Founders: Embracing the Necessary Friction

A founder is someone who finds a new idea so compelling and difficult that a whole community or corporation or organization or set of sustained actions is required to implement the idea.

A warrior is someone who embarks upon the building of what some may call an impossible dream.

A founder warrior is someone who blends both of these. Embarks on what seems to be an impossible dream - someone when told a thing is impossible - considers this a personal challenge.

It is important to note that not all founder warriors are successful, that many are motivated by greed and by what Machiavelli might describe as someone willing to justify any means to reach a desired goal.

This guide for warrior founders is inspired by a newly evolving theory which prioritizes warrior founders, those who are truly motivated by need instead of greed. Those who reject the kind of inner or outer tyranny which Machiavelli described.

Saints Need Not Apply

We are not talking saints here: but human beings who think big, who consider being discouraged from a goal to become a challenge, and whose dream of a goal is one which could be beneficial to humanity.

What kind of humans keep working with good intentions and with a positive mindset when everything around them is falling apart and the work seems impossible?

What sort of knowledge is considered most dangerous, and why is that knowledge most worth pursuing?

What kind of humans continue to evolve: to change and grow precisely because they consider that a life without meaning is not a life, but instead, a life without meaning becomes a living death?

The very variety of humans who suspect they may have been born meant to attempt to transform those impossible odds into wonderful probabilities.

As we explored thoroughly in From Gaia to Geometry, when viewed from certain mathematical perspectives, the odds against the universe, or any of us, existing at all are astronomical.

These appear to belong to some sort of unwritten laws of evolution, evidenced by the following two elements deemed by this book to be part of the unknown process we call evolution.

Evolution is not about something being possible versus what is impossible, but is rather about drawing from existing forms to allow evolution to proactively engineer the greatest probabilities.

Evolution, the process, slowly maximizes existing strengths, slowly begins discarding existing weaknesses, selective pruning of certain elements, so eventually a more successful evolutionary probability emerges.

Evolution, the process, involves friction: stirring things up, bringing the required chaos & disorder - the very disruption which arrives bearing both energy and raw materials. Energy and raw materials which allow for the harmony of homeostasis more likely to produce a healthy living being.

Disharmony is absolutely necessary for evolution, bringing maximum friction to bear when evolution cranks up to maximum strength. Bringing something completely new and novel into being requires immense inner strength and endurance, flexibility, willingness to accept failure and to learn from it.

Founders encounter these stumbling blocks persistently, to the point that it is how a founder responds to these roadblocks, which determines success or failure.

A high degree of innovation, daring to bring real change, frightens most people, as we humans like a comfortable status quo, enjoy certainty over uncertainty, prefer predictability over unpredictability.

When founders bring uncomfortable questions, notice inconsistencies requiring action, dare to dream by light of day, bring action others would rather not consider, they set themselves apart.

A human is meant to exist as an action word - a verb - while most humans prefer remaining an unmovable noun.

This is not even their fault, as evolution predisposed us to prefer the perceived comfort of a sheltered and cloistered life, believing it brings enhanced survival, health and well being.

But evolution is not monolithic and brings plenty of variation brought by chaos.

Founders are part of that different evolutionary breed of humans, preferring a life of chaos over a life of sessile comfort, preferring to ski straight down the fall line, rather than zigzagging across the fall line.

While polite society selects for nonaction, to exist as a noun, and prefers the sessile status quo to rocking the boat, founders prefer the hero and heroines journey.

Something triggers a set of circumstances, in which the founder must break with the society, and chart a new path.

This trigger is often some sort of traumatic event, an event so powerful it ejects an individual from the tyranny of the status quo, mandating a journey taken only by madmen: by those inner directed mapmakers and literary code breakers known otherwise as heroes or heroines.

A Man of Knowledge Takes Action: A Warrior’s Journey

If trauma leaves most individuals with hyper-vigilance or dissociative tendencies, how does it work when trauma is reverse engineered to become a powerful trigger for personal growth and creativity?

It is impossible to exist without experiencing some kind of trauma, but it is what we do with trauma which determines if we are brave warriors or traumatized victims.

Successful founders will revisit the trauma & proactively process it, rather than pretend it did not happen. Rather than waste energy diverted to anger, hatred and blame, the warrior founder seeks further knowledge, invokes compassion for self and others, and sets out in a course of action.

Many human beings of great achievement endured dreadful trauma, the sort difficult to recover from. These people may respond initially with anger, fear, hyper-vigilance and self-sabotage.

These initial reactions bring nothing but additional self-generated trauma, leaving a warrior founder lost and alone, preferring bitter isolation to the tyranny of the status quo.

Here is where a warrior founder finds his or her purpose in life: discovering a purpose, inner strength and stoic compassion they had no idea they possessed.

At this point they quite literally begin a journey of self-healing, often discovering their perceived weaknesses are actually personal strengths. This journey is anything but peaceful, the antithesis of that much needed vacation in paradise.

The warrior founders encounter obstacles, overcome them, and begin evolving into something we might define as a hero or heroine.

The warrior founder encounters an insurmountable challenge in the form of a powerful adversary and becomes disillusioned.

The first guide appears, offering a helping hand, lending a torch, a map, and a double-edged sword. The warrior founder defeats and overcomes the powerful adversary.

Our warrior founder sets out again, guided by the light of the torch, forewarned by the map, protected by the power offered by the double-edged sword.

Pursuit of Dangerous Knowledge

Now refreshed, the warrior founder recognizes he is on a quest. Embarked on a journey, seeking undiscovered knowledge, intending to return home to share the knowledge.

Even understanding that the knowledge will be rejected by those he intends to share it with.

Knowledge represents, to the warrior founders, that the seeking after knowledge, the journey towards understanding, the pursuit of comprehension, is in and of itself the reward.

The warrior founder returns home and is resented and ostracized; the hard-won knowledge, instead of being celebrated, becomes the source of endless laughter and derision.

The warrior founder becomes ostracized, retires to the wilderness, serves as a guide for others who seek to embark on this journey.

Evolving into a respected guide for those who would dare to dream and act upon these dreams.

Guiding those designers, architects, and imagineers who have a habit of turning impossible dreams into probable reality. A small new civilization populated by warrior founders.

The old civilizations had burnt to the waterline, and evidence they had even existed sank below the surface, the ignorance of the past now completely buried in the primeval mud of the harbor.

When asked, many years later, why the old civilization collapsed and burnt to the waterline, finally disappearing into the muck, the reply was simple, clear, direct.

Such was the power of the ignorance, knowledge could not find purchase.

A society which had created great things they failed to understand, unable to reconstruct the foundations which had crumbled.

When the founder warriors were asked why their civilization succeeded, the answer was again simple, clear and direct.

Ours also burnt to the waterline, sank beneath the surface into the harbor mud. We carried the knowledge which was rejected, the knowledge which allowed us to rebuild quickly and efficiently and successfully.