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Nietzsche
describes a person’s life as three successive metamorphoses of the spirit.
He calls the stages of this development the camel, the lion, and the child.
If this sounds
too esoteric we might as well replace “spirit” with “awareness”. And
awareness is what we need to succeed in life in general and in business in
particular. It can be safely assumed that thriving entrepreneurs of course
analyse the environment and rationalize, but that to a substantial extent
decisions are taken on the basis of intuitive awareness of the situation at
hand. Malcolm Gladwell calls this “the power of thinking without thinking”.
“Thus spoke
Zarathustra” was published in sections by Friedrich Nietzsche between 1883
and 1892. More than 100 years later the relevance of the three
metamorphoses has even been highlighted in a world of information overflow.
Here are the
underlying assumptions of what Nietzsche is saying: Humans are born
incomplete, we merely come into this world as a process with the potential for
development. Evolution, however, is intrinsic to our nature. And a person’s
evolution is realized through the stages of the camel, the lion, and the
child.
The camel is all
about assimilation of the past - assimilation of knowledge given by
society. This stage is predominantly about memory and dependence upon the
prevailing opinion about the world we live in. The camel is about being a
good citizen in the sense that the greater the assimilation the higher a
person stands in the esteem of the society.
The lion is a
rebellion against the stage of the camel. The assimilation of common
knowledge has reached a level that the inner self of a person rebels
against the environment and discovers itself as a guide for authenticity
and independence. Nota bene, the majority of people remain camels all their
life. The lion is for example the entrepreneur who is being laughed at for
doing something that “will never work”. The lion switches from heteronomy
to an internal locus of control.
The ego becomes
self. Lions are perceived as a danger by camels and sometimes the lion can
feel the camel inside “Can I really just make money from home on the
Internet? Or should I rather pursue a respected career?” – It is indeed
very difficult to rid oneself of the camel completely. The camel is about
memory, the lion is about knowledgeability.
The last stage of
the child is not merely a rebellion but a true revolution and might as well
be described as enlightenment in eastern philosophy. So, according to
Nietzsche the second childhood is the real one, and for Westerners this
might even ring a “biblical bell”. In the stage of the child a person
becomes utterly free from past and the future. This is the stage of
creativity and interdependence, this is when personal happiness and economic
success truly coincide. This is the stage of wisdom.
Svend Nelson is a university lecturer and
Internet entrepreneur. Svend lived and worked in various countries across
Latin America, Europe and Asia and spends most of his time in Thailand
these days. I Web
Marketing I Spa
Directory I Thailand
Spa I
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