Commitment has a twin, and the two are almost impossible to tell apart from the inside. One of them builds everything. The other one drowns crews.
Captain Ahab describes his own mind with the most beautiful, terrifying image in the book: "The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run." Hear how good that sounds. Unstoppable. Locked in. Every founder has quoted some version of it — burn the boats, no plan B, nothing will swerve me. We put that speech on posters.
But sit with the actual image for a second. Rails can't swerve. That's the whole point of rails — and it's fine, admirable even, if they're aimed at a destination. Ahab's are aimed at a whale that yields nothing (Chapter 7 covered the barrels he refused to count). So the same iron that makes commitment magnificent makes it a railway to the bottom of the sea. The difference between the twins isn't intensity. Both run hot. The difference is one thing only: can the warning still reach the driver?