Tuesday, May 08, 2007

The nontrepreneur

Where do we come up with this stuff? I read an article today by Nick Douglas glorifying the nontrepreneur. Who is a nontrepreneur you might ask, well it turns out that he/she is the anti-hero for the entrepreneur.

It is amazing, the speed with which we continue to build and destroy heroes in our society. While entrepreneurship has been around since the dawn of time, the entrepreneur is a modern day king or hero. The United States is the country with the most kings. Immigrants come from all around the world with the dream of one day becoming kings. This crowning of the entrepreneur happened in the past 50-75 years (post world war II) or so. Now we are already tired of the kings we created :-)

Reminds me of a famous quote from G.K.Chesterton's book (Orthodoxy),
the new rebel is a Sceptic, and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind; and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it.....................................
The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts; then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting, where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite sceptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality; in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.


Read the full excerpt if you enjoy well written satire.

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