It's Honing Your Brain to make Value Judgements
The most valuable thing is your time, and second most valuable thing is your brainpower, both of which were waisted by the last few terminator flicks
When I interact on Steemit I’m constantly asking myself “What is this worth to me?” I identify that which has value, and I act upon it. On Facebook or any other platform the question is always “What am I doing here? I should be working.” On Steemit I am working. That’s what I’m doing here. I take pride in working, even in the posts that I spend hours writing that never go above a dollar. Because of how low the return has been many could say that it is therefore not a selfish motive…
Bare with me here.
Imagine Steemit like a brain that has only just gained consciousness, and the first question it’s asking is like Descartes waking up in the morning before he remembers who he is. “How do I know that I exist” (On Steemit this comes out to something like “What the fuck is this platform? How do I even begin?”)
I think therefore I Steemit
It feels like 90% of all posts on Steemit are basically about Steemit – and maybe it was like that at the beginning of Facebook but somehow I doubt it. Steemit is all self centered, self reflective, and that’s a good sign. More than anything else, that’s what makes me believe in this platform. It’s unabashedly motivated by self interest. (Enlightened or rational self interest).
It’s strange that the most capitalistic website on the internet revolves around these altruistic upvotes… but then again, is altruism my motive in content creation/upvoting?
Is it really altruistic? You know that weird feeling you get when you help someone immensely with a problem they’re suffering from? I don’t really get that feeling when I upvote… Does this mean that it’s a purely selfish motive? Of course it can’t be because no one will ever know that I clicked upvote-so why did I do it?. (Assuming the gratification of an upvote has an external source, which I don’t believe is the case). Participation on Steemit is selfish (a word that for me is neutral or positive) it is rather altruistic (a word that for me carries a negative connotation given that I’ve read too much Ayn Rand).
Participation on Steemit is motivated by selfishness, and that’s not a bad thing depending on your definition of selfish. If you think of the un-restrained irrational thieving conniving sort of selfish (which is ultimately harmful to the self and therefore not truly selfish), that’s not really part of my vocabulary. But if your thinking of the rational Rand esque selfishness that revolves around voluntaryism, I’m right there with you.
what the rest of the world thinks selfishness is
You can say that upvotes are altruistic in nature because they put the writer at the mercy of the reader, but that has always been the case. It’s not an altruistic motive that drives me to an article in the first place. I go there because I’m seeking value for my own mind, not because I want to increase someone’s wallet.
Lately I’ve been thinking that we need better terminology than ‘enlightened self interest’ or ‘rational self interest’. We need a word that describes this phenomena accurately, assigned with a universal definition that anyone can grasp. For now I’ll just have to use the word ‘Steemian’.
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