Of Dragons and Lions

In discussing some of the concepts of human thinking with a friend recently, I was drawn back to the work of Friedrich Nietzsche and the challenge of human transformation and development. One of the things that Nietzsche spoke about in "Thus Spake Zarathustra" was what he referred to as the "Three Stages of Metamorphoses".

Nietzsche spoke about the transformation of an individual through life from the camel "load me up and let's see how much I can carry" to the lion who becomes master of his or her desert and in doing so must encounter and slay the dragon upon each scale of which is written "thou shalt".  In slaying the dragon the lion then becomes the child who can truly wonder at the new beginning which is found by slaying "thou shalt" .

The thing I was pondering was what this dragon looks like now and what is written upon its scales. Nietzsche himself noted that "Values, thousands of years old, shine on these scales; and thus speaks the mightiest of all dragons: "All value of all things shines on me. All value has long been created, and I am all created value." .... Thus speaks the dragon " What new values are upon its scales that the modern world has taken to be "gospel" for its existence?

• Thou shalt build things that must be replaced?
• Thou shalt consume with no thought for the future?
• Thou shalt squander the resources of the planet?

To take the metaphor further, perhaps, like the dragon of the individual psyche, there is a dragon of collective society, a dragon upon whose scales one may find  the "thou shalts" of the modern world. Rules writ large by financial experts and economists who believe they know how to avoid financial disasters and modern industrialists who think they know what is best for society (or at least their shareholders). Perhaps, in the same way that the dragon of the individual must die in order for  one to discover the wonder of the new beginning, the social dragon of our time must die in order for the human collective to discover the route to a new mode of existence. An existence with lower levels of consumption, and a more equitable and sustainable access to the resources of the planet. Else, like Easter Island we will consume all our resources worshipping the gods of the dragon thou shalt..

About slade

Slade is an Enterprise Architect, Business Analyst and Project Manager with extensive experience in the Defence, National Security, Emergency Services and secure systems environment. Slade has been in the IT industry since 1988, and is experienced in systems engineering, systems architecture, systems integration, security assessment and development of sustainment frameworks for new systems. He is also a thought leader in human factors for the design of critical decision support systems and environments and the development of enterprise and solution level architecture for high information workload environments. Slade is the Director of EcoThought Pty Ltd