What You Need To Know: Ambition
Ambition is a disease.
I read The Hot Zone and was a genetics major for two years, so I feel qualified to speak on this issue.
The condition is caused by a highly contagious virus called Impruvacoccal urselvitis (IMPRV-U), with carriers experiencing constant uncertainty, paranoia, and disappointment.
Although the initial source remains unknown it’s first notable appearance occurred in Medieval Europe. The Renaissance was a time of increased travel throughout the continent, drawing thinkers and artists and merchants out of isolated villages and in into the bustling cities. These people brought new ideas, mesmerizing masterpieces, and stories of exotic places, but they also facilitated the spread of diseases like syphilis, the plague, and IMPRV-U (obviously).
This was a period that challenged the chokehold religion had on society up to that point, but had yet do invent the mindless listicle, sadly missing the opportunity to share articles such as “Top 27 Things Nutty Nathanial Shouted At The Birds This Week”. “Pick Your Favorite Style Of Chastity Belt And We’ll Tell You How Old You’ll Be When You Die During Childbirth”. “Henry VI Totally Threw Shade At Charles VII In His Latest Tax Plan And Nobody Noticed Cuz They Can’t Read”.
With less emphasis on the oppressive doctrines warning that any attempt to improve one’s station was an affront to god’s will, citizens from all walks of life could dream of a future that didn’t involve standing barefoot in manure for 16 hours a day, losing a foot to gangrene, and eventually dying of ringworm.
Parents could send their children out into the world to gain trade skills that would help them land a prestigious and glamours job. Like blacksmith. Instead of farming the fields alongside their families, they could to work among strangers in front of a blazing fire for 16 hours a day, lose a hand to an ill-timed hammer blow, and eventually die of black lung.
Progress!
But ambition didn’t just appear out of nowhere. How did the disease enter the population?
I’ll answer your questions with another question: What is the root of most of the world’s problems?
Old, rich, white men.
These infected individuals were the product of countless generations of inbreeding, which resulted in a highly concentrated version of the virus. The infected then 1%ers introduced the ambition virus into the lower classes by associating with its dingy members for their own amusement. That’s a nice way of saying, they could get poor girls to do that freaky stuff the noble women wouldn’t.
Pegging isn’t new people.
So technically, ambition is an STD. And once you’ve slept on a bed that wasn’t stuffed with hay, pig entrails, and your dead grandfather, you’re never getting cured.
In order to not feel gross about sporting infections pustules on their souls, ambitious people have somehow convinced everyone it’s the societal norm. The IMPRV-U positive population worked tirelessly to ostracize those who understood life was, at best, something to be tolerated, until western culture was ultimately conditioned to view the unambitious as the lepers poisoning their communities.
But they have not eradicated us.