Harese and Ambition: How much is too much?
- Merve Kagitci Hokamp
- Feb 11, 2023
- 7 min read
Updated: Jan 26
The camel, a strong animal who can walk in the desert for days without food, water or rest has a weak spot for a particular desert thistle. They desire it so much that they just cannot resist it, they have to bite and chew on it the minute they see it. Over time, the thistle scratches, tears, and lacerates the camel’s mouth causing severe bleeding. The taste of its own salty blood mixed with the sweet taste of the thistle makes the camel even more infatuated so it continues to chew on the thistle until the bleeding is so severe that it dies from it. This is harese, an old Arabic word from which the words for ambition, greed, craving, desire, and passion are derived.
This is harese, an old Arabic word from which the words for ambition, greed, craving, desire, and passion are derived.
A Parable of Destructive Ambition
Zulfu Livaneli’s Disquiet, a riveting novel about the refugee crisis in the Middle East, starts with this parable. The camel’s harese story is a metaphor for human greed, ambition, and desire. The infatuation, the passion, the desire and greed cause the camel to be attracted to the thistle so much that it is intoxicated by its own blood, so overjoyed by the short-term feeling of satisfaction and tempted by the allure that it is blind to an imminent catastrophe lurking - even when it’s its own self-destruction.
Tragedy in Turkey and Syria
I write these lines as the death toll from the two recent earthquakes in Turkey and Syria are in the 25000s as we speak and continuing to rise. We all know earthquakes don’t kill people; bad buildings do.
So what went so wrong that some 4000 buildings collapsed and many more were severely damaged?
What kind of greed, what kind of insatiable desire for more—more money, faster results, wider construction—fueled the minds and hearts of so many?
What kind of short-term satisfaction or ambition for status drove the decisions of contractors, architects, engineers, government officials, lawyers, local offices, real estate agents, sellers, buyers, and renters?
In an area with a well-documented earthquake risk, how did all these actors collectively bypass protocol and best practices?
What allowed this dangerous chain of negligence, cutting corners, and willful blindness to lead to such a devastating tragedy?
Was it ambition unchecked? Greed unrestrained? Or a collective failure to consider the long-term consequences of their actions in the pursuit of personal gain?
So what went so wrong that some 4000 buildings collapsed and many more were severely damaged?
The Tech Industry’s Blind Spots
Last week, I wrote about the ripple effects of the ongoing tech layoffs, which have reshaped the lives of many over the past year. To date, approximately 70,000 people have been made redundant in the tech industry. The official explanation from these companies? They hired for a different economic reality than the one we’re living in now.
But here’s the big question: how did these brilliantly successful companies—armed with experienced financial evaluation teams, cutting-edge AI, and every possible forecasting tool—get it so wrong? How did they over-hire by such staggering amounts?
What role did the pursuit of short-term gains, the allure of momentary abundance, and the desire for a glamorous image and industry popularity play in shaping their misjudged economic outlook? Was it overconfidence, or something deeper—an infatuation with appearing unstoppable?
And what stopped these companies from being more prepared for an inevitable economic downturn? Was it a blind spot in their strategy? A failure to look beyond the peaks of growth? Or perhaps a collective hesitation to pause and question the sustainability of their decisions?
These are questions worth reflecting on—not just for the tech giants but for all of us navigating the delicate balance between ambition and foresight.
So what went so wrong that these brilliantly successful companies with brilliantly experienced financial evaluation and estimation teams (human and AI included!) all got it wrong and over-hired by large amounts?
Crossing the Line: From Ambition to Destruction
As the stories behind fraudulent start-up founders like Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX, Charlie Javis of Poverup unfold in the news today, one cannot help but wonder what got into these young, smart, Ivy-League educated individuals from seemingly good families and relatively comfortable lives, that they had to lie, deceive, and scam other people, to cause them and their families harm, in the end leading to their own self-destruction?
What role did greed, euphoria, destructive ambition, and unhealthy passion play in these cases?
How did these people who were once highly-respected and praised cross the line from healthy determination and eagerness to unethical and immoral actions caused by greed?
Did they know they were crossing the line?
How did these people who were once highly-respected and praised cross the line from healthy determination and eagerness to unethical and immoral actions caused by greed?
Ambition: The Fine Line Between Success and Failure
Macbeth, one of Shakespeare’s most well-known tragedies, portrays a Scottish general and his wife’s quest for absolute power. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Macbeth starts off as a well-respected and loyal nobleman known for his bravery, intelligence, and compassion. He has one fatal flaw, however: ambition. He does whatever it takes to become King, in the process partaking in immoral acts, dishonesty, betrayal causing hurt and pain. At the end of the play, Macbeth technically has achieved all he wanted but has also destroyed himself and his family in the process. With his wife gone and not being able to have children, Macbeth realizes what his excessive ambition has cost him: the destruction of all he holds dear. Many innocent people are killed, and Macbeth dies known as a tyrant and a traitor.
Ambition, in its essence, is a good thing. It drives purpose, energy, and achievement. Many of the world’s greatest successes were fueled by ambition. But when does ambition become too much?
In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, we see the tragic consequences of unchecked ambition. What starts as a noble drive for success transforms into betrayal, dishonesty, and self-destruction. By the end, Macbeth achieves everything he set out for—but at the cost of his family, his values, and his life.
As the Harvard Business Review notes in the article, titled, How Ambitious should you be?, “In excess, ambition damages reputations, relationships, and can lead to catastrophic failure.”
"In excess, however, ambition damages reputations, relationships, and can lead to catastrophic failure…”
Black Swan Events: Unpredictable but Inevitable
Earthquakes are black swan events, occurrences characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight. Nassim Taleb argues in his 2007 bestseller, The Black Swan, that “because black swan events are impossible to predict due to their extreme rarity, yet have catastrophic consequences, it is important for people to always assume a black swan event is a possibility, whatever it may be, and to try to plan accordingly.” The dotcom bubble of 2001, the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the crash of the housing market in the USA in 2008, September 11 terrorist attacks, Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the Great Depression are some examples of black swan events.
Should we be doing more to curb our human weakness for dopamine-induced overambition, overconsumption, overpower?
“The result,” says Taleb, “is that people develop a psychological bias and a 'collective blindness' to them. The very fact that such rare but major events are, by definition, outliers makes them dangerous.”
I’m no earthquake expert, construction engineer, CEO, or financial advisor. But I can see this collective blindness—and like everyone else, I am impacted by it.
Questions We Must Ask Ourselves
So I ask:
If it weren’t for the blindness driven by ambition and unchecked desire, would government officials approve planning permissions for the thousands of collapsed buildings—even those their own families lived in?
Would the camel keep chewing on the thistle that ultimately causes it to bleed to death?
Would an entire industry overhire, overspend, and then signal “tough decision-making” to investors by laying off thousands overnight when the economy shifts?
How can we start seeing black swan events as possibilities, not impossibilities, and plan accordingly?
How can we collectively learn from these rare events when they do happen, so we don’t repeat the same mistakes?
Should we be doing more to curb our human tendencies—our dopamine-fueled ambitions, overconsumption, and hunger for control?
What checks and balances can we create to protect ourselves from this collective blindness?
I don’t claim to have the answers—there isn’t one simple answer. The solutions will differ for each of us. But I do ask the questions because I believe we can do better—both as individuals and as a society.
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