"Something is indeed something. For most people, it’s dismissed as life’s background noise. Others hear the whispers and bury it with weekend merriment. For the rest of us who aren’t easily manipulated, we question it. We seek its source, challenge its presence, and ask, 'What the hell is going on?'”
My first hint that something was wrong with the world happened as a struggling young entrepreneur in Chicago. At the time, I had a menial job as a limousine driver, which paid my bills and funded my crazy business ideas. Because the job required a special license granted by the city, I had to drive downtown to take a test for its qualification. I arrived early with time to blow, so I grabbed a coffee and seated myself at a cafe window. As I gazed out into the commuter swarms navigating the Monday morning rush, I noticed something: Everyone moved with an eerie robotic efficiency, indifferent and obtuse. The variety of faces, no matter the age, race, or gender, were uniformly vacant and resigned, each etched with a stone-faced glower as if they’ve walked the walk a thousand times.
As the organized freneticism mesmerized me, the street rush slowly faded into an obscure moving fog. Unique individuals with goals, dreams, and aspirations; sons, daughters, wives, husbands, all suddenly blurred into a single collective as if one organism compelled by instinct. Did any part of the sum question why they were on a frozen street at 6:30 a.m.? And why would they repeat the same insanity for the next four days? Was anyone pursuing their dream, or were they pursuing what culture programmed them to pursue?
The sudden realization struck me—and frightened me: it was not free will at work, but conditioned instinct, like a bee buzzing to the hive or an ant marching to an anthill. Moreover, dress or implied social hierarchy played no relevance: three-piece suits, jeans, work overalls—the horde behaved as if controlled by a single puppet master.
As I reflected on the scene, I knew I could never—and would never—be normal as prescribed by cultural routine. That day sealed my fate as an entrepreneur—either one who’d eventually succeed or one who would fail and die trying. Lucky for me (and you), entrepreneurship was the snips that clipped the puppet master’s strings."
DeMarco, MJ. UNSCRIPTED : Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship (pp. 10-11). Viperion Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
My first hint that something was wrong with the world happened as a struggling young entrepreneur in Chicago. At the time, I had a menial job as a limousine driver, which paid my bills and funded my crazy business ideas. Because the job required a special license granted by the city, I had to drive downtown to take a test for its qualification. I arrived early with time to blow, so I grabbed a coffee and seated myself at a cafe window. As I gazed out into the commuter swarms navigating the Monday morning rush, I noticed something: Everyone moved with an eerie robotic efficiency, indifferent and obtuse. The variety of faces, no matter the age, race, or gender, were uniformly vacant and resigned, each etched with a stone-faced glower as if they’ve walked the walk a thousand times.
As the organized freneticism mesmerized me, the street rush slowly faded into an obscure moving fog. Unique individuals with goals, dreams, and aspirations; sons, daughters, wives, husbands, all suddenly blurred into a single collective as if one organism compelled by instinct. Did any part of the sum question why they were on a frozen street at 6:30 a.m.? And why would they repeat the same insanity for the next four days? Was anyone pursuing their dream, or were they pursuing what culture programmed them to pursue?
The sudden realization struck me—and frightened me: it was not free will at work, but conditioned instinct, like a bee buzzing to the hive or an ant marching to an anthill. Moreover, dress or implied social hierarchy played no relevance: three-piece suits, jeans, work overalls—the horde behaved as if controlled by a single puppet master.
As I reflected on the scene, I knew I could never—and would never—be normal as prescribed by cultural routine. That day sealed my fate as an entrepreneur—either one who’d eventually succeed or one who would fail and die trying. Lucky for me (and you), entrepreneurship was the snips that clipped the puppet master’s strings."
DeMarco, MJ. UNSCRIPTED : Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Entrepreneurship (pp. 10-11). Viperion Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
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