It's Christmas, which, for a significant part of the word, is a major spiritual event. I've been brought up and raised in a space which observed this event, and I hold very nice memories about this time of the year. Furthermore, my own personal experience, over decades, proved that, beyond the religious and spiritual meanings attached to these days before me, I can feel myself that this is a time of rebirth, of recharge, of restart.
The night already started to shrink in the Northern Hemisphere, the day is slowly becoming longer, we're entering a new cycle of light.
So, time for a recap, and a few confessions.
I came a long way since I first joined this project, more than 5 years ago. A few people that were here at the very beginning are still around. But many aren't anymore, they either joined other projects, or abandoned the idea entirely. Replacing them, more and more people are joining every day, though, starting to align themselves with the values that this ecosystem builds upon.
Beyond the tidal moves of every day life, what remains is this hard core of values, these beliefs that we can function in a better way, both as individuals and as a community.
I'm not going to recycle words already tired, like decentralization and cryptographic proofs, for us, these are part of the daily vocabulary, for years now. But I'm going to insist on some of the consequences of applying these concepts, these processes in our lives.
Every time we spend time in this space, regardless of how many upvotes we get, of how high or low the price of Hive is, we're experiencing one of the benefits detailed below.
First of all, we're less subject to the algorithmic reality controlled by the tech overlords. We don't know the faces of these overlords, and we're mostly deluded to project our insecurities on way less dangerous people, like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. These public images are mostly puppets, the real overlords are in the shadows, controlling with every click, with every scroll, with every reply and reaction, what are you going to see next in your feed. And that's something that is optimized for their profit, not for you, or, God forbid, the truth.
By playing in this field, by contributing to this platform, we're playing outside that area. We may still optimize for our personal profit at times, but we are outside the algorithm they control. This is going to become more and more important as we move forward.
Second, we get to build in a space with limitless potential. Nobody knows what Hive can become, become nobody controls Hive completely. We may go through periods of apparent calm, in which nothing seems to happen, and then, in a few days, we see more projects that we can keep up with. They seem to be flourishing out of nothing. They didn't, they appeared specifically because this is a space of continuous opportunity. If nobody controls the vision, the processes and the people, then everything is possible. Literally everything.
And third, we get to contribute. Like real contribution, making the wheels of this mechanism turn every second, keeping the contraption afloat, not merely posting, enriching a few and creating a world way too easy to control.
Contribution is fundamental for our human psyche, it's the cornerstone of meaning, and life without meaning is something that we cannot fathom. It may seem that decades of comfort in front of the translucent screens controlled by the tech overlords transformed us into mindless sheep. For hundreds of millions, this might be true. You see them virtue signaling, begging for attention, obeying to the algorithm and slowly sinking into oblivion, into a Matrix-like existence, without even realizing. But for a few lucky ones, like the ones reading this post right now, this is not true. We didn't give in to comfort, we escaped - partially, or totally - the algorithmic reality of centralized social media and we contribute here. I run a witness node for about 5 years now. Never been a top 21 witness, but about 10 blocks per day are validated by my witness. I cannot tell you how meaningful this is for me. I am doing my part. As little as it is, 10 blocks per day are validated by my witness for more than 5 years.
Any of these blocks may have contained a transaction that was life changing for somebody.
Merry Christmas!
Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash
