Are we becoming less ambitious?

What?! I did not expect that spin.

I expected something like "ambition used to mean being a polar explorer, or world-record setter. Now it means something working to get 10,000 followers on your Twitch stream."

That wasn't it at all.

The "ambition" here is strictly "professionally ambitious", that is, following "the well-trodden path to the top of a corporate pyramid" - "a linear journey with intermittent pay rises and regular promotions that signify professional progress", even if it's bad for your mental health.

That might have been a Boomer tradition, but my generation - Gen X - supposedly already didn't follow it, to the point that we were derided as slackers because of it. Books were written about how we had no ambition.

Indeed, quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_X , "'they were reluctant to grow up' and 'disdainful of earnest action'". Then,

> As the decade progressed, Gen X gained a reputation for entrepreneurship. In 1999, The New York Times dubbed them "Generation 1099", describing them as the "once pitied but now envied group of self-employed workers whose income is reported to the Internal Revenue Service not on a W-2 form, but on Form 1099".

Hardly "the well-trodden path to the top of a corporate pyramid".

But, meh. Gen-X gets forgotten again, film at 11.