Preface (Metaphors)

This book delves into the essence of what makes us human, framed by three symbolic pillars: a lyre, a roulette wheel, and a spear. These symbols represent essential stages of existence: paradise, earth, and hell. Life is fundamentally a negotiation between these states—a suspenseful tension caught between beauty and injury, serenity and struggle, certainty and risk. Here, wisdom is symbolized by a book, guiding us through this journey, while folly is embodied by the roulette wheel, capturing the allure and peril of chance.

The human journey is not linear; it traverses three phases—the oblivion of the beast, the burden of memories and near-misses of man, and the pessimism beyond good and evil of the Übermensch. Few complete this journey fully, but the progression offers a template against which we measure our will to power on a scale of three—what is your score?

What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.
For he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and godlike reason
To fust in us unused.
—Hamlet

The lyre symbolizes paradise, where the soul, like David’s harp, resonates in harmony with the divine—think of David’s psalm of a good shepherd, with you as the lamb lying all day in green pastures and by still waters, much like a child under the protection of a mother. Yet, paradise alone does not complete life’s picture; without suspense and challenge, the soul would stagnate. A child must eventually engage with the broader world through school, work, and adulthood. The spear represents hell, confronting our fears and inner adversaries with unwavering resolve—adversarial in interpersonal, organizational, and national contexts. Between these extremes lies the roulette wheel—a symbol of life’s gamble on earth, where suspense rules, and fate and choice are deeply intertwined. We hedge our bets through strategic alliances and other forms of insurance to achieve payoffs.

This book explores these realms, examining how we navigate beauty and brutality, intention and uncertainty, and the suspense that defines our journey. Through these triadic themes and their variations, we aim to uncover the layers of what it means to live and strive as human beings.