$TURBO: For the Culture!
By: Pro Veritas aka Namastoad - July 20th, 2023
Greetings, my fellow Toads, Hivers, Web3 aficionados, Cultural Creatives, (AI) Art lovers and crypto enthusiasts.
Recently, @Jackthestreet, one of the current seven council members of the $TURBO community of which I am a part, has opened up a discussion on our Discord to determine the "why" of Turbo to take our project to the next level and I believe I have found a way for all our Why's to have a place within our ecosystem and evolve it into something truly grand.
My short answer is to build a culture around the Turbo ecosystem.
Think of it as a tree, where the original project started by Rhett Mankind through leveraging A.I. to create a memecoin, forms the roots. The tree stem or trunk that has formed since then represents the ecosystem that has grown out of it so far. This tree is still a young sapling and has the potential for becoming a majestic oak tree or even a giant redwood (sequoia).
On this tree, we, the people form the branches, the twigs and the leaves.
The Turbo Toad Token becomes the tree's life juice, spreading all the nutrients on which we will thrive, from the deepest root to the highest leaf and back again.
In its entirety, the tree represents the totality of our culture.
Not even mentioning what the seeds of our tree would become once they drop and grow new roots, can you imagine?
In my opinion, the only way forward for Turbo is to become a culture, a safe haven for the collective creative mind of humanity while leveraging A.I. in the process.
History
Throughout history humans joined together, first as families, then as small groups, followed by tribes. These developed into communities, villages, cities and countries.
The one thing these ever evolving groupings of people had in common was culture.
Here are a few definitions of culture:
- Culture is the systems of knowledge shared by a relatively large group of people.
- Culture is communication, communication is culture.
- Culture in its broadest sense is cultivated behavior; that is the totality of a person's learned, accumulated experience which is socially transmitted, or more briefly, behavior through sociallearning.
- A culture is a way of life of a group of people--the behaviors, beliefs, values, and symbols that they accept, generally without thinking about them, and that are passed along by communication and imitation from one generation to the next.
- Culture is symbolic communication. Some of its symbols include a group's skills, knowledge,attitudes, values, and motives. The meanings of the symbols are learned and deliberately perpetuated in a society through its institutions.
As we can see, Culture can be defined in many ways, the common denominator however, is that culture is a combination of knowledge, skills, values and purpose shared by a group of likeminded people.
Knowledge:
Knowledge is the accumulated experience of individuals that has been integrated and available to be shared with others who lack that knowledge, an exchange of ideas by teachers and students where the insights of the one enriches the other. A great example within Turbo would be sharing of insights gained throughout our lives that may increase understanding within members that have not yet gained a certain insight, be it a rational, emotional, practical or spiritual one.
Skills:
A skill is knowledge honed by practice and then turned into a recurring action. Like knowledge, skills can be transferred from one individual to the other. Combining both knowledge and skill has the potential to develop an expertise.
When it comes to turbo one can imagine a dev sharing skills with an animator or an
experienced artist sharing skills with a novice.
Values:
- Values are a set of moral or ethical standard to which one holds oneself and others.
- Just like knowledge and skills, values can also be shared among individuals and taught to each other.
- The transferal of knowledge and skills is pretty straight forward and mainly requires a certain level of intelligence.
- The exchange of values has quite some more depth to it though, it requires an aware mind, an introspective spirit and empathy to be able to relate to one another.
- Where knowledge and skills mainly require a willingness to learn and the application of logical intelligence, values require an emotional intelligence, the ability to sympathize with others so to speak.
As members of Turbo culture we can share our codes of ethics, share our life stories, be part of each other’s narrative and expand our awareness of ourselves and each other.
Purpose:
- Purpose is what drives us. Our goals, our dreams and our aspirations.
When also fueled by our passion, purpose can be the one single driving force that brings together our individual knowledge, skills and values. - A purpose does not require our knowledge and skills to be the same.
Only our values would require a certain amount of overlap, for knowledge and skills this is simply irrelevant as they can complement each other while being different. - My values do not have to be the same as other members in Turbo but it definitely would be beneficial to find a common ground from which we can galvanize our then shared purpose. more on that common ground in the next section
- To include as many individuals within a shared purpose the definition of what our culture should be needs to be as broad as possible.
- When we define our culture it becomes what unifies us.
The Culture Coin that Turbo could become
The one universal thing we all have in common is creativity, be it in varied levels, and spread over a wide field of interests, expressions and modalities.
Creativity can be the main pillar of our culture and to solidify our culture we require only a few universal guidelines:
- “Respecting our differences”
- “Doing no harm” and
- “Embracing diversity”
True creativity is free, it is unshackled and a driving force of evolution on an individual and collective level.
So, when we indeed establish that creativity (to create) is the one true common denominator we all share, we only need to agree that we will respect each other’s differences, do each other no harm and embrace our diversity in order to proceed.
Within this very wide framework, people from all walks of life, any background or with any level of education can become part of our culture. As long as they agree with our guidelines and will always strive to adhere to them.
Turbo Culture made practical
What does this mean in practical terms? Well, this only requires us to look at human history and translate it to our current place in time where we are becoming a global society.
I strongly believe Turbo can play a big part in this.
We can set aside our nationalities, our religious or spiritual beliefs and our social background when creativity and a desire to teach, learn and grow together is what we all strive for.
A very neutral approach to this would be for the Turbo culture to diversify itself into practical learning communities. Historically also known as guilds or as our member Jotnheimr puts it: “Creator Hubs”.
Currently we are a community of people with many different ideas on what art is, on what creativity is.
We are a very diverse bunch indeed! Some of us are free spirits that wish to follow as little rules as possible,some would love to see more structure, other’s are indifferent and are waiting in the background till a direction in which to proceed is chosen.
Few lead and many follow, yet we have not grown as much as we would have liked.
In my opinion this is because the diversity in Turbo has not (yet) been truly embraced.
There currently is a difference of opinion on how to proceed with Turbo and as long as we define Turbo as a community, an art project or a memecoin, we will always remain in this limbo.
Hence my suggestion for Turbo to become a culture!
The Turbo Toad Token then becomes our currency, through which we exchange and appreciate our ideas, our projects, our creativity and our labor.
Guilds / Creator Hubs / communities within our culture (the branches in the tree metaphor)
Forming Guilds in Turbo would solve our impasse and can propel us forward.
Our culture is what unifies us, our guilds are where we embrace our diversity.
For example we could have the following sub groupings within the wider Turbo Culture:
Guilds / Creator Hubs
Guilds are mostly groups of people that share, or wish to learn, a certain set of skills that interests them.
We could, for instance, have the following Guilds:
- Graphical Artists (with sub guilds in classical and digital realms)
- Animators
- Photographers
- Poets
- Writers
- Musicians (both acoustic and electronic)
- Designers (visual, gaming, physical etc)
- Developers
- Marketers / promotors
- Curators
- Social media experts
- Crypto specialist
- Sculptors
- Woodturners
- Producers of media
and so on...
The list is virtually endless because artistry or craftmanship can be interpreted in many ways.
Communities
Another subset of our culture are of course the consumers, spectators, fans, etc. They are the ones that do not necessarily create but who align with the Turbo culture and appreciate what is created by the people in all the various guilds and enjoy what is shared by the communities.
Communities could be groups of:
- gamers
- music lovers
- fans
- holders
- traders
- philosophers
- art lovers (collectors)
- crypto aficionados
Etcetera.
When you are part of a certain guild you could be a part of a community within the Turbo culture that has nothing to do with your art or craft, but simply because you enjoy it and vice versa.
Accountability
Some have expressed concerns regarding accountability, becoming a culture would address these concerns quite simply.
- Within our culture, each guild, community or individual becomes responsible for their own actions.
- A guild or community can create their own subset of rules or guidelines that their members or visitors need to adhere to, the leaders of those groups are the ones that are accountable.
- Community members agree to those rules when they join a community, being completely responsible for their own actions within that branch and therefore accountable.
- Visitors only need to follow the rules when they are visiting. If you don't agree with the rules, don't join or visit said branch, simple.
As previously explained, a culture is more like a collection of ideas, knowledge, skills etc. It's not a business, a corporation or a foundation that has to abide to certain laws.
If certain groups or individuals want to establish a legal entity that interacts with the Turbo ecosystem they will be solely responsible for that entity.
The culture as a whole bares no responsibility.
It simply provides a means of connection based on preferences, values, skills and knowledge.
Conclusion
Within all this that has been defined so far, the Turbo token becomes the medium through which we appreciate and express value to all that is shared within our culture, it becomes our currency in the widest form possible.
By becoming a culture, we are free to explore our own individual creativity and/or the creativity of others.
We no longer restrict ourselves within the narrow confines of a community as we will organize our communities within the wider culture, where we can align with likeminded people on a more personal, professional, philosophical or a shared interest level.
We can reach out to other guilds or communities within our culture to exchange our knowledge, our skills and our values and learn from each other. Enjoy each other’s creations and ideas whenever we so desire to.
We can step outside our comfort zone and when we are done, go back to our little corners within the culture to share what we have seen and reflect on what we have learned and even share it within our own branch to help it grow.
Imagine a guild of graphical artists creating motionless art and sharing it in the wider culture, in turn inspiring members of the musical, writer or poetry guilds They can then take these images as inspiration for music and poems or stories. We could then see animators who suddenly discover a wonderful template for an animation, a game or perhaps inspire movie directors.
This flow of creativity could go in many different directions, starting with
an image and ending with a song or starting as a story combined with an nft collection leading to a game.
The combinations and possibilities are endless within this Turbo Culture!
By becoming a culture we can grow in any creative direction, diversify and multiply the amount of people that create, share, enjoy and consume everything that comes out of our culture, tenfold, hundredfold, thousand fold, ad infinitum.
Ever increasing the adoption of the turbo token, spreading out over the globe through a decentralized network of web 3 hubs and become a worldwide phenomenon!
Tree = Culture
Roots = Rhett Mankind's Vision
Stem = The Turbo ecosystem
Branches = Guilds & Communities
Leaves = The People
Live Juice = Turbo Toad Token
The roots are what ground us and which gives our tree its nutrients.
The stem is what allows us to be Unified.
The branches allow us to connect, create, share and learn.
The leaves are us, capturing the light from the sun and feeding it back into to the tree and completing the circle of life that makes up our culture.
Just imagine the endless possibilities we would have at our fingertips, I know I will not settle for anything less!
Would you, now that you have seen this vision?
Lets Go Turbo, For the Culture!