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I’ve recently been troubled by a chronic toothache. Mind you, I haven't had a toothache in over ten years, and haven't been to the dentist in close to thirty years – nor have I seen a general practitioner for over two decades. I generally don’t get sick. I also don’t know how I’m still alive! Jokes aside, I believe I owe this prolonged good health to a balanced diet and an active lifestyle. But this toothache is relentless, and I'm compelled to consider a different approach to what I'm used to doing.
Other than my toothache, there is something else that has been a chronic anguish to my peace of mind ever since learning about blockchain technology and cryptocurrency in general. The source of this anguish directly correlates with our innate disposition to mistrust change. I use the word “innate” loosely in this case as I personally don’t think that human beings are born with this unfortunate disposition. Like many things in life, I believe its a trait bequeathed yet falsely flung on nature’s faultless feet.
For the sake of progress, will henceforth neither challenge nor accept the dominant arguments supporting humanity’s resistance to change. It must however, with unbridled conviction, be accepted that change is necessary. It must further be conceded, that not all change is good or necessary. The raring reader my be asking themselves, what on earth does all this claptrap have to do with Web 3 Plus, and what the hell is this Web 3 Plus? Please bare with me as, I will eventually distil the point.
With rapid advancement in technology, it beckons that human understanding of technology must advance at the same pace. But we currently have this tandem approach where technology advances and human cognition follows, which I believe creates a lot of problems and opportunity for abuse and exploitation. Of course it is not by accident that the general public is out of sync with technological advancement, I posit that it is by insidious design as part of an ancient plan by the elite to control the masses. Conspiracy theories aside, multinational corporations and the so called developed nations leverage the ignorance of the general public (globally) to maintain a position of power and enrich themselves. This cruel and unabated pursuit of power has left us with an almost uninhabitable planet; the countdown to an apocalyptic state of affairs has long begun.
It is at this crucial juncture of civilisation that we need to have our wits together. As much as I cannot continue to doge the dentist for another moment, neither can humanity continue to uphold this decaying status quo. These drastic times require a radical approach to solve our prevailing challenges and refocus our cognitive lens in preparation for a very different world; a world where every being matters and the planet is no longer abused.
One might ask; what are our prevailing problems and what will it take to address them?
I would like to posit that the following key problems and their tentacles need to be addressed for the human species to survive: Group Identity and Trust in Authority.
The great late George Carlin once said, and I paraphrase; “I could never understand ethnic or national pride, because pride should be reserved for something you’ve accomplished on your own, not for something that happens by accident of birth.” As polarising as this statement may be, there is so much truth in it, and although his comic approach presented the statement in light hearted manner, it is nonetheless a very serious observation.
The most polarising form of group identity is nationalism. The dictionary describes nationalism as “identification with one's own nation and support for its interests, especially to the exclusion or detriment of the interests of other nations.” Unfortunately, identification with one’s “own” is something that we’ve all been brought up with, inadvertently being taught to discriminate that which you are not affiliated with. This of course, to the keen and honest observer, presents a huge challenge because the earth does not respond to separatist notions of identity. The earth’s carrying capacity, it’s ability to provide us with sustenance does not regard human beings by their skin colour, creed or nation. The rain falls on us all indiscriminately. The greed and unabated pollution perpetrated by “developed nations” doesn’t just affect the developed nations alone, the consequences threaten the extinction of all human beings.
Tribalism can looked at as a regional form of nationalism. Our evolution as human beings was centred around groups that developed a common way of life in traditions, music, food, beliefs and so forth. Despite globalisation and technological progress, some ancient tribes persisted and preserved their traditions and culture. It is a beautiful, captivate and immersive spiritual experience when a city slicker like myself encounters a tribe that has preserved ancient traditions. It’s almost like travelling through time in an organic museum.
Notwithstanding this beautiful side of tribalism, there is also an aspect of tribalism that resembles the tenants of nationalism; showing no tolerance to other groups while harbouring notions of superiority and violence. This type of group identity must be fiercely advocated against.
In a new world view — a world that radically seeks to preserve the integrity of the earth for humanity and all species that form part of our ecosystem, requires that we challenge the dominant identity values that separate us. We as individuals need to look at ourselves in a global context, how we relate to that global context, and how our regional input affects the broader outlook.
I believe blockchain technology can assist to address this individual value proposition in a global context from an administrative point of view. Exactly how I believe this can be done will be contemplated in forthcoming blogs. Suffice it to argue, for now, that we need to strip down our individual identities and be garbed in a broader and more inclusive global identity.
The second challenge I’d like to address is our conditioned trait of the appealing to authority. Like our trait of group identity, we have been trained from a very young age to place unflinching trust in authority. Our parents, school teachers, elders in the community and so forth; all these authority figures were presented to us as infallible.
Growing up as a child, in a world that is both daunting and mesmerising, it was comforting to know that there're people who knew better, and were able to help you navigate life. Unfortunately, we have carried that childlike mentality of appealing to authority into our adulthood. We have cultivated this need to trust in authority that it has become part of our psychological evolutionary process; we cannot trust ourselves unless an authority figure says yay or nay. This trust in authority has transcended the development stage and its tribal origins and has now morphed into a disturbing and often cataclysmal trust in religious leaders, government officials, scientists, institutions of learning, and banking establishments to name but a few springing to mind.
We have seen the rise and fall of leaders like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. Although these leaders had grand visions for their “own”, they had no tolerance and need for the broader global population. Indeed, the trust that people placed in such leaders created monstrous regimes. To a lesser extent, this type of trust in authority in authority still persists in our new global dispensation mainly spearheaded by the United Nations and its affiliates. Honest observations show that the united nations is not that much different from the atrocious regimes it was meant to guard against. So many well meaning and intelligent people find themselves impotent and unable to effect real and needed change due to forces that control the UN for ulterior motives. The current spate of global conflicts characterised by bigger and more powerful nations bullying smaller and less powerful nations attests to the fallacy of institutional authority.
Trust in leaders requires that the leaders in power are benevolent enough to grant people a fair dispensation of resources, rights and freedoms. Furthermore, the leader must have the moral intelligence to treat the rest of the world with fairness and integrity.
History and the current state of global affairs affirm that we cannot continue to place our trust in leaders. This is because leaders more often than not have an agenda that is contrary to our demands and needs as a global community.
Governance at a local level largely mirrors, and is influenced by what happens globally. A government that is transparent, inherently free from corruption and unbiased is currently not possible with the current systems of governance. It goes without saying that government officials seem to be beholden to powers that are “greater” than the people that the government officials serve.
A trustless system of governance may seem counter intuitive and opposed o everything that we’ve been conditioned to uphold, but I posit that it’s the direction that we need to embark on as a people. I believe that a decentralised governing system to manage our resources and maintain our freedoms and rights is crucial to the survival of the human species, and ultimately the survival of the planet.
We can no longer trust in individuals or groups to make decisions for us when we can determine what needs to be done through empirical processes built in within blockchain protocols. We need a trustless decentralised governing system.
Institutional authority is the last of the overarching tentacles that I’d like to speak to. This part requires careful treading as I do not wish to impugn on anyone’s beliefs or faith. But we need to look at the authority given to religions and faith based institutions that promote violence. Any belief that requires you to violate the dignity of another human being to the point of killing them requires serious introspection and interrogation.
Outside of faith-based institutions, banking is another of the institutions that we have placed enormous unwarranted trust in. Aside from day-today transactions, most people have a very vague understanding of money. It follows that money is the biggest faith-based system in the world, therefore, banking as an institution can claim – even above government officials, to have the biggest share of people’s trust worldwide.
Albeit that the invention of bitcoin and blockchain protocols present the biggest threat to conventional banking, the slow adoption of cryptocurrencies by the general public has lead to banks and governments interfering with the integrity of cryptocurrencies, mutating the system to be less private and thus allowing institutional oversight. I am sure that Satoshi et al cringe at the current state of affairs and the direction of blockchain.
This brings me back to our original question; how can blockchain technology change the global dynamics to empower the populous on the ground? How can this technology imagined by geeks reconcile and realign humanity with its purpose? I believe it is possible because blockchain technology espouses freedom, and human beings are inherently meant to be free.
But for this to happen, there first needs to be a mass adoption of the technology. How is this then achieved? I believe real world blockchain infrastructure through decentralised physical communities is how we can accelerate blockchain adoption and secure our rightful place in the scheme of global affairs.
For any kind of new system to succeed, there must be mass adoption from the populous. Real world blockchain infrastructure is the vehicle to mass adoption of blockchain technology and protocols.
Despite our greying hair and balding heads, the human race is arguably still in an adolescence stage, where we continue to outsource direction and leadership from those who claim to have the answers. But this requires a lot form the population, it requires a high level of self reliance and self determination that our dominant systems are totally against. They seem it fit to maintain humanity in a childlike state, fully dependant on their wisdom.
A bottom-up approach of rebuilding society in the image of liberty and self-rule is the only way we can achieve true freedom at every level. It goes without saying that we should be immensely grateful for the progress that has been achieved so far in the blockchain world. But if such strides are not matched on the ground with decentralised physical communities then it might as well be all for naught.
Decentralised systems need to claim their place in society and not just exist solely on digital platforms with limited decentralised infrastructure. We need to build decentralised physical communities that can be tokenised by virtue of the processes built in them; to run and maintain them.
As the adage says, “build it and they will come”. This is a clarion call to developers and investors in the blockchain world, to start small and develop decentralised physical communities. The possibilities are massive, but we have to start with one building, one road, one bridge; one community at a time. This is what I cal Web 3+.
Greetings Hivers! I trust that you're all well.
I've been meaning to publish this post for a while now. I'm happy that I was finally able to put my thoughts together in a cohesive way and outline what I believe the future of blockchain should embrace. This is a work-in-progress, and will continue to be updated as new information comesto light. Thank you for taking the time to read. But most importantly, I hope you can be a part of the change.
