What is ambition? It is defined by the Oxford
dictionary as being “a strong desire to do or achieve something”. This is true
but I believe it is a far too simple approach to the question as there are
different types of ambition, for example, in Julius Caesar by Shakespeare,
Brutus, Julius Caesar’s murderer, Antony seems to suggest that being ambitious
is a bad thing as he says “Brutus says he [Julius Caesar] was ambitious”
conveying it is his reasoning for having murdered Caesar. The other type of
ambition is a positive one; striving to making something better or to improve
oneself on a reasonable scale. This is because I think what Antony’s message in
his speech is not solely that being ambitious is a bad thing but that ambition
can be dangerous because one can be ambitious for an unrealistic goal meaning
they will try achieving it being unsuccessful and doing all that is possible to
complete their goal thus making a very dangerous form of ambition. Another,
more recent, example of this type of ambition is Hitler, his terrible hate and
ambition to destroy all those he saw as inferior to the “perfect” German race,
he achieved great power in Germany and created an ideology that at the time
seemed a solution to everyone’s problems. But, his unrealistic goal manifested
itself as the systematic murder of over 11 million innocent men, women and
children. There are many more examples of this throughout history that show all
the damage that the bad form of ambition can do however there are also positive
examples of ambition that, although they make less of an impact on the world,
make it into history. The reason I say the negative form of ambition makes more
of an impact is because it is a lot easier to be destructive on a massive scale
than being progressive and moral on even any significantly large scale. A
relatively recent result of positive ambition was the creation of the state of
Israel fuelled by the great ambition of Theodor Herzl. Herzl was inspired by
seeing a soldier being accused of spying simply because he was Jewish and it
gave him the ambition to create a safe haven for all Jews. His ambition now
means the Jewish people have a homeland where they are protected by a country
and are safe from persecution. So, to define ambition, ambition is not just
simply a binary question of either having it or not, rather, it is a deeper
question that shows itself throughout history as people are influenced by an
inspiration to become ambitious either positively or negatively. Therefore, I
believe the true definition of ambition is; “the choice that is made to either
be destructive or progressive when one is given an inspiration”.
