*I originally wrote this piece for a self-help type blog but it was never published. So here it is, unaltered. My second post on here, and I would love to hear your thoughts.*

The Entrepreneurial Spirit

In case you haven’t noticed, we’re living in the age of the entrepreneur. Our society and modern culture idolizes the entrepreneur and everything that he or she embodies. Entrepreneurs are the rock stars of our time.

We are now living in the “century of the self,” and entrepreneurs symbolize “the self” and its very personification in modern culture. The concentrated focus of the individual and just how impactful that single person is, or can be, is exactly what the entrepreneurial spirit is all about.

The image of the business created and operated by one person, the Youtuber, the Instagram celebrity, the content creator, the single DJ who stands on stage fist pumping, and every individual voicing their own unique opinion on your newsfeed, as you yourself choose which posts get your approval, your silence, and even your own opinion in the form of a comment, if you care enough to give it; is all individualized entrepreneurial energy.

From The Wheel to Abstract Art

If there was one person in history who invented the wheel they must have been a genius. The very epitome of intellectual force and innovative thinking was at work when the thought of that most useful of objects entered into someones mind. It really is a shame that they didn’t stand up and receive credit for the idea though; they would have had people paying them residuals for generations until practically the end of time, really. That person would have been an entrepreneur.

In reality, it was most likely a “people” who first conceptualized and invented the wheel, and not a “person.” The wheel was a community accomplishment, with no one person taking the helm (to our limited knowledge), yet nearly everybody who has walked on this earth since then has benefited from the creation.

During this approximate age in history (historians have estimated the wheel came into existence around 3500 BCE) human beings were not in an entreprenurial mind-set. It is true that some of the individuals of that time would have been natural-born leaders and others natural followers - like is to be expected during any time in history - but the energy behind the general actions of the people during this age was for the well-being of the entire collective and the credit and ownership of ideas were not given to an individual “person,” but instead were shared among the overall “people” of the time.

Everybody had their role and place in the tribe, and therefore it was in the best interest for everybody to try and help everybody else, if they could, because it was a community that thrived on everybody working together as one solid unit. Without too much of a convoluted history lesson, over time these tribes got so large that today they are practically all connected and encompass nearly the entire world. We all know that things like exploration, industrialization, and the internet have contributed to this new reality.

Now because our tribe is so incredibly large, there is a new energy of how people interact based on their individual needs as well as the needs of the tribe, or as we now call it, the world. The world will continue to function just fine if one person over here wants to do abstract art that only a few people really understand, or if a person over there wants to focus their entire life studying the eating habits of animals that have long been extinct and virtually forgotten.

These types of occupations are not directly necessary for the tribes overall survival in the same way that being a hunter or a medicine man would have been in prehistoric times, but since there are so many people living today, the tribe will get along just fine no matter what path these individuals decide to take. From this concept, we as a people gain an incredible sense of freedom, and an even stronger sense of individuality.

With this new sense of freedom that comes from such an overpopulated world, and the technological advances that have made modern day living such a unique time in history, comes the age of the self and the individual.

“If ours is an age of individualism… then let us be individuals!”

- Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette

The entrepreneurial spirit is more of an inherent archetype of human nature that has gone through a rebranding of sorts to fit the modern image of what it means to be a member of society. In Joseph Campbell’s idea of the Hero’s Journey, the entrepreneur exists within the hero when he or she takes up the call to action, and goes about their quest. This moment of critical decision is an inherent part of the human experience.

Of course in modern times that quest has never been more varied and is just as unique as each individual. Walking virtually any path in society right now is almost universally accompanied by a cell phone, the internet which binds the worldly tribe together, and of course everybody’s favourite, social media; the ultimate example of entrepreneurial energy.

Every Person on Social Media

“Self-branding” and building your online presence with social media has never been more important. Every person (who wants to participate, of course) is now their own personal marketing manager. And, depending on how many hashtags they want to use, they are their own sales team as well.

The individual is the product, the platform is the marketplace, and the collection of likes, comments, shares, and retweets are the currency. For the purpose of this article, we won’t mention the role that brain chemistry plays in this equation. Every person who is on social media can choose to look at what they do as a business-like endeavour.

The type of oversharing that can be found on all social media platforms today would be considered incredibly strange even as little as twenty years ago. But today taking a picture of the meal you are eating at a specific location during a specific time and sharing it with (sometimes) literally everybody seems pretty damn normal. The privacy that individuals once held sacred is now making way for more expressive sharing to the community, the tribe, and the world.

Some people might label this kind of behaviour as chauvinistic or attention seeking; but this is simply modern individualized thinking, this is “the self” standing up amidst the crowd. And when the entire crowd is also standing up, this becomes the collective energy that everybody is engaged in.

This becomes the worldly participation of the entrepreneurial spirit.

*Thank you very much for reading. Feedback is welcomed and appreciated.*