"The Creative-Destroyers: Are Entrepreneurs Mythological Heroes?" (Part 4)

This is the title of a paper I presented at the Western Economic Association Meetings in 1992 in San Francisco. I will be posting this paper in parts. There will be 5 parts. This last part has the bibliography and a transcript of the radio interview when Joseph Campbell said entrepreneurs are heroes. Part 4 has footnotes.

Part 1. Part 2.  Part 3. Part 4. Part 5.

Initiation

This is the penetration to the source of power.

The Road of Trials. Once the hero has crossed the first threshold and entered the belly of the whale, he faces a seemingly endless road of tests and trials with the aid of his mentor or the benign power of nature. He slays dragons at each trial, but only if he can constantly put his ego to death.

Entrepreneur: Anyone who has started a new business given the rate of new business failures necessarily must face a road of trials which include getting capital, land and labor to mesh together efficiently and creatively. There are long hours of work, bureaucratic regulations to deal with, irate customers, mechanical breakdowns, competitors, etc. that have to be overcome in order for the entrepreneur to succeed. Gilder (1984) writes "The entrepreneurial achievements of the 1970's and the early 1980's came in the face of a hostile press, resistant culture, and a stagnant "economy." The breakthroughs of these entrepreneurs are an amazing testimony to human will and ingenuity, vision and tenacity in defiance of the odds" (p. 56).

Gilder (1984) also writes of the difficulties faced by the entrepreneur with "In their own afflicted lives, they discover the hard predicament of all human life, threatened by the creeping encroachments of jungle and sand" (p. 18) and "In the harsh struggles and remorseless battles of their lives, entrepreneurs are no saints, and far from sinless. They bear scars and have inflicted many. Since their every decision has met an empirical test beyond appeal, they are necessarily the world's true realists, most proven pragmatists" (p. 256)

Burch (1986) adds "Few, if any entrepreneurs have escaped failure.

Most have seen the wild beasts of failure trample on their rose gardens" (p. 33).

The Meeting with the Goddess. The importance of the goddess for the hero here is not that he must meet her and fall in love with her, but that the goddess is representative of the universe. If the hero can come to know this "mother" universe, he can learn the creative secrets of the physical universe, which will enable him to deliver a boon. That is, if the hero can look at the world (or universe) as a protecting and nourishing place, like a mother, or be "married" to the universe, he will be able to deliver boons because he will be in tune with those creative secrets.² Entrepreneur: It must be recalled that this section and the next are very symbolic and do not relate directly to the hero's relationship to actual women. The hero needs to see the universe as a nurturing place. Burch (1986) refers to the entrepreneur's ability to take charge of and watch over a venture until it can stand alone as a "nurturing quality" (p. 29).

Woman as Temptress. Here the hero must not see the woman as someone tempting him with the pleasures of the flesh, rather he must accept the fact that we live in a material world and that everything we do is related to that fact. If he can go beyond seeing women as merely material things, he can keep the power attained in the meeting with he goddess.

Atonement with the Father. The hero has a father or knows someone who is a father figure who initiates him with new techniques, duties and attitudes so that he can take the place of the father and later become an initiator himself. The hero must also outgrow the notion that the father is an ogre and come to believe that the father is merciful. This is necessary for the hero to gain the creative power.

Entrepreneur: Gilder (1984) gives importance to the family and the father of the entrepreneur. "Most [entrepreneurs] were driven by conscious feelings of deprivation and guilt stemming form broken families and connections. Many had lost their fathers in childhood through death or divorce. Resulting pangs of guilt and failure may unleash personal drive to vindicate themselves and retrieve a family order" (p. 18). He goes even further in discussing the role of the father by saying of entrepreneurs "Many lose their fathers, early fill their role, and transcend it gloriously in the world "(p. 18). This is echoed by Sarachek.

Shapero (1982) reports that many entrepreneurs had fathers who were entrepreneurs (85-6).

Apotheosis. This is the act of making a god out of a person. To become a god or god-like, the hero must become selfless. But to become selfless, the hero must transcend the pairs of opposites (especially birth and death) that make up the world as perceived by our rational minds. The hero must stand and be able to go between two worlds, the conscious and the unconscious and see the divinity and oneness in all things. This is shown to be the case for the entrepreneur in the step of the journey called "Master of Two Worlds" in the next section on The Return.

The Ultimate Boon. The ultimate boon is for the hero to deliver the knowledge of the divinity and oneness of all things to his community. This leads to the knowledge of the infinite creative abilities within each individual.

Entrepreneur: It has already been noted that both Schumpeter and Campbell understood the importance of the process of creation and destruction. Earlier it was noted that Schumpeter (1962) said creative destruction is "primarily responsible for the recurrent "prosperities" that revolutionize the economic organism" (p. 123). That is, he saw creative destruction as a bringer of boons.

Return

In Campbell (1968) this is the life-enhancing return which is necessary to the "continuous circulation of spiritual energy into the world" (p. 36).

            Refusal of the Return. Some heroes refuse the return because it might annihilate all recollection of the enlightenment found or it will be too difficult to bring this knowledge to the world. Kirzner says not to act on a hunch shows that it was not a hunch at all. This would mean that no enlightenment had been found in the first place. So someone who refuses to act on his hunch (or not return) . would not be an entrepreneur (or hero) to Kirzner.

The Magic Flight. If the hero displeases the gods in some way, he must flee from them on a flight of what Campbell (1968) calls "magical obstruction and evasion" (p. 197).

Rescue from Without. The hero, having touched the eternal, may wish to stay there rather than return to the world, in which case the world has to somehow bring him back.

            The Crossing of the Return Threshold. If the hero does not have to be rescued from without, he must realize that although he has glimpsed and touched the divine that the world he left and to which he will return is also just as real. This allows him to cross the threshold rather than stay In the eternal so that he might deliver his boon.

Master of Two Worlds. The two worlds are the known, material world he left, and the one he entered on the adventure where he discovered creative power. Somehow the hero must be able to use the energy and creative ability discovered in his adventure for the benefit of mankind. He has to be able to delve into his unconscious and bring out that which the world needs without letting common, everyday concerns distort his gift. He has this ability if he has killed his ego.

Entrepreneur: Gilder (1984) writes something similar about the character of entrepreneurs. "It is the entrepreneurs who know the laws of the world and the laws of God. Thus they sustain the world" (p. 19). The following elaborates on this:

"Every capitalist investment has the potential for a dual yield: a financial profit and an epistemological profit. One without the other is sterile. Economies progress when the process of investment is informed by the results of previous investments. What makes the capitalist entrepreneur uniquely valuable as a force for growth, and progress is that he combines in one person these two yields of enterprise" (p. 254).

The entrepreneur clearly must be a master of two very different worlds.

Freedom to Live. The hero is finally able, once he has killed his ego, to detach himself from the fruits of his own labor and sacrifice them to

God. He has discovered the creative, divine power that was in him all the time. According to Campbell (1968) he is "the champion of things becoming, not of things become, because he is" (p. 243).

Entrepreneur: Burch (1986) says that corporations tend to cease taking risks and are not run by entrepreneurs (p. 87) while also acknowledging that entrepreneurs are good at starting companies and making them successful, but not at managing them (p. 26). The entrepreneur is not a champion of the already existing corporation but of those that are becoming, to which he is giving birth. Campbell (1988) strongly emphasizes the heroic nature of mothers who give birth because of their sacrifice for another (p. 125). Gilder (1984) also lists sacrifice as an important characteristic of entrepreneurs. He says of entrepreneurship "It IS a world of service to others-solving their problems and taking on new ones for yourself-it is the prime source of leadership and wealth" (p. 247) and of entrepreneurs "By the process of creating and responding to markets, they orient their lives toward the service to others" (p. 255). MacMillan and McGrath found that "American entrepreneurs give back more than others to society" (The Wall Street Journal, February 6, 1992, p. A1).

The most telling Gilder (1984) observation for this phase is "His (the entrepreneur) success is the triumph beyond the powers and principalities of the established world to the transcendent sources of creation and truth" (p. 258). The entrepreneur masters the two worlds of business and creativity.

CONCLUSIONS

Given that we need to know more about the psychology of entrepreneurship and to the extent that actual entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process as well as what has been written about them coincide with the nature of the hero and his adventure in mythology, this paper provides important insights into the psychology of entrepreneurship because myths are representations of our psyches. Since the entrepreneur's (ad)venture so closely resembles the hero's adventure which in turn represents the internal action of the human psyche, entrepreneurship is a very natural human instinct. It is human nature to go both on the vision quest of the hero's adventure as outlined by Campbell as well as the vision quest of entrepreneurship. This is not to ignore the negative, destructive aspects and pay attention only to the creative side. They may be heroes but they are not saints. They could also be part trickster and all of the skills and knowledge they learn on their Journey can be used for purposes that cause harm as well as bring benefits. The hero and trickster are both agents of change, and change is always a two-edged sword. It may, however, be a moral imperative for society to allow entrepreneurship to take place. Even though few people become heroes or entrepreneurs, their creative energy and world redeeming work is what makes for a vital and dynamic society as Jonathan Hughes pointed out in The Vital Few: The Entrepreneur and American Economic Progress. The work from systems theory attests to the need for systems to be open to new energy and ideas that can only come from the outside. When a system or society is closed off, entropy sets in and the system starts to stagnate and die. We must allow the heroic entrepreneurs to leave the society or system (the separation) so they can be initiated into new sources of creative energy which they can bring back as a boon upon their return.

FOOTNOTES

1. From personal correspondence with Israel Kirzner he writes "I should point out in my own treatment of the entrepreneur, he is not seen as a "hero". Moreover, in my own treatment pure luck is not seen as entrepreneurial. (but as the act of deliberately putting oneself into a situation which one hopes will prove lucky is entrepreneurial") It is my contention that the best way for a person to put themselves into a situation in which they will be lucky is for them to follow Campbell's advice that is based on his analysis of the hero's adventure. This is to follow your bliss, to listen to the wisdom of your heart and do what you love, not what the social system would have you do. If you follow your bliss, you are a hero. I believe that the most successful entrepreneurs follow their bliss and are therefore heroes.

It is interesting to note that Schumpeter listed three classes of motives for entrepreneurship: the will to found private kingdom, the will to conquer, and the joy of creating. The first one, although seemingly only one of greed, ranges, however, from "spiritual ambition down to mere snobbery" (Schumpeter, 1983, p. 92). The second he saw like a sporting event, with money used to keep score, and not as an end in itself (Schumpeter, 1983, p. 92). This is consistent with other, more recent research (Burch, 1986, p. 29). The entrepreneur who fits the third class of motives is in it for the sake of "exercising one's energy and ingenuity" and for the delight in venturing (Schumpeter, 1983, p. 92-3). All three classes of motives are anti-hedonistic, with the third being the most so. This certainly makes it plausible to see the entrepreneur as someone who follows his or her bliss.

 2. Campbell (1968), p. 121, says that the adventure is essentially the same for men and women. The interested reader should see The Female Hero In American and British Literature by Carol S. Pearson and Katherine Pope as well as The Heroine's Journey: Woman's Quest for Wholeness by Maureen Murdock. These are listed in the references.