That's the key difference in viewpoint though:

>Two: out of the people who did something meaningful, few of them were helped by a "can't do" attitude. Even if not grounded in reality at all, you still need to have amibition, for that rare case where you do end up being the 1 in a million that does something meaningful.

Who says living your life, with its common challenges, etc, is NOT meaningful?

And that meaningful/happiness/success require some "superhuman" feats, millions in the bank, or whatever?

>Not many people are ambitious on a grand scale.

So? If I could change people's attributes on a grand scale, ambitious is not what I'd made them. More compassionate, more altruistic, more vigilant against BS, less polluting, more skeptical, etc -- there are tons of things I'd rather people be more than "ambitious".

If anything I'd say ambition is a surefire way to make people uglier, greedier, less tolerant and caring, more "me me me" (which in turn, hurts them too, because others are more "me me me" as well), less present for their family and friends, and ultimately (since only "1 in M people" end up really doing something meaningful), ambition makes them bitter, unhappy, depressed, and so on.

In fact the perfect recipe for the kind of self-absorbed and unhappy society we have now.

In the words of Radiohead:

  Ambition makes you look pretty ugly
  Kicking, squealing Gucci little piggy