Save the planet – Be an Entrepreneur
What is it that entrepreneurs have in common with those whose lives are exemplary standards of ecological living – the people who live in the wilderness, forests and undomesticated nature? I bet most are going to say “survival of the fittest”! But what people usually mean is: “might is right”. I hate the ambiguity in the word “fit” so I say “survival of the appropriate”. That distinction is worth an essay by itself because our language has no words for meanings which have been lost by misuse.
Yes, many an entrepreneur today lives by the motto “might is right”. Don't demonize them. They are merely clouded by the same view which is present in all mainstream people today: politicians, workers, bureaucrats, statesmen, traders, socialists, capitalists, economists, social-workers and all. To be an entrepreneur is to be responsible for oneself, notice change, adapt to it, identify niches and take risks for a living. This recipe followed by survivors of all species, plant and animal, is at the core of the wonders of the living planet.
So what went wrong? What is that smoke in our eyes? It's the way we mainstream humans have progressively moved to huge monolithic societies where a thousand or more individuals are barely a statistic. The practical and psychological implications of this move on our lives are enormous but only visible when compared with those humans who don't share this culture.
The modern human's self-response-ability has diminished greatly - relinquished by default to any number of authorities and experts. Even risks are taken by specialists on our behalf. And as for social concerns – what are social-workers for? All we have to do is sit and get fat like broiler chickens waiting to be dinner. Natural accountability vanishes without responsibility. Someone makes a mistake and scores of other people suffer and the mistake-maker never learns.
Humanity never had so much “grey-matter” available for its use. Yet, most of that “grey-matter” is kept out of the effort to live appropriate lifestyles and the little that's left in modern society is busy attempting to control the rest of the grey-matter. There is evidence that Nature's “computer” doesn't work by centralized logic any more than the termite queen controls the lives of its colony of termites. Our immersion in artificial order makes us invent terms like termite-queen and queen bee. The magic of the termite nest emerges without dictation from the queen. What miracles await us if that locked away resource of attention, thought and initiative is free to engage synergistically!
At a time when we are threatening our very own survival as a species we sorely need more processing power. Real answers cannot just call for better technology, higher expertise or different leaders. If they do, they are repeating the cause of the problem. Individuals have to recover responsibility and the freedom to use their own minds to solve their own problems. Freedom comes from capacity. This is largely an economic question. This wave of freedom can never be ordered. It has to emerge from the individual. Its spread would also follow principles of natural neighbourhood interaction where new local alternatives open new avenues. Such a wave would be sure to change our systems, our culture and also our technology.
Big entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, don't qualify. We need to be the kind of entrepreneurs that everybody can be. If you're an everyday, ordinary person, you're closer to the answer. Look for needs in your own little world of people. Provide what you can in a way that improves your own life-support. The more you answer your own life-support needs the greater freedom you have from systems which do not invite accountability, responsibility and are destructive. One may start with only a little freedom and have more than just a foot in the old rat-race. That's ok. That little freedom gives new perspectives which lead to more freedom. As it grows, you start to think of all those things that you never considered before. You do it not because you're doing social work. Your livelihood depends on making sure that what you provide others is good for them. The web of interdependence becomes more visible. Make your web happy and it will look after you. Ultimately all webs connect to the big web we're all a part of. So, let's not wait for governments, Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Workers to look after our world. Sure we're small, but we can be entrepreneurs who look after ourselves in a way that looks after the earth.
- Leslie Nazareth