\u201cHere I was standing on the sidelines, looking at the people in the arena, those people with the sweat on their forehead, you know, with their hands dirty, the people who fall down and then stand up again. And I was honestly just jealous. I was like, well, I\u2019d love to do that as well, to build a legacy that actually matters and move beyond the awareness phase of my career.\u201d For inspiration, he can look to his own mother, a 68-year-old member of Extinction Rebellion<\/a> in the Netherlands whose most recent arrest was just a fortnight ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s the only person in our family who keeps getting arrested,\u201d he says. \u201cShe\u2019s really one of my heroes and role models. And I think that the work that she and other activists have been doing has been very valuable in raising the saliency of the issue of climate change<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n A series of unlikely heroes \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Bregman\u2019s heroes in Moral Ambition are the ordinary people who stepped up and made an impact. Not the legislators and movement leaders, but the inventors of kitchen appliances and bulk-buyers of mosquito nets. Take 18th-century abolitionist Thomas Clarkson, who had a spiritual revelation on the evils of the slave trade<\/a> after winning an essay prize at the University of Cambridge, then devoted himself to the cause.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s Rob Mather, who was working a generic corporate job until he watched a TV programme about a two-year-old girl who suffered 90% burns in a house fire. Moved to try and change something, Mather wondered how much he could get done in 20 minutes. So began the journey to begin the Against Malaria Foundation. To date, it has raised over \u00a3565 million and protected 614 million people from malaria.\u00a0<\/p>\n Or Leah Garc\u00e9s, an activist who exposed the evils of industrial farming by befriending a farmer \u2013 putting the focus on how big corporations create incentives forcing farmers to become modern-day serfs. This feeds into how Rutger Bregman sees the way ordinary people can change the world. He is sceptical of the idea of tipping points, used by groups like Extinction Rebellion \u2013 the idea that once a certain number of people buy into an idea, change will happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJust having the public on your side isn\u2019t enough. You need to find other ways of affecting real change. You need those dedicated, small groups of people who don\u2019t just believe something, but believe it very deeply,\u201d he says. \u201cHaving a certain opinion, in and of itself, doesn\u2019t say all that much. The question is, how deeply do you believe it, and what are you willing to do for it? What are you willing to sacrifice for it?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Every year, when Big Issue celebrates 100 Changemakers from all over the UK<\/a>, one theme is clear: the desire to help is born out of necessity. Bregman is preaching to a slightly different crowd. \u201cObviously, I\u2019m punching up a little bit in the book towards all those people who are really talented, quite privileged, but who are, for some reason, stuck in what is, I believe, called in academic terms a bullshit job,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u2018If you\u2019re so smart, then why do you work here?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n But the writing is only half the story behind the Dutchman\u2019s own moral ambition. Rutger Bregman is recruiting SWAT teams, as he calls them: small cohorts of dedicated, experienced professionals who will take on \u201cgreat global problems\u201d. He will take talent away from the rich, Robin Hood-like, and redistribute it to the service of urgent challenges. That\u2019s the idea at the heart of his School for Moral Ambition<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n Bregman plans to find these people in unusual ways. One wheeze is to start a campaign on Wall Street with billboards saying: \u201cIf you\u2019re so smart, then why do you work here? We will pay you to quit your job.\u201d He hopes to recruit about 10 dedicated bankers, wealth managers, tax experts and beyond, to fight for tax justice and take on tax evasion. He needs people who understand the system, love spreadsheets and arcane details, and can work to close loopholes. Where does one get the idea to do something like this?\u00a0<\/p>\n Ralph Nader, for most people, is less a person than a political fable, after he ran as a third-party candidate for the presidency in 2000 and split the vote enough to accidentally propel George W Bush into the White House.\u202fNader is a direct inspiration to Bregman. As a young lawyer in the 60s and 70s, Nader formed small teams of ambitious, idealistic people called Nader\u2019s Raiders. These \u2018radical nerds\u2019 took aim at problems, inspired by Nader\u2019s work on road safety, and tirelessly set about campaigning for the solutions. The Raiders helped usher in the Freedom of Information Act, Whistleblower Protection Act and Clean Water Act amid an estimated 25 pieces of federal legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nader made changing the world cool. At one point, a third of Harvard Law School applied to work with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n The evidence is there that Gen Z<\/a> are already voting with their conscience, with one study showing 40% have actively avoided applying to companies they find unethical<\/a>. Some 42% of young workers have considered quitting because their job doesn\u2019t have strong enough values or a social purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n Bregman\u2019s big promise to potential readers is this: everything he earns from Moral Ambition will be used to fund the School for Moral Ambition.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI have signed a contract with the Dutch non-profit foundation The School for Moral Ambition that legally binds me to donate everything I earn from Moral Ambition \u2013 including related talks \u2013 to the foundation,\u201d Bregman tells me. \u201cTo avoid any conflict of interest, I have stepped down from the board of the foundation and no longer have direct control over spending decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n Advertising helps fund Big Issue\u2019s mission to end poverty<\/p>\n Each year, the foundation publishes a report detailing all donations, including Bregman\u2019s, and how the money is spent. This includes more than \u20ac1 million (\u00a3850,000) Bregman has already made from his advances on Moral Ambition, which has helped launch the organisation and fund its first programmes. He lives off the royalties of his previous books.<\/p>\n If it\u2019s tempting to see Rutger Bregman as a radical, remember: that\u2019s exactly how Ralph Nader funded his raiders.<\/p>\n Moral Ambition<\/a> by Rutger Bregman is out now (Bloomsbury, \u00a320).<\/strong> You can buy it from the\u00a0Big Issue shop<\/a>\u00a0on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.<\/strong><\/p>\n Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this?\u00a0Get in touch and tell us more<\/a>.\u00a0Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income.\u00a0To support our work buy a copy of the magazine<\/a>\u00a0or get the app from the\u00a0App Store<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0Google Play<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has become impossible to move for self-help books. Dodge Atomic Habits, and the dullest person you know…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86581,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[13217,3444,77,7056,462,11525,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-86580","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-activism","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-from-the-magazine","12":"tag-interview","13":"tag-learning-and-employment","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114476306049366203","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86580\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1665_Rutger-Bregman_2NF6XEM.jpg\")
Ralph Nader in 1966. Image: Associated Press \/ Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/1664-Subs_Media_Ads_800x250.jpg\")
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