“The Man Shapes the Environment, and The Environment Shapes the Man”

“The man shapes the environment, and the environment shapes the man.”  I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit lately.  I wrote more about it in my essay “Kevin, Why Entrepreneurship for You? (Part III)”:

“The man shapes the environment, and the environment shapes the man.”  My Dad said this to me once.  I’m not sure where he got it, or if it came from a synthesis of his own experiences.  The phrase describes an undeniable phenomenon, and its effects shouldn’t be taken lightly.  The environment influences us, and we in turn exert force on the environment in some sort of tug-of-war over causality.

You see the effects of this concept when studying evolution, start-ups, work environments, and our own living spaces.  You can even observe this somewhat paradoxical concept when studying cells in a petri dish.  You change the substrate that the cell lives on and the cell changes drastically, and consequently, the environment changes.

But what does this really mean?  Primarily, it means we live in a constant state of disequilibrium.  And this creates opportunities, perhaps a dire need, for growth.

(This is a powerful concept.  I also wrote about this implicitly in my post on Co-Evolution.  Curiously, my conclusion in that post was that coevolution leads to balance in the universe.)

The concept has been on my mind as we steadily pull together Vogel Labs.  It’s impossible to find the perfect physical space in the perfect location at the perfect price.

Here’s what I say:  Find the optimum, take what you have, and make it so beautiful that it changes the greater environment. A great group of people can exert a huge amount of force on their surroundings.  Weaker people will say, “you can’t bend reality to your will.”  This may be so, but don’t interpret this to mean you can only throw your hands up in the air and wait; we aren’t bugs being washed down a river,  drowning in the chaos.  Part of reality is the fact that we create it.

And with this attitude in mind, it will be perfect, all in good time.

-Kevin
5.16.2010