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Ambition

What is the essence of a company?

Companies seem permanent – GE, Siemens, Ford, Nike, Apple, Four Seasons. But what are they really? A company is not a thing, like a shoe, for instance. If you take a shoe off, you can put it in the corner, and it will stay that way until it slowly degrades and, eventually, returns to dust. A company is less real than this: a business is just a pattern. Imagine that North America faced some devastating epidemic and civilization fell apart.… Read More »What is the essence of a company?

Loving ideas + being ambitious

The times I have felt most ambitious in life are around ideas: when I have found some grand new theory (evolution and Richard Dawkins, Goethe and classicism, Carl Jung), when someone has created a great work that tries to encompass the whole world and the human spirit (Dante, T.S. Eliot, Jordan Peterson, Maria Montessori), or when I have had long dinners with friends and mentors, talking late into the night about grand ideas for the world and what would make… Read More »Loving ideas + being ambitious

Building blocks

I’ve been experiencing the cliche of running into ‘reality’ as I get older. When I was 20 or so, it was much easier to have big dreams for the world. I had ideas for what society should be like and what civilization would look like if it were improved. The question of doing it was always a given, meaning, it was obvious to me that it was possible and that I was going to do it. I could build a… Read More »Building blocks