesting then that our Penn graduates should not go into banking and consulting?

[Rucker Bregman]

They should be very, very careful about it, let's put it like that. So. So a good friend of mine went to Oxford University and a couple of years ago he got an offer from McKinsey and he always calls it the Bermuda Triangle of talent. So you've got consultancy, corporate law and finance. It's this dark chasm that sucks up so much talent. And we never hear from these people again and they become incredibly boring. And once they're past the age of 30, they've got the mortgage, they've got a house, and you're at a birthday party like you don't want to. Okay, maybe I'm a bit too blunt now. You know, we Dutch were known to be blunt.

[Anna]

You did say earlier we have the freedom to be boring. So are you trying to take away free?

[Rucker Bregman]

That's true. That's freedom. No, no, no. Don't want to take away that freedom at all. I'm just warning you. Look, there is light at the end of the tunnel. So I co founded an organization called the School for Moral Ambition. And we like to see ourselves as the Robin Hoods of talent. We started in Europe last year. We have the, these fellowship programs very, very hard to get into. We recruit people who have about 10 years of working experience and some of them have Indeed come from McKinsey and have now been liberated by us. And yeah, they're very happy about it.

[Anna]

Do you think though I have an easier time making the case for consulting than banking? I think that the learning and development systems that management consulting firms have built are quite valuable early stage in a career, especially if you don't know what you want to do. And we've seen lots of consultants go on to do great things. But even in the banking world, I think about great leaders like Jacqueline Novogratz, who took her investment banking expertise and built the Acumen Fund.

[Rucker Bregman]

Absolutely.

[Anna]

So it seems like what you're advocating for is not against that necessarily.

[Rucker Bregman]

No, absolutely. There's a really good argument to be made that especially early in your career, you need that career capital. Right? You want to work with the best and brightest. And again, I come from a leftist progressive background and people like me often have a discomfort in acknowledging that there are vast differences in just how talented and effective people are. I mean, I do think we should broaden our definition of talent. I don't think that this country or universities like this one, they're not meritocracies. You often have to be lucky to get in in all kinds of ways, but there are differences and it's often power law shaped right. So any venture capitalist will tell you that there's often like this one investment that will generate most of the return of the WHO fund. And I think that's often true in the talent space as well. So it does make sense if you're young and really ambitious, that you want to go to a place where you feel really challenged. You want to work 70, 80 hours a week, you want to work with people who are really ambitious and want to work for the big project. I think that is an uncomfortable truth to acknowledge that sometimes there are awesome NGOs out there, of course, but they have that deep yearning to do hard work and they don't always find it in that space.

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[Anna]

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[Rucker Bregman]

Uh, what?

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[Anna]

I've had the privilege of teaching some of the students who are here with us today, and there's a message I've tried to deliver to them a few times that I want to get your reaction to. And maybe your version of it will land more effectively than mine has. But the question from. From those who are morally ambitious, from those who are tempted to go to a nonprofit or an NGO or to build a social enterprise. They are very impatient, generally, and they tend to come by office hours and say, I want to go and do that immediately. And my reaction to them consistently is, what's the rush? I think the single most important investment you can make at the beginning of your career is in your learning and growth. So that means you should not join the organization that you think is going to do the most good in years one or two. You should join the organization that's going to prepare you to do the most good in years 10 and 20 and 30. And I get so much resistance to that. And really, the only success I've had in pushing back against the pushback has been to say something along the following, like, why did you come to Penn? You've chosen to invest in your learning. Why should that investment end the day you graduate? So help me out here. What is the more effective version of this argument?

[Rucker Bregman]

A couple of things to keep in mind. Work isn't just work, right? It changes you as a person. So there was this movement, it still exists, the effective altruism movement. And these people made the argument, what is it, more than a decade ago now, that you should actually go into finance because you can earn a shitload of money and then donate that to highly effective charities. And it seems like a really reasonable argument. The pushback here, though, could be that finance is such. How do you say that? Problematic environment, that it changes you as a person, so you may not be the same person a decade later. And then obviously, well, we all know what came out of that. Sam Bankman Fried is the most notorious example who is one of the earlier earning to givers and now in prison.

[Anna]

I would like to think that's a self selection effect more than a socialization effect. That maybe the kinds of people who are drawn to some of these fields are more inclined to have their values or their decisions correct.

[Rucker Bregman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's maybe true. There's a good argument to be made that this can actually be done. But what you also need is a very powerful community that makes sure that you're still idealistic, that you don't change too much as a person, that you don't get used to a certain lifestyle. That's also honestly one of the reasons why we co founded this organization, the School for Moral Ambition. Because we want to build a little bit of. Well, in the book I call it a cult of like minded ambitious idealists. I've got one story in the book about a school in London that is sometimes described as the Hogwarts for do gooders. It's a little bit like Y Combinator, the organization, that startup accelerator. Exactly. And they're like the nonprofit version of that. So they launch These high impact NGOs, also very, very hard to get into. But when I interviewed the founder of that school, I also asked him this question, like shouldn't people wait for a bit? And he was like, no, no time to waste. If you really have that energy, if you're super ambitious, if you're super idealistic, do it now.

[Anna]

I think if you have that clarity of vision, absolutely. I'm thinking more of the person who says look, I want to do good, but I don't exactly know what that looks like yet. So shouldn't I join an organization that's heavily socially conscious? Maybe, but don't you want to build the knowledge and skills and network that will allow you to do that in a more meaningful way?

[Rucker Bregman]

Again, there's something to be said for that. But if I can push back again a little bit. At our organization, we believe in the Gandalf Frodo model of doing good. So Gandalf never really asked Frodo, hey Frodo, what's your passion? Right. He was like, this needs to happen. Throw the ring into the mountain. That's at the top of the world's to do list. And I think that's also very much what moral ambition is about. If you don't really know what needs to happen, just find yourself a Gandalf. Right. You don't need to go out in the world and spend years figuring out who you are gazing at your navel. Just ask some really smart people. Like there are a lot of Gandals out there who've done a huge amount of prioritization research, as it's called, in social science. And like we have the world's to do list, and you can just go start, you know, at the very top of it and make a difference.

[Anna]

Is this what your curriculum looks like at the School for Moral Ambition? Do you just read Lord of the Rings?

[Rucker Bregman]

Well, it's difficult to resist making the comparisons to all these fantasy novels. Also the Robin Hood model of talent. We're basically trying to convince people to leave the empire and join the rebel alliance. And anyway, there are many.

[Anna]

It sounds like fun. So one of the things I was really grappling with as I read the book and that I've been thinking about ever since is the line between moral responsibility and sanctimoniousness. I think there's a real risk when you tell other people to be morally ambitious of leaving them feeling judged. How do you think about navigating that?

[Rucker Bregman]

So you've probably experienced that as well. You know, sitting in class as a student or maybe in high school, learning for the first time about some of these terrible periods in history and then wondering, like, what would I have done? Well, today is the day to find out. We are living through one of those moments in history, and this is a time when characters are being tested and you can basically show who you really are. So this is really one of those moments. So if you're, if you're like worried of being seen as too sanctimonious or like a do gooder, I don't know. That would be like the last worry on my mind right now also, because honestly, I think doing good can be contagious. It's one of the simplest. But I think also one of the most important insights in the book is that you don't do good things because you are a good person. It's the other way around. You become a good person by doing good things. And then that can be infectious as well, because people see you being bold, being brave, being courageous, and they're like, hey, maybe I can do that as well. And then it could spread like a virus.

[Anna]

I mean, I love that idea. I think it speaks to what Jonathan Haidt has called moral elevation. Witnessing somebody else engaging in an act of moral excellence and that lifting us up and making us more interested in doing the same. I want to push back though, on your claim that we're seeing a lot of Cowardice right now, because I'm not seeing a lot of cowards. I'm seeing a lot of people who are falling victim to what our own psychologist, Marty Seligman called Learn helpless. The basic idea is that you get feedback from your environment that what you do doesn't make a difference. And you over generalize the conclusion that nothing I do makes a difference, so why try? And I think that's not a crisis of cowardice. I think it's a crisis of both confidence and also of mechanisms for organizing and having collective impact. So I think it's maybe a collective action problem is underlying it. And I love to hear you talk a little bit about what is the antidote to learn helplessness for people who ten years ago might have been morally ambitious or five years ago might have been morally ambitious and now are saying nothing worked, why try?

[Rucker Bregman]

I would say that this is a moment where if you have any kind of comfort still today, you're like, oh, it's very bad when I switch on the news, but it's not really affecting me. Then you are exactly the kind of person who should do something today. Right? That for me is very much the main audience for moral ambition. That's why I'm glad to be here today. If you have that power, if you have that we call privilege sometimes, or you have the talent or the skill set, etc. Well, use it to make a difference. And I'm not really sure whether I buy your difference between learned helplessness and cowardice. I mean, it's got to start somewhere, right? Someone has got to break through that collective action problem. I've got a whole chapter in the book about resistance heroes during the Second World War. Like, why did some people have the courage to stand up and help persecuted Jews? And why did they risk their own lives to do that? And I always assumed that there must have been some kind of psychology of the resistance hero. And indeed, there's been quite a lot of research into this area. There was one big project a couple of decades ago by Samuel and Pearl Olner, who wrote this big book called the Altruistic Personality Project. They couldn't really find anything like the effect sizes were very small. There wasn't really anything like the altruistic personality. But then later researchers did find this. One really interesting thing is that there was this one very predictive factor, like were you asked to join the resistance? Were you asked to frankly risk your own life to help someone else? And then in most cases, people said, yes, yes, of course there was some selection effect going on, like, you wouldn't ask anyone. Like, it would be risky to ask any kind of Nazi or something like that. But this also explains why resistance was a very local phenomenon. Right. It wasn't evenly distributed across the country, but you could really see it popping up in certain villages, for example, certain communities. And you could also see the role of certain super spreaders. And I guess, honestly, that's also how I see the spread of moral ambition. It could start on a campus like this. And maybe initially we have this collective action problem, and maybe initially some people are really skeptical, but then you have those people who really are able to act in line with their own ideals, who don't need that social support from a lot of people around them. And I think that's often where it could start.

[Anna]

So I think we're mostly in agreement on that. But I think I have to fight you on two things here.

[Rucker Bregman]

Okay.

[Anna]

First one is I think there's an important distinction between being a coward and suffering from learned helplessness. I think about cowardice as basically a psychological state where people say, my fear overcomes my will to act. And I think that if I take this action, the risks are too great. I think about learned helplessness as saying, instead of being worried about the negative downside of my action, I just don't believe that there's any positive upside. And so the former is fear, the latter is futility. It doesn't matter. Why bother? Don't you think those are different empirically? They show up as different?

[Rucker Bregman]

Yeah. Yeah. And how do you overcome learned helplessness?

[Anna]

Well, I think ideally what you do is you show people their behavior does make a difference. And I think one of the ways you do that is show them. Here are other people taking action. Here's a technique that works. Here's a strategy that moves the needle. I think the other approach that I think has some good data behind it is we remind people that they have been able to make a difference in the past. Right. So I've shown this in some of my research where we ask people to reflect on times where they were able to help others and had an unexpectedly positive impact. And all of a sudden they say, huh, I've done it before. Maybe I can do it again.

[Rucker Bregman]

Well, that makes a lot of sense.

[Anna]

Okay. All right, let's try the second one then. So the Olina research on the Holocaust rescuers, one of the patterns that I thought was interesting and not only reached statistical meaningfulness in their data, but also has been replicated in future studies is the rescuers compared to basically Bystanders who had similar upbringings, one of the things that distinguished them was their parents had more discussions of the consequences of their actions. So when their kid did something that they thought was hurtful or wrong, instead of just punishing them, they would explain, here is the impact that had on others and how do you think they feel? And they taught, I think, a fair amount of perspective taking and compassion. What did you make of that? Because you seemed fairly dismissive of that program.

[Rucker Bregman]

Maybe I was too dismissive. So indeed, there were some things in that research that I also quite liked. Reminded me of the Dutch way of bringing up our kids. So the idea is that you basically give much more freedom to your children within a certain defined set of boundaries, then if something goes wrong, well, you use that as a learning opportunity and indeed also explain the reasoning why some things are immoral. So it's not just rules, not just like because I say so? No, it's because there's a whole set of moral principles that we care about and that you should probably care about as well. So indeed, the researchers emphasized that many of the rescuers had relatively high. What's the word? Internal locus of control, feeling that they were in charge of their own life, while many of the bystanders indeed had this learned helplessness where they were saying like, yeah, what can I do? How can I make a difference?

[Anna]

Yeah. I like the point about parents teaching moral reasoning, really. And I think that moral emotions are a big part of this process. And there's something I've been thinking about a lot since reading your book. I think that oftentimes what you see with parents who are really good at teaching kids to be kind, caring, responsible, upstanding, is they actually express disappointment when you don't live up to moral expectations. What we want to do is say, that action was disappointing to me. And what that does is it highlights a standard behavior gap. And then kids are more likely to want to close the gap. And the question is why? What happens is when parents express the right kind of disappointment, kids start to feel guilty. And as Erma Bombeck, I think put it best, guilt is the gift that keeps on giving. But we actually do see that guilt is a powerful motivator of pro social behavior. That when you feel like your actions violated expectations or standards or you hurt somebody else, you want to make amends and right your wrongs. And so I was starting to think a little bit about. Is one of your goals here to make people feel guiltier A little bit?

[Rucker Bregman]

Yeah. Yeah. I think that there's been A lot of dunking on shame and guilt in the pop psychology world, but I'm like, no, I'm a pluralist. We need the whole spectrum of human emotions, and we've evolved to be able to feel shame. We are one of the very few species in the whole animal kingdom with the ability to blush. There's probably a reason for that, and that's probably also useful in some situations. I earlier mentioned this movement of the effective altruists, and I think that's very much grounded in guilt for quite a few of the people in that movement who I'm very often, by the way, deeply admire. I don't think that you can build a big movement on just guilt alone. So for me, the right mix is probably like 80% enthusiasm and 20% guilt, but it's got to be in the mix a little bit.

[Anna]

I do need the record to show I'm pro guilt and healthy doses, but much more anti shame. Because if you follow the trail of June Tang me's research, what she shows is that the two emotions tend to have opposite effects, right? So when people feel guilt, they say, I did a bad thing. I got to make it right. When they feel shame, they say, I'm a bad person. And then they tend to either attack or whoever's making them feel ashamed, or they tend to withdraw and become small. That is not true in all cultures. I've read at least one paper, Rick Bugozi and colleagues, showing that in the Philippines, for example, shame is actually dealt with in a much more constructive way than we do in most of the Western world. And you have to restore your honor at that point as opposed to just kind of aggressing or retreating.

[Rucker Bregman]

Interesting.

[Anna]

But I was curious to hear your Dutch take on this.

[Rucker Bregman]

A couple of things. My previous book, Humankind, made an argument that we humans have evolve to work together and that we are the product of survival of the friendliest, as some evolutionary psychologists call it. And for that book, I did a lot of research into these nomadic and together cultures, where, indeed, shame also plays a really important role in stabilizing these societies and especially controlling people who are getting a little bit too arrogant and a little bit too shameless. So how would you deal with them? Well, you use a lot of gossip, you use ridicule, and, yeah, sometimes we could use a little bit of that.

[Anna]

Right.

[Rucker Bregman]

I know that I could sometimes use it like power is a dangerous thing, like attention is a dangerous thing.

[Anna]

I think you're right. I think it's problematic to build a society where anyone is shameless. But I don't know that we need to get to the point of shame to get the benefit. I think what people want is anticipated shame. I want people to feel anticipatory shame about doing something wrong or harmful. And the hope is that that emotion then prevents the action and they never have to live with the shame itself.

[Rucker Bregman]

The distinction you make reminds me of someone who recently explained this distinction between anger and disgust to me in a relationship. So the point this person was making is like that anger leads to connection, while disgust leads to separation. So, for example, you have a little bit of a conflict going on or a big conflict. If you're angry, then you take someone seriously, you say, like, I expect the better of you. Like, why did you do this? This is a betrayal of our confidence. So, yeah, you really recognize that person. But if it's disgusting, that kind of leads to separation. Right? So I'm very much pro anger, which reminds me of you being pro guilt. So, yeah, we're pro anger. Pro guilt. What else?

[Anna]

I don't know if I want to come down on the pro anger side here, Rucker. I could get behind empathetic anger or righteous indignation. The kinds of injustices that you've been talking about today, if that leads to a sense of moral outrage, might be useful. I think that it's much more effective, though, for propelling you into action than it is for getting you to be persuasive to others. Because oftentimes when people are morally outraged, what they do is then they start to blame and shame other people, and that leads other people to then not want to rise to the occasion. So I worry a little bit about the tactics that come out of that intense emotion.

[Rucker Bregman]

Fair enough. Yeah.

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[Anna]

Let's shift gears here. You ready for a lightning round?

[Rucker Bregman]

Yeah.

[Anna]

Okay, first question. Worst advice you hear, people given when it comes to ambition, follow your passion.

[Rucker Bregman]

No one cares about your passion.

[Anna]

I care about your passion. Just to be clear.

[Rucker Bregman]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Just ask other people who've thought long and hard about it what needs to happen, and then be compassionate about that.

[Anna]

So don't follow your passion, follow your compassion. Yeah, you've already given us a few hot takes, but is there an unpopular opinion that you're excited to defend?

[Rucker Bregman]

I don't believe in free will.

[Anna]

Oh, you're one of those. We're going to have a whole conversation about free will later.

[Rucker Bregman]

Okay.

[Anna]

At minimum, I'm going to convince you that this is an irrelevant topic for anyone to discuss, ever. And at maximum, I want to convince you we do have free will. But that is another conversation. What's the question you have for me?

[Rucker Bregman]

I'm curious about the point around learned helplessness and maybe also how you would advise me to help build a movement that's actually helpful for these people. Because it's easy for me to have some fun and dunk on the McKinseys of this world, but people in the audience here today, it's their lives and they got to make real choices and you work with them a lot. So I'm very, very curious as I embark on this adventure of trying to build a movement that convinces as many people as possible to become ambitious idealists. What should I do?

[Anna]

Well, I'm actually really torn on this one because on the one hand, I loved in the book the way that you encouraged us to aim higher. And I think that's one of the most uplifting aspects of your philosophy, is it doesn't allow people to make excuses and just kind of focus on little things that don't really matter. At the same time, I keep thinking about this classic paper that Carl Weich wrote in the 80s on small wins and the importance of redefining the scale of social problems. And there's been a lot of research in the last few decades showing that one of the simplest antidotes to learn helplessness is actually just breaking what people need to do down into smaller pieces. And so what I wonder is, is there an opportunity with your School for Moral Ambition and with this movement that you're building to start with the high ideals and say, look, here's the level of aspiration that we should all have? And now here are the first three actions that will move the needle that you could begin taking tomorrow.

[Rucker Bregman]

Yeah, I love that.

[Anna]

So what are those actions for people who do want to do more? For people who are morally ambitious, where should they begin?

[Rucker Bregman]

Okay, I want to say three things. One is, I recently spoke to this entrepreneur who said, if you can accomplish your goals during your lifetime, then you're just not thinking big enough. So thinking big is important. Then you reminded me of the research about the resistance heroes, because they didn't start by saying, yes, I'll have a place for five people in the attic right now. It very often started with smaller acts of resistance, like you distribute an illegal newspaper, for example, or you sabotage a car of the Nazis or something like that. And then you start becoming a different person. So maybe we got to find those kind of equivalents. I started this organization called the School for Moral Ambition. And one of the things we've developed is pretty simple. It's called a moral ambition circle. So it's a group of six to eight people who don't know all the answers, but who are interested in the same questions, like, what are my super talents? What are some of the biggest, most neglected problems in the world? How can I take the first step? How can we hold each other accountable?

[Anna]

Would love to see some people join. Rucker, I think you said something really profound earlier. I loved your point that it's not being a good person that leads you to do good things. It's doing good things that makes you a good person. And I think it's your best defense against virtue signaling to say you actually have to go out and earn moral ambition, not just claim it. I think for me, knowing you has been a major force toward inspiring me to want to do more for other people. And I think you always challenge me to think differently. I think your book genuinely will lead people to want to become better humans. And I thank you.

[Rucker Bregman]

Thanks so much, Anna.

[Adam Grant]

Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by Ted with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glaser, our editor is Alejandra Salazar, our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson, our technical director is Jacob Winick, and our fact checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hylash, Ben Ben Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Su and Alison Layton Brown.

[Anna]

How many of you are planning to go into the Bermuda Triangle as Rutger described? That's about a third of the room.

[Rucker Bregman]

Yeah, well, it's wars at Harvard.

[Anna]

Harvard.

[Rucker Bregman]

It's 45% of graduates who go into consultancy and finance.

[Anna]

Oh, I don't think we're doing better here. I just think many of those people did not want to see you talk today. No one wanted to deal with the cognitive dissonance and the existential anxiety that this conversation was going to promote.

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