A certain future for enrepreneurs
In January 2017, Brunhilde Pomsel died at the age of 106. Pomsel was the personal assistant to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and possibly the last surviving member of the inner circle of Hitler’s Third Reich.
In an interview prior to her death, Pomsel noted, “No one ever believed us. Everyone thinks we all knew… we knew nothing.”
Distressing as it is, I acknowledge Pomsel’s view, because at essence, humans need only be aware of their own validation, ego and survival. Anything more is really hard work and doesn’t pay the bills - unless perhaps you are a professional cleric or philosopher. Time, space and the energies in our environment shape our beliefs, values and behaviour. It’s normal to think of ourselves as the absolute generation – perfectly aware of what is righteous and moral. In truth, there is nothing new, moral or special about humans.
Except for the very wise among us still who have more doubts than answers, we mostly see the environment through filters of heritage, education or experiences - enthusiastically believing ours is the only path and truth.
But this is unfair - both to you and those who lived before us? Think of Julius Caesar persecuting the Semites, the ruthless march of Cecil Rhodes’ colonisation of Africa or the genocidal practices of Shaka Zulu.
Do we view our time, space and energy in relation to them? Would we feel validat- ed by renaming the month of July, or the prestigious Rhodes Scholarships or a billion-Rand international airport in KwaZulu-Natal?
Were these men racists, bigots and despots or were they innovators, entrepreneurs and rulers doing what people experienced as natural for their time? Perhaps today they wouldn’t survive a democratic election or a population able to think abstractly.
But, as consistent events demonstrate, their primal allure may be more popular than some would admit.
True innovators and entrepreneurs have the opposite attributes to those who feel trapped and victims to their environment. Entrepreneurs believe progress and innovation are limitless and nearly anything is possible. Innovators sense they should strive to develop and improve wherever they find opportunity.
Envy aside, perhaps we owe them greatly. Even progressive activists concede the majority of 21st century humankind has more choices, rights, information, disease survival rates, freedoms and longevity than the most privileged world elite of just a century ago. This is due largely to the advances and risks taken by entrepreneurs and innovators.
Witnessing both the inevitable results of the South African Budget speech and the technological advancements in the US this past month, I would like to dismiss the phrase: “Nothing is certain in life, except for death and taxes.” These two blights on the advancement of human inge- nuity are coming to the end of their relevance.
Private currencies, the electronic age and the blistering pace of medical progress will see involuntary death and theft by legislation (taxes) eradicated.
It will take time, innovation, and novel concepts. But as humanity evolves, deciding to live as long as you wish and experiencing freedom from coercion will become individual choices, not acquired privileges.
Alice Rosenbaum encapsulated the essence of the innovator and entrepreneur beautifully when she wrote: Great achievements are within one's capacity, and great things lie ahead.
It is not in the nature of man, nor of any living entity to start out by giving up, by spitting in one's own face and damning existence; that requires a process of corruption whose rapidity differs from man to man. Some give up at the first touch of pressure, some sell out, some run down by imperceptible degrees and lose their fire, never knowing when or how they lost it.
Yet a few hold on and move on, knowing that [the] fire is not to be betrayed, learning how to give it shape, purpose and reality. But whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man's nature and of life's potential. It is a confirmation of the spirit of youth, proclaiming man's glory, showing how much is possible.
It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man's proper stature and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give life its meaning. [The] rest are no concern of mine; it is not me that they will betray - it is their own souls.
At the beginning of May 1945, in a bunker beneath the Berlin ruins of a failed ideology and a decimated nation, Joseph Goebbels murdered his six children and wife before turning the gun on himself. Brunhilde Pomsel was captured and jailed.
Exactly 49 years later, South Africa celebrated its first day of a new ideology and a Rainbow Nation.
As Pomsel said, “..We knew nothing.”
Neither a cleric nor philosopher, at least she admitted that value and certainty before passing.
•Ron Weissenberg is a Grahamstown resident who started his first business at age
7. He is a Certified Director (SA) and mentors people and
their enterprises.