After a decade of providing mental health services in the United States, I felt completely ineffective and burnt out. People were suffering. I could provide them a small amount of relief by teaching them how to cope with their problems, but when they left my office, they returned to the environment that made them sick. I started to wonder why I was teaching skills that helped people accept a society that was impacting them to the point of mental illness. What if, instead of helping them find ways to suppress the anger they felt, I helped them channel it toward making change? Could I create social disruption on a large enough scale to change the cultural values that lead us down a path of unhappiness?
My current mission is to find ways to utilize tech to connect people and re-think the way we interact as a whole. The Western economic system creates loneliness and isolation on a scale that we have never before seen. High monetary value is placed on activities that harm us and our natural world. Emotionally, we suffer from slaving away instead of living life to our fullest potential.
Ultimately, my dream is to re-think the valuation we assign to currency. The current system values unsustainable growth, consumerism and wage slavery. Can we use cryptocurrency to entirely change the economic system to assign the highest valuation to positive endeavors? Imagine a currency that values being a good friend, a helpful neighbor or being a supportive teacher. What would the world look like if currency backed the things we value most.
