Flowering life: The purpose of entrepreneurship
An Essay on the Driving Forces of Entrepreneurship by Dr. phil. Christoph Quarch
In this essay by the Argonauts’ Thinktank — led by Christoph Quarch, initiator of the Third Platonic Academy —we examine the role of Plato and unconditional love for life in regards to entrepreneurship and the future of mankind.
What is it about us as entrepreneurs? What happens if we move around the world as entrepreneurs? What power drives us forward? What is the Golden Fleece that stimulates The Argonauts’ quest? Here’s a story to be told:
An entrepreneur once had a dream. He dreamt he was on the way to his office. Just like every day, he parked his car in the garage, got in the elevator and rode to the twelfth floor. But when the elevator opened, he suddenly found himself transported.
He faced a thriving, verdant, beautiful garden. Colorful flowerbeds glistened in the sunlight. A gentle wind was conveying to him the scent of fruit tree blossoms. The carefully manicured lawns, and the well-tended meadows were glowing in rich shades of green. Ponds and streams breathed a pleasant coolness.
And everywhere in this beautiful garden he saw busy people. They did not seem to notice him, so on he sauntered over the carefully carved paths, observing them at work. With quiet joy he saw the dedication and care of the gardeners, men and women alike. No one rushed. No one looked at the clock. They were immersed in their work.
Some conversed quietly as they worked. Others worked in silence. He noticed how they greeted each other, clapping each other’s shoulders. He saw their quiet pride in their labors, the appreciation and respect they showed to their colleagues. There was mutual recognition of a common purpose.
He saw strong men and women, the sweat of their brows glistening as they laid new beds in the soil for the plants and flowers. And whenever they paused, there was someone there to hand them a mug and a towel. At the moment of this exchange, they would toast one another, share a laugh, and then joyfully continue their work.
Proceeding on the path, he soon heard happy chatter. Following the sound, he saw by a well a group of young women whose merriment and joy filled him with sheer delight. He did not understand what they were saying — or were they singing?
Over their heads fluttered colorful birds, each singing what seemed to him a blessed thought, tweeting it out joyfully to the world. Around their feet scampered mischievous little creatures, each of them moving like a powerful emotion.
Everywhere was life, everywhere spring. Everywhere was abundance, everywhere prosperity. And the people in all their diversity seemed to blossom like the lush beds of flowers being planted and emerging from the moist soil.
Then, at once, he noticed that something had changed. A growing silence had moved into the garden. Slowly the people were dispersing. Soon night descended over flowers, bushes and trees.
Then, in his dream, time began to accelerate. A new morning came, and noon, the garden shimmering in the midday heat. The people worked deliberately and quietly, but with an air of contentment.
But that too would rapidly change. He saw that clouds were gathering and clenching in the sky. Soon the rain was pouring down in torrents. The garden paths became streams.
The people were seeking shelter. But when the storm was over, they returned from their huts and cheerfully cleared everything up again.
Days followed nights. Nights followed days. One evening he saw a swarm of beetles overrun the garden. Another time a deadly disease decimated a swath of well-groomed plants.
The industrious people complained and cried when they perceived that the long-awaited harvest was in danger, at risk of being destroyed. But they got together, rolled up their sleeves, braced themselves, and managed to save what could be saved.
They worked day and night. No one rested till their work was done. As the days came and went, heat, rain, storms and frost took turns threatening the fruit of their labor.
He saw the people of the garden tremble in fear as a hailstorm approached and threatened. And he felt their relief and joy as the dark clouds unloaded their deadly arsenal in another place.
Once lightning struck and split an old cherry tree. Once, perhaps more than once, a couple kissed in the moonlight.
And then, as the summer came to an end, wheelbarrows and baskets filled up. Abundant piles of harvested vegetables and fruits.
Then came the festival time for the people of the Garden. All locked arms and grasped each other’s hands. They celebrated their work and their harvest well into the night beneath a starry sky, before smilingly taking their well-earned rest.
That’s how it went. The year’s end approached. The days grew shorter. The people chatted more quietly and worked more deliberately and somberly. Everything was more restrained than in the spring. Still, serenity spread like a fine mist over the garden.
As the dreamer realized one day that less people were working among the trees and the flower beds, he noticed piles of charred compost steaming in the cold air. Yet he was not dismayed or disappointed. The sights and smells gave him confidence, even certainty, that everything left in this garden had been returned to the soil, gathered to the earth, exactly at its appointed time.
The thought did him good. He felt at home, secure in being a part of this great cycle of nature. Then he noticed yet again the pungent smell of smoke. He saw near a faraway hearth a man slowly and deliberately burning the last dry remnants of the harvest, the fallen fruit left over from the abundance of the garden year.
The dreamer approached the man — and was startled as he looked into his eyes. Because he was gazing at his own face. Not the exhausted and pallid face he had seen in the mirror the night before, weary from the dreary routine of meaningless labor.
Now he looked upon a face tanned by sun and weathered by wind, from which shone a bright pair of eyes. At that moment he understood: That is my life. That is living. That’s why I’m here. Only due to that.
The entrepreneur awoke. He ate his breakfast and drove to work, parked his car, and took the elevator to the twelfth floor as usual.
But when he arrived at his office, he summoned his best and most trusted people. He gathered them together and told them his dream.
After finishing, he looked around the room to his people, men and women, one after the other, and said simply: “Come, my friends: let’s make our company a garden.”
His people did not say a word. But the golden glow shining in their eyes — or was it the golden fleece shining in his vision? — told him everything he needed to know. They had already started. They shared his dream. He had inspired them.
Why this story? Because it tells us something about the most crucial questions of all: What is it all about? Why? Why are we entrepreneurs? What urges us on? What it the driving force that pushes or attracts entrepreneurship? Many psychologists, philosophers and neurophysiologists have pondered this and related questions — and numerous are the answers they give! Which one will help us? Maybe the most original. We owe it to Greek philosophy, more precisely: we are indebted for it to the philosopher Plato. He was convinced that the real creative, producing and shaping force in human life is the one called Eros in Greek. Eros drives people to creation, and procreation.
Eros is the power that propagates life. But Eros is — the Greeks thought — much more: the power is inherent in every living creature and motivates each being to unfold its potential: to flower and become fully alive. And that means developing, growing, blooming, bearing fruit. And it also means withering and dying. To be completely alive, to show oneself in beauty in the world, to bear fruit, to leave behind life — and then to age and die in peace and harmony with oneself: that, Plato said and the Greeks said, is what men — and women too — really cares about in the deepest depth of their souls.
And the art of life thus presented itself to him is focused on cultivating one’s living garden in such a way that life in it can fully unfold in all its colorfulness and diversity: in an abundance that nourishes man, fulfills him and makes him permanently happy.
Is it this wealth of a fully blossomed life that makes people entrepreneurs? Or is it only the prospect of limitless possession of material goods? Why become an entrepreneur? What is the fulfillment of true entrepreneurship?
These questions have not yet been answered. Only the direction in which those who are seriously concerned with clarifying the essence of entrepreneurship must go will become discernible — the meaning that is usually shaded by words such as entrepreneur or imprenditore. Let us take a few more steps in this direction by determining the consequences of no longer placing the meaning of entrepreneurship in the paradigm of technology and engineering, but rather in the paradigm of cultivation and gardening, in view of the problems indicated above. Finally, five signatures of meaningful entrepreneurship are outlined:
Reconnection to the Cosmos
Entrepreneurship is not a practice of conquest, domination or warfare. Its aim is not to gain control over human, financial or natural resources for to exploit them to the maximum. Nor is it a question of only asserting oneself against competitors. Rather, it is carving out one’s niche while integrating oneself in a harmonious way into the whole of the cosmos. Entrepreneurial success is measured by the extent to which a company contributes to increasing the natural and cultural prosperity of human life, measured in accordance with the laws of cosmic life. Entrepreneurship is a systemic art that consists of integrating oneself harmoniously into the whole of social and ecological systems on the one hand, and of arranging and structuring the system of one’s own company in such a way that it is able to unfold the potential for aliveness invested in it to the maximum.
Conversation with the world
The return of a company to the systemic whole is only possible through a lively and open conversation. Entrepreneurship is an art of dialogue, the mastery of which consists in carefully and attentively safeguarding which requirements and challenges are addressed to the company. Listening carefully in order to be able to give coherent answers: that is what distinguishes a sustainable entrepreneur. It is not that he can impose his will against all the resistance of the market, competitors or society by uniting power in himself. That is not what makes a master of the art of business, but rather the facility to find precisely the right response to what others ask and say.For the entrepreneur knows that it is not enough to make a plant blossom. To bear fruit, it must be fertilized from the outside.
Limited growth
One great error of many company paradigms is the concept of infinite growth. Certainly: technical devices or systems may appear capable of producing indefinitely — given the resources. But every gardener knows that’s not true. Everything that lives grows only as long and as far as it can grow, without endangering its own existence. At some point, every creature or plant becomes fully grown. Once this point is reached, the prudent entrepreneur should not try to force further growth. The entrepreneur seeks growth in quality, not just quantity.
Acceptance of finiteness
Everything that lives ages and dies. This basic fact of life can perhaps be ignored, or overlooked, but never negated. Who — like the transhumanistic philosophy of Silicon Valley or its ‘dataistic religion’ denies this circumstance, pays a high price for it: the price of liveliness. Surely it is possible to keep companies — like other organisms — technically and artificially functioning, but this existence in name only will be lifeless: without passion, without enthusiasm, without laughter, without tears. It may still yield profits — but then nobody knows what for. The technical-mechanical paradigm of entrepreneurship has already spawned many a zombie company, which somehow carry on, but without purpose. Those who measure themselves against the paradigm of the gardener will understand that a company — like all other organisms — has its time and must therefore die at some point; so that time and space for something new will be created.
Enthusiasm as motivator
Entrepreneurship can be understood as an erotic practice. It thrives on enthusiasm and passion for visions and ideas that promote the development of life and the richness of the cosmos. Its driving forces are not greed or the will to power, but an unconditional love for life. Where it prevails, companies will prosper not only materially, with abundance and profits, but also culturally and humanly. Where the erotic enthusiasm for being alive seizes an entrepreneur and fires the practice of his companies, they become the driving forces of the comprehensive, sustainable transformation of economy and society that humanity so urgently needs in the 21st century.
Dr. phil. Christoph Quarch is Chief Philosophy Officer of The Argonauts, a community for courageous leaders and their organizations. He applies ancient insights that are increasingly relevant today, providing wisdom and answers to key questions such as how to discover our true selves and what it means to be fully alive. Christoph is the author of the bestseller ‘Plato’s Metaphysics of Soul’ and is regarded as Europe’s most down-to-earth philosopher.
