The Art of Business

The real creators of civilizations

When people think of creating, they think of artists: painters, sculptors, composers of music and literature, dramatists and architects. Rarely do they consider the individuals that create businesses as artists. I came here today to expand your mind.

Firstly, let us peek inside the meaning of the word, create. To create, a verb, an action, means, to bring something into existence. The creator, noun, is the one that does the bringing. All sorts of individuals create things. The crafter that makes a piece of jewelry, the carpenter that constructs a cabinet, the sculptor that can mold clay into something we recognize as a human being. Both Michelangelo and the Creator did that. The exception is the creator god gave his sculpture life. His is the founder of all biological life. His exception was to create human beings in his image; that means thinking, reasoning, creators in their own right.

Many of you have different beliefs when it comes to the origins of the Earth, the Universe, and so forth. As a teller of tales about the creation of this Earth, and its universe, there isn’t a story out there that doesn’t point to a creator god, goddess or gods. And, to continue my own learnings, there seems to have been a collective wisdom about a nebula that sprang into action billions of years back. Presto! Here we are. I say this, because, in that regard, from the West to the East, people believe we came from this primordial liquid that had no shape. If you think that sounds a bit like Genesis 1, that is because the world’s people share this basic belief. It is the science that is catching up to the ancients.

The scientific story is that we evolved. Again, looking at the myths and the evidence, that is true. Humans evolved from the primitive to the civilized. It is the how of that evolution I address.

Back in the day, the good ole cavemen created. Tools and art. The tools, I submit, had to come first. The tools are a result of survival. Art is an expression of survival. My theory is that next, came the storytellers. They became the explainers of the skies, and the tellers of days gone by. Those stories became the history of the creators and organizers. Polytheism is good at putting the two together. Monotheism, a more recent invention, makes the creator god both instigator and organizer. It is, however, a theist movement that lead to the organization of human beings into agriculturalists, who then turned to forming cities. Thus they created a society to hold those cities together. That means rules.

Those creators made a world in which engineers came into being. Engineers were the first physical organizers of civilizations. The religious organized the conduct of human beings. The priests created a balance when they ordered the Kings to answer for their actions. Back in those ancient days, if a drought hit, it was the king’s fault. Don’t believe me? You need to read up on your mythology.

The question is, what made the civilizations worth the trouble? How did they keep things going? How did they expand? In a word: trade.

The entrepreneur brought something into existence that wasn’t there before. They called it a business.

Long before the civilizations formed, human beings were trading. There is evidence that they went quite a distance to get things they wanted, and to bring things that other people wanted. Ergo, trade is an old game.  Once humanity put up big structures, that meant bigger and better trade needed to take place.

The entrepreneur is the hero of this story. He is the real mother of invention. To make a business, all the right questions have to be asked. And then answered. What do you need? Who makes the thing you need? What is needed to get that thing to the you? I know what I need, but it is a long way off. Across the sea. How do I get there, and back?

From those answers a business is developed, and established. In addition, just as an artist does, the entrepreneur has to wait for the verdict. Is the product accepted? Are people buying it?  Another parallel with the artist is, not everyone will like it. Some will hate it.

What happened next in the development of the world is that the business people turned the agriculturalists into a manufacturers. Women became even more important here as they were the individuals that took care of the small stuff on the farms. They were the individuals that carded the wool, spoon it into thread, and wove it into cloth. Same with flax for the making of linen, as well as picking the cotton, and turning it into all sorts of necessities.

Business then made the division of labor possible. It was all about side gigs, until the Phoenicians, the first entrepreneurs to think globally, expanded west, across the Mediterranean as the Silk Road developed in the East. Business then became its own occupation. Full time, men, and women, devoted themselves to trading. And creating wealth.

Business brought us together. It wasn’t all pretty, but it was all about the creative thinking and energy of generating goods and opening up markets. Shipping was invented, and then one of the world’s first trade centers, Carthage, was built. It was so successful it made the Roman jealous. They wanted Carthage for themselves. Like a man who kills a woman he cannot have, Rome killed Carthage. And took over its trade routes.

Creators cannot help themselves. Art or business, they must take action. The desire to create and exchange is a core human trait.

The next time you gripe about the greed of business people, think about life without them. You may hate the Jeff Bezos or Elon Musks of this world. Nonetheless, the truth is, it is they who move life forward. And the artist? He, or she, interprets the events, and then records them.

Never forget how you thrived during the lockdown. And that farmers still farmed, shippers shipped it to you, and, probably, some young entrepreneur brought it to your door.

He that would destroy business, destroys art.