Blockchain for Beginners
You heard about Bitcoin. It's the first crypto currency and still the biggest. The price increases will continue to melt faces in disbelief. In 2025 governments and corporations will start accumulating strategic Bitcoin reserves - mark my words.
But Bitcoin is a bit boring. You can't do anything with it except holding it as a store of value. I am not into blockchains and web3 for Bitcoin. I am excited about everyday use cases.
The cover image above represents what's going to happen in the next few years. Blockchain technology will permeate into every corner of the world, disrupt many industries and bureaucracies, and will make your life easier, just like the original internet did. Blockchains give us web3, the internet of value. Whatever Apple or Amazon host for you, it's not yours, but theirs. Same with your money on your bank account. Ask anyone who experienced a bank run in their lifetime.
I have spend a gigantic chunk of time, headspace and energy understanding this disruptive technology. Like many early adopters, I sometimes was ridiculed for playing with toys that can make you magic internet money. Now in my 5th year of studying this with a beginner's mindset, I start to realise that:
Crypto is not about money, it is about time.
A blockchain is, fundamentally, a clock. It records when transactions take place in a transparent and untamperable way. This is the key to its potential: in a world of declining trust, this blockchain clock can serve as a universal source of reality, for everything from financial transactions to election voting.
Every transaction in blockchains carries within it the answer: who did what, when and why. Time is the ultimate trustless key to our lives, and so, seen as clocks, are blockchains.
Vitalik Buterin and other co-founders created Ethereum to become a World Computer — a universal network consisting of thousands of computers on which anyone can build decentralized applications from anywhere. This is the trailer of the best crypto documentary I know.
Let's go back once more to the cover art above. What you see there is a simplified representation of the world economy with cubes of neurons in the middle; the neurons representing both smart onchain contracts and AI (I'll come back to AI later).
Most of the economy is dependent on middlemen and women. Let's be honest, we don't like too many of them, especially when they get too big to fail:
big banks
big tech
big media
big pharma
big agro-food
big government
Blockchains don't need middlemen
When I provide liquidity in a DeFi (Decentralised Finance) pool, I am the bank - and earn a bit.
When I build a channel (think a sub on Reddit) on Farcaster, I am the social network - and earn a bit.
If I provide my idle computing power to a decentralised hosting service, I am the SaaS - and earn a bit.
Notice the pattern?!
Do you know people who work in any of the above sectors? They'll get disrupted beyond their current imagination. Why? Let's bring in AI.
It's been 2 years since ChatGPT 3/4 created a new capital allocation and computing arms race. Here is the thing: these chat bots give me instant knowledge, but I still have to do any digital task, online action, work on-screen myself afterwards. Why can Claude not book me a flight directly?
A few weeks ago, I witnessed the birth of AI agents who can make autonomous transactions with their own crypto wallets. This wild! I consider the intersection of blockchain x AI as highly consequential because of their emerging symbiotic relationship:
AI creates abundance. Crypto creates scarcity.
I have seen an agent called aether commission digital art permissionlessly and then distribute the $100K!!! earnings between the artists, their owner/maker (lovely chap called Martin) and other stakeholders. Anyone with any ideas can create anything with AI = abundance.
Blockchain will make these digital assets scarce and thus valuable.
More importantly, AI agents are the true crypto natives because this is software speaking to software at the speed of light, literally, thanks to fibre optics.
Most importantly, AI agents can't go to your local bank and open a bank account. But they can create a crypto wallet and ask to get paid in Bitcoin. They already do, I have witnessed this in real time and the proof is on the blockchain. Don't trust me, verify. I'll show you how.
Blockchain for Beginners weekend seminar
Here is my invitation: forget most of what you think you know about blockchains and crypto. If you consider yourself a curious person with a zest for learning, you might like to join my seminar this coming weekend. The first cohort was a success and I am giving you a 25% discount: FAST25
If you like my work on the Psychedelic Map For Change, you might love this course structured via these eight systemic lenses.
I'll leave you with Christian's testimonial. The cohorts are small right now (you are still early:-) and there is plenty of time for bespoke deep dives and intensive Q&A.
BYE GARY, HI...?
#byegary is the meme
$BYEGARY is the meme coin
We have a much bigger opportunity with BYEGARY. You can read about this one week old project in my previous article from yesterday.
Even if you are not directly interested in the evolving movement around BYEGARY, may this article still inspire you to think about similar (and bigger) questions in your communities.
The terror regulator will resign soon.
Not an if, just a when!
I think there will be many such cases coming out of the woodworks:
disgruntled founders
unbanked teams
sub-poena'ed start-ups
artists who never tried because they got intimidated
...
Don't be surprised if there the court cases from 18 States surfaced that General Warren had used Lieutenant Gensler; Maybe he was a pawn in the political attempts to halt crypto, DeFi. Or at least delay it long enough for the powers to be to adjust to the new realities, and to get a late stake on the ground via Blackrocks ETF for their wealthy and riskaverse normie friends. The FOMO on Wall-Street and in Government Halls around the world, will be a spectacle in 2025.
This is the time to share what we think, how we feel, and why we act the way we do. We are the "early" right, so it's down to us to guide the next cohort incl. institutions and regulators with good faith. Let's start by listing, analyse and make sense of the damage done.
Brian Armstrong was quoted in an article saying:
Coinbase CEO wants next SEC chair to apologize for ‘damage’ done
My big idea
Create a nounsspace for the /byegary channel hosted on www.byegary.wtf
Run daily prompts as channel rituals for members to reply to. Examples questions:
How did you feel as being demonised as a space by a powerful mandarin like Gary?
What role did you think Gary really played, and in whose game?
What do we not want to see from the next SEC Chair?
What are our ideas, inputs and insights for the regulation that will happen now?
by propagating the #byegary meme, we can create a positive-sum secondary order effect for us all: we can use all available onchain social legos as a a showcase on how decentra social and consumer crypto actually works. People on X, on FB, Linkedin, anyone ouside of Farcaster can read in real-time (and even write in our channel without needing a warpcast app afaik) how we are creating a flywheel that we co-own, too: rewards on rounds, questions on ponder, bounties added by ai agents like mferGPT talks on tavern, earnings via moxie, channel fan-token, tipping via $DEGEN, NFT minting on Zora. Plus the brilliant games like Whack-a-Gary. All in one screen UX focused on BYEGARY.
GYEGARY narrative and lore becomes trojan horse to onboard people on farcaster, and on base. We can engage Dan, Jesse and eventually Brian; and of course the nouns community.
Imagine how this strategy could get our mission into much bigger media channels. Imagine if we collectively believed in ourselves and used our own farcaster channel as a public message to the incoming regulator, by us, good crypto people, and for all net-new normies to see. We won't be the outlaws and outliers much longer.
They'll listen to us, but what do we want to say?
We can steward this channel towards winning. In addition to biting irony and dark humour via our BYEGARY memes, we can also leave collectively compounded feedback paired with a farewell party, and rounded off by some compassionate wishes, too. Michelle Obama style "we go high" which is also aligned with /higher
What if we (also) wished Gary all the best?
It would show that Ethereans (that's what we all are ultimately, right?) care about human values as people. I admire Gabor Mate's work on Compassionate Inquiry.
Winning stance: compassion for Gary the person and critique for Gary the chair.
We need to be critical, and now the space will become safer to speak up. We are ready to engage with the next Garies. We are ready to build bridges and to reach a hand. Because now we can. Now we are winning. Let's be generous winners who embody clarity, confidence, creativity, compassion and connection to something bigger than us.
BYEGARY can be a 100M meme coin with a mission.
I am still convinced that we should pool 1% of supply for grants. We can form a party.app DAO to vote on proposals for education in financial literacy and self-leadership.
How does this resonate? I am particularly interested in "Yes, and..." and "no because" responses.
Am I the only one who thinks there is a bigger opportunity?
Say bye bye to Gary
The purpose of this article is to activate anyone who wants Gary Gensler to resign. I'll share some ideas on how you can contribute to making his exit period entertaining.
BYEGARY is a satirical meme coin on base created to unite the crypto community around a shared critique of regulatory overreach. Gary Gensler's time as chairman of the S.E.C. felt like a terror regime for many founders, creators, investors and everyday crypto users.
Combining irony with sharp humor, BYEGARY highlights the unintended consequences of regulation by enforcement: meme coin mania is a thing precisely because this chair.
BYEGARY taps into the community's resistance to over-reach of Gary Gensler's regime. The incoming Trump Administration paves the way for progressive legislation for crypto currencies and web3 at large.
Our community aims to spark a larger conversation on shifting power dynamics in society with creative content. Many of us are fed up with being entrapped in 5-9 jobs only to then be protected by the political and economic elite when we want to invest our hard-earned savings for a little more freedom and flexibility. We all know this is a rigged game! The current legislation is in fact complicit in ushering in the Low-Float-High-FDV epidemic where retails gets dumped on by regulated investors aka VCs. We had enough, and we respond in the most crypto-native way: with Gary's very own meme coin propagated by our creative content.
BYEGARY is our farewell gift. Let's send it 
Ok, banger, but how do we get make waves, create a movement, reach the masses? Let's start by starting.
Project Information
BYEGARY was launched by Maretus on Clanker a new token launcher deployed by Proxy. Maretus is fully doxxed and highly respected on Farcaster. He started the Success Channel with one of the most successful Hypersub memberships around. Maretus is also a trail-blazer in the Moxie community and has received the second largest grant in the Moxie Retro1. I trust him.
Then afaik there is also Niko on the core team who has 6K followers on Farcaster who received the third biggest Moxie grant. He is an active member in the channel I am hosting called Farcasterland. I trust him, too.
Of course you shouldn't trust, but verify:
CA: 0x39e6eed85927e0203c2ae9790edaeb431b8e43c1
Dextools shows a healthy 50K liquidity and the plan is to lock it in early December.
Token distribution looks healthy with Maretus holding 3.6% and Niko 2.9% on Thu 14th November 2024. I hold around 1% and there are a few other whales that are in a private group setting up all the plumbing for Dex, TG, CG application etc. The vibes are positive and mature, otherwise I wouldn't pay with my attention.
The best way to dive deeper and share your thoughts, ideas, critique, content and above all, your enthusiasm is to become a member of /byegary on Farcaster, follow the unfolding exit on X or join the TG. You can find all vital information on this temporary landing page.
Memetic Strategy
Like all great meme coins this meme coins is about community, creativity and content. This where we got to so far:
Check out the meme contest on Rounds and contribute your own to win some $BYEGARY
Play Wack-A-Gary the 2nd game from the team and earn $BYEGARY (you can play without owning any but you have to own 500K coins to win the prize. Gary Gamified
Listen to my AI-generated EMO song capturing the essence of the problem and our response (any fees will go into the team treasury for sundry expenses)
ByeGary's Endgame?
Speaking for myself, I want this meme coin to have some positive-sum game outcome when it has run its course. What if we created a DAO with a treasury of 1% of supply to fund grants for creators, educators and trainers to educate people with less financial literacy and you and me?
For my daydream to become serious opportunity we have to send this to a market cap between $5M and $10M. Steep uphill attention battle, but not a mission impossible? This Ponder Survey is just 2 hours old at the time of writing but the channel members think it could very well achieve this. Vote if you read this within the 24 hour period.
Call to action: your contribution?
These are loose ideas based on what I currently see might be valuable contributions:
Meme propagation: raid relevant tweets, or re-cast or re-tweed memes tagging the usual KOLs
Agentic Acceleration: which AI agents can we use to do outreach for us 24/7. Wanna build one?
Grassroots politics: get the attention from crypto advocates of #standwithcrypto
Time Square Flashmob: if we ran 15 second billboard ads on Time Square in NYC every hour for a day, how could we augment this with humans performing a flashmob, which can be filmed and send to news and media outlets?
Anthem: are you, or do you know proper musicians who want to make a proper theme song for the charts? Imagine people on Time Square or elsewhere chanting its refrain...
Games: create more funny games for people to find some release and relieve after years of terror
Podcasts: get Maretus on crypto pods or connect him to podcasters or youtubers who want to promote this super early opportunity to their followers just like it happened today on Thinking Crypto (full episode)
Wormhole: if you are deep into Solana and this satiric project resonates, why not create a wormhole for the existing token?
Endgame: how could we turn this fun project into something with a lasting legacy like funding education? DM me or Maretus
XYZ???
All thoughts and ideas a mine. NFA. DYOR.
Bye by Gary!
51
Building Farcasterland
Look at the image above: the shape acts as the border for the imaginary country called Farcasterland. Like borders of nation-states, the black-line acts as boundary to the seemingly impossible shapes and colours inside the silhouette. Just like the artwork feels magical (at least for me, more on that at the end) I often catch myself imagining Farcaster as a utopian network state where fully present people play infinite games. Am I the only one who has this fantasy?
if Farcaster became a network state, I'd want to be a citizen on day one.
I have met some incredible farcastoors IRL, engaged with 100s on warpcast, and also dived into 1:1 video calls with people who seem mission-aligned.
Fact is, I don't have such a high density of high quality human connections IRL where I live.
Speaking of human connections, an early instantiation of farcasterland might be just channel members, the famous Dunbar number. Let's check if you are aligned with my long-term mission:
I want to co-create and co-live in a regenerative community.
Let me explain:
Many years ago, I dove into the world of systemic thinking and self-organisation (holacracy, sociocracy) where I formed my own view on complex models like Spiral Dynamics and Integral Theory. Then a few years later, I trained as a psychedelic coach supporting people to prepare and integrate psychedelic journeys. I learned a ton about Internal-Family-Systems (IFS), Trauma, Inter-Generational Trauma, holotropic breathwork, bio-hacking, neo-colonialism, and Ancient Wisdom traditions. Plus, I learned directly from various visionary plant medicines in form of mystic experiences, ego-deaths and cosmic union. However, the most profound and lasting impact of my personal and professional growth path is my global community.
I am grateful to have met some of the most beautiful (meaning kind AND holistic thinking AND intentionally acting) people on earth; they embody what they teach, propagate or 'sell'. Many of my friends operate at the intersection of inner work, self-mastery, creativity, entrepreneurship, systemic change and planetary regeneration. I have directly learned from luminaries like Daniel Schmachtenberger, John Vervaeke, Christiane Seuhs-Schoellenberger, Nora Bateson and Alexander Beiner.
In parallel, I have dived into many blockchain-crypto-web3 rabbit holes over the last four years. What struck me most is not that some people are unabashedly here for the casino only, and nothing but the casino. No, it's people who are often well regarded founders, VCs, authors etc. who sincerely, genuinely and profoundly believe that technology will just solve our problems.
Techno-optimism is insufficiently holistic to be treated as THE solution for the meta-crisis.
I was a die-hard atheist, rationalist and e/acc proponent when I was younger. The experiences over the last 10 years have influenced me to become more of a d/acc advocate (don't agree with some overly defensive currents) so perhaps I rather subscribe to an n/acc - natural acceleration approach: the complexity on Gaia is naturally growing according to the (known) laws of thermodynamics.
Diversity of existence is naturally accelerating.
Sure we have species loss of epic proportions, but we also have, epigenetically-speaking, a Cambrian explosion of diversity: every single human is 1000x more different and diverse compared to other humans than any other animal is to a fellow of the same species. Maybe an unintended consequence of identity politics is turning 8 billion people into the sample size of n = 1.
How? Humans might look reasonably similar, but the world we construct in our minds, scaled to 8 billion, creates almost infinite constellations of energy - and the universe is nothing but a constant shape-shifting of matter from one energetic state to another. And our beautiful minds, they create all these memes...which is why Richard Dawkins coined the term meme in 1976 in The Selfish Gene.
No matter how many scientific and academic accolades he has won...
I wouldn't want to have Dawkins as a neighbour in my Farcasterland...
because he seems incapable of admitting he is wrong, accepting other views with his heart and being open to the world of the esoteric...which makes me wonder what story he keeps telling himself to feel ok inside. Sorry Rich, but Atheism is just another belief system and scientific 'knowledge' lasts as long as its invalidated by new theorems from the next generations.
Ok, but who would I want to have as neighbour in a regenerative community located ideally in a New Climate Oasis?
You guessed it: my inner circles on Farcaster plus my closest friends and peers from the tribes mentioned above. Ideally a human that embodies these implied systemic choices:
There is, of course, no perfect Farcasterlander - my forebears tried that under Hitler and we all know how it ended!
To be crystal clear: these virtues say everything and nothing about you or me as a person. Irrespective of how we look, live, love, work or parent, wether we are introvert or extrovert, no matter of what we pay attention to - we can choose these virtues (or not). Why these? Well, afaik they are all life-affirming practices:
if we choose them = WAGMI
if we don't choose = NGMI
Life wants to life. Memes want to propagate.
Right now, network states are mainly memes, Balaji's big vision. It seems like they are an idea whose time has come - and nothing can stop this, just like no power can stop hyper-structures like Bitcoin or Ethereum anymore. Praxis got $500,000,000 in funding and has 14K early citizens. Big fish. The Network School has opened its first cohort in Malaysia. It's happening.
On the other hand, Próspera feels like too much like neo-colonialism for me to. Just next door in Costa Rica (as well as Europe) I know of at least a dozen local experiments, initiatives, structures, festivals and gatherings for Co-living that aim for healing and regenerative transitions.
Vitalik got a lot right with ZuZalu but it was transient by design. Co-here is making small strides but I'd rather buy a share in a village in the UK or on Crete. Why always exotic locations? Why not where we already live? I don't know but I notice this: despite the swathes of digital nomads and the global co-working movement, when it comes to co-living we are nowhere near there yet:
Co-living is lagging Co-working as a concept bc it's more complex. Nice design space then.
Farcasterland = our design space
Praxis Nation or another emerging network state projects with ambition are an audacious cast into our future. They will take time to realise. Rome wasn't build in a day. Even if today's infra and tools can be build 1000x faster than in ancient Rome, changing and uniting our worldviews, our beliefs and our values arguably takes longer than current roadmaps and runways would envision. Let's start by building the social substrate in this channel first: We are the people we have been waiting for. It's time for our shot.
Ok, banger. Now what?
Change happens here-now and the only way to start is by starting...let's start in our little sandbox in this cozy corner of the internet. Where else would we dream-up a new way of co-living by co-creating small onchain experiments in dialogue, coordination, governance, impact and becoming?
Why becoming? You cannot 'know' the emerging system by what John Vervaeke calls Propositional Knowing alone.
You need to also intentionally experience the shift from old to new system.
You need to participate in the moment-by-moment transitions because otherwise you won't co-create its next iteration. As a result you will fall back to to a level that is not farcasterland-aligned:
victim: life happens to me
POV: a good citizen of Farcasterland might be a blend of Creator and Co-creator with a dash of Becoming.
Now what?
Right, hghgmm, here is a hint of something some people call roadmap;
become a fully present member of Farcasterland channel
share why you are there, what piques your interest
co-create our vision, mission and values in fast iterations
participate by casting valuable observations and insights
engage in open-outcome-oriented dialogue
educate the interested in systems thinking and self-leadership
invite other mission-aligned people
onboard people you'd want as neighbours in Farcasterland
someone build a website for www.farcasterland.xyz
someone wants to be a channel co-owner or mod
experiment with fc-native tools, composer actions, clients in service of fulfilling the purpose of the channel
explore partnerships and collaborations with adjacent channels and artists
helping newcomers understand Farcaster culture and the big "why we are here"
Source and Decentralisation
These tasks and deeds are an invitation for all of us and especially myself. I am the source of Farcasterland: I need this. I am scratching my own itch. Without me this channel wouldn't even exist. The source as defined by Peter Koenig is like the unmoved mover in Aristotle's texts, the one that starts an initiative.
I am the source and can't wait to let go of control. Lmao:-)
There is a part in me that wants to be naive and think the world revolves around me. Then there is another part that knows that I can live life to the fullest if am open to be wrong, willing to learn from others, prepared to change my tracks, detached to begin again, fearless to trust the process and humble to let go. This part is called antaur btw;-)
That's what I aim for, so that's what you can expect. You are invited to tell me if I am not practicing these.
What I expect from you is to be fully present and to take full responsibility for your experience if you join the Farcasterland channel.
Tell me what channel you're in and I tell you who you are!
Idk if this is for you but if you like being in some of these you might like Farcasterland, too.
higher higher-fm optimists coop vandelay july network-states foresight success believein cocreated valuesdao innerwork spirituality nervous therapy psychedelics now empathy regen gratitude
The OG artwork that inspired Farcasterland silhouette
What you see below is the original artwork: a photography, not photoshopped, just masked to hide the context of the scene.
To fund some early small scale operations for this experimental channel, I will make a tiny collection of one of one NFTs. I could make a single one that actually reveals the full image. But then you know and cannot stay in the unknowing which can be a delightful space. BTW: no one has ever correctly guess what the actual picture is about, but hundreds have shared their vivid interpretation.
On a morning walk in May 2024, the source energy came through me and told me that this image shall be the silhouette for Farcasterland. I got the channel name the second I got home. It took me six months to figure out what this channel wants to be. What do you want it to be?
First Farcasterland Frame
If your attention kept you this long, thank you and congratulations. Here is a little alpha for you: I will drop a fun frame on warpcast this week related to Farcaster and network states. It will pull your PFP and assign an imaginary citizen number to your mint. I make no promise but a low # number might be of some value further down the road...
Other antaur articles you mind find enjoy reading:
Interesting people, interesting content
Ethereum is down. Vitalik is calling out L2s for not decentralizing fast enough. Crypto is de-coupling from other risky assets during Rektember. And then, to add insult injury, this.
Tough times create strong women and men...
Before I dissect Dan's reaction and the networks's responses to that, I want to respond to Alemac's question:
What are we doing wrong?
NOTHING: nature is about growth and growth does not always happens in lockstep; different pace, different direction etc. If you take a systemic view of life, then you can accept that Farcaster, too, has seasons with different growth vectors.
Now, the cast below is what got one of the most interesting debate going on FC since I joined 9 months ago.
Read the replies of this cast as they cover many important aspects of our tough situation. I hope this article will be a contribution to our growing stack of interesting content.
Zooming out: what are we anyway?
This is the tagline on farcaster dot xyz on mobile (no mentioning of this on my web browser, which doesn't help attract interesting people imho - and tbh I have already lost a few while trying)
If Farcaster wants to be a social network, then it's about interesting people first. Why? Because there is obviously more to social networking than creating content. If you want interesting content first, then FC should label itself social media platform. Hence, the title of this blog article is intentionally in this order, and not the other way round:
Interesting people, Interesting content
I admit that this is a paradox: of course we want to see interesting content in our feeds and channels. When I joined I was attracted by interesting content from the likes of Binji, Jesse, Linda, Christin, Cooper and ted, and over time I made up my mind wether they are interesting people worth more of my attention. However, the following juxtaposition leads to dramatically different outcomes as the first two decades of social media have painfully proven.
Interesting people create interesting content from their authentic self w/o worrying too much about how it is perceived. Optimising for them can create an infinite game.
Uninteresting people create interesting content from their idealised self to appear more interesting than they are, or worse, to game the system. Optimising for them typically leads to Moloch, the race to the bottom.
The first is sustainable, the second is not. The first is crucial if Farcaster wants to thrive long-term, the second will lead to an accelerating burn rate of Merkle until they run out of money and make poorer and poorer choices reach. To me this cross-road is the existential question for Farcaster, especially when 99% of profiles on any network are bots creating deep fakes.
The first also is based on a create-AND-earn model, the second is based on a create-TO-earn model. The latter was a short-lived phenomenon in the last cycle in form of Axie Infinity et al.
Consumers, Creators, Engagoors & Farmers
This week, Snicker Doodles published their illuminating State of Farcaster 2024 report. Among the many intriguing data points, I'd like to pull this one out:
https://snickerdoodle.com/reports/farcaster-2024
Idk but the overall ratio between these roles we play in the game seems ok - wdyt?
Interestingly, one big difference between (non) and power badge holders is the ratio of engaging over creating. As a holder, I must admit that I am first here to (co-)create, then to engage, then to consume, and last to farm (I never quite seem to fit into any scene:-) Hence, I got marginally triggered by ted's cast on the ratio between quote-casting and replying as a function of the size of your ego. Marginally, bc I am aware of my ego and then again this dichotomy lacks nuance, which the many replies pointed out.
BTW: the pinnacle of interesting content this week was the dune dashboard by Ryan J. Shaw in response to her cast. Fucking genius and of course a bit of a joke. This is what they just don't make in other social networks afaik!
Ok, that was a little tangent, which you may or may not perceive as interesting content. I personally like tangents as they can reveal how things are connected.
Farmoors
Anyway, back to the graphic above, and let's dive into farming, the quintessential x-to-earn model in crypto: many have casted about the influx of next gen bots on Farcaster that, whilst replying with empathic whole sentences that make sense to you and might boost some vanity metrics, are nevertheless bots. Many are assumedly spawned in large-scale farms based in low-cost countries where this is a lucrative enough business model. Apt for people whose parents have most likely been farmers IRL. Good for them, bad for the whole. Why?
Whether it's farming for token airdrops, degen tips or moxie rewards - the interesting people I'd love to onboard to FC have a hyper-sensitive bullshit detector. They ask me what makes our cozy corner any different, and thus worth their attention.
For the first nine months here on FC I told them how smart, nice, and cool the people I surround myself with, and learn from are. I experience FC as the biggest, open and fluid incubator of ideas and accelerator of onchain experiments on Earth. People are happy for me, bc they can see the fire in my eyes and they know that I am always radically honest, so they assume that Dan, Jesse, Binji, Cooper, ChrisCoCreates, Pentacle, Know, Maretus and many others are: smart, kind and cool.
Channels
The thing is, the most interesting people in my IRL (and Linkedin) network are not that interested in building businesses onchain - yet. They are interested in psychedelics, regeneration, social justice, better leadership, better organisations, personal growth and inner healing. They will be interested in sophisticated tooling for channels - mark my words. Why the confidence? I am not a crypto-native myself. I am a recovering Gen X with a background in organisation design, coaching and facilitating group processes; I see channels as breeding grounds for new forms of collaboration that can blend our professional and personal interests, and thus, create new organisational life forms that were indescribably to our forbears.
Uninteresting Content Space
Last week the interesting person humpty.eth casted interesting content in form of this ponder poll:
Interestingly, the response desktop grows from 25% to 35%-ish for OGs , popular casters and power badge holders. Being a power badge holder myself, I do most of my content creation and engagement on desktop/laptop whilst consuming mostly on mobile. I also spend most of my consuming time in channels, not on my general WC feed. Hypothesis:
Interesting content is often created on desktop and aimed for consumption in channels.
Both were not a priority in the past afaik. Now? I am not expecting complete revamp, but here is a little suggestion dear WC team. Look at the right side of my screen. I never use it except the thin search bar. It's a waste of space of expensive onscreen real estate.
My wish: be able to configure this space on the right with apps, composer actions, and analytics - anything that helps me to produce more interesting content. Please scrap the protocol client language, it is incomprehensible for the next cohort. We care about the words like user interface, and I want to also access ponder, buoy, events and tavern on the WC screen plus the latest my moxie earnings and TVL of all fan-tokens I hold that were launched by interesting people on Farcaster, many (if not all?) power badge holders. Let's circle back to that pbh's.
pb - or no pb: that is the question
Much has been said about the pros and cons of hiding them on WC. I'd like to add two cents:
Look back at the graphic way above: 5x more non power badge holders are on FC primarily for farming - it is crystal clear that you want more people who behave like power badge users; anything else is intellectual dishonesty by anyone!
Quality badges are important bc we don't know what great looks like until we see it. I have studied many badge holders and deducted my own path based on how I want to show up authentically - and I got the badge around the time when FC switched from needing to have 400 followers to power badges. I often hear that nowadays it has become a lot harder to reach this status. My question is: why does it have to be black and white? What if there was more nuance?
Behavioural Science
For most interesting people it is utterly demotivating to cast their interesting content into the void, which is what my partner ruthveda.eth repeatedly reports after she lost her briefly-held Power Badge (she doesn't cast every day and sometimes not even for a week e.g. when on retreats).
I recommend more nuance in the form of achieving PB Status on a scale from 1-100%
Study Gitcoin Passport which does that incentivising really well imo.
Imagine how many Ruth's would feel more motivated and and supported in becoming a Power badge Holder (invisible to WC, still relevant for FC and many apps, frames and clients on top of FC) if they knew how far they are into that road and when they'll be there...
Unless you already have one on the team, maybe FC could hire a dedicated behavioural psychologist or anthropologist?
I know that Dan wants to know who will join Farcaster bc of new interesting people like Naomi aka afrochicks, pichi or proxystudio - and why. Which brings me back to the OG reference in Brent's cast at the top of this article:
Many of those accounts became enshrined here as tastemakers.
That's true and normal. Just like in an organisation (or network) there are old-timers vs. new-timers. It seems (although some disagree) that the algo still favours newcomers and Moxie airdrop is a big testament to the unleveled playing field. My key question to anyone, whether OG or newbie, is this:
Is your content attracting net new interesting people?
I am embarking on this daunting journey myself soon as I will be onboarding people via my Blockchain for Beginners weekend seminar.
If I get them to sign-up on FC it's because they have rated my course as interesting content and hopefully consider me an interesting person worth following into Farcacsterland.
I will surely recommend them a staple of interesting people and then also tailor that list to each individual based on their specific wants for interesting content.
Interesting people, first.
I am a bridge builder first, and content creator second.
Thanks for your attention. If you have lasted this long, I consider you an interesting person that I would love to have a conversation with. Over to you...maybe start with some comments? What resonates? What am I getting wrong or miss?
Welcome to Farcasterland
Dear reader,
Thanks for your attention. Today, I am renaming this blog.
from: Psychedelic Map For Change to: Farcasterland
Sunsetting: Psychedelic Map For Change
Sunrising: Farcasterland
5 reasons why
Most of my articles so far were about topics related to Farcaster
Farcasterland is one of the Channels I host so this feels more aligned
I still think we need a map for navigating our way from web2 to web3...
But, the old title is not focused enough and the word psychedelic is a stretch
I love the image above and you'll learn more about this in Q4...
Next Step
Inline and on topic with the new title, you can xpect the next article to cover and comment on this hot Farcaster topic:
PMFC: Psychedelic Map For Change #3
Welcome to the edition #3 of this newsletter. The mycelium network in my life has produced some astounding fruiting bodies both in IRL and online onchain. More on the latter further down incl. context for my new online course: Blockchain for Beginners.
Shroom Season
Ok, the most exquisitely delicious Chanterelles are not psychedelic, but picking, washing and cooking them is like a psychedelic experience for me. Ping me for some pro tips (they grow in our forest, so I had plenty of small batches to experiment with). The dream is to live where liberty caps also grow within walking distance...
Medicine report: the god bomb
After an 8 months hiatus from psychedelic medicine I decided to go much deeper on the so-called God Bomb: cannabis-oil x ketamine. (I had 4-5 journeys with increasing dosages over the course of a year before). WOWOW. Imagine the dissociative out-of-body experience of ketamine combined with the highly somatic in-the-body experience of THC oil. The result feels like some kind of emergence; even though I understand the properties of both compounds, I couldn't imagine what both together created. I had a few k-hole experiences before, but this was something else entirely.
Did I feel like God? Yes. Can I put it into words? No.
This visualisation is reasonably close to how it all felt. I had no such visuals though.
Setting: early evening, fasting after lunch, THC 2 hours before the ketamine, darkness, silence, no music, no movement at all. The material that surfaced was astounding...I won't go deeper here, so if you are interested in my report, dosage, safety precautions and integration ideas, let's Zoom. It goes without saying: this is for experienced psychonauts only and don't do this ever ALONE!
What I have been up to re Psychedelics & PMFC
As you know, most of your success comes from taking a long-shot. Two years ago I gave candid and compassionate feedback to Joost Breeksema one of the Executive Directors of the Open Foundation. Their flagship conference, ICPR (Interdisciplinary Conference of Psychedelic Research) draws a diverse and awesome crowd every two years in Haarlem, NL. It is a great conference, as far as this centralised event formats go. Yet I left the premises in 2022 feeling that we (the psychedelic professional space) can do better - and that a decentralised unconference part would mirror mycelium network a lot more. Biomimicry. I followed-up several times, and they finally said yes - yes to my audacious idea to facilitate an Open Space afternoon on day one, focussed on business people and policy makers. Ping me for free tips if you want to run such format in your organisation or at an event.
It was a full-blown success and I am always amazed by the outcomes people create when they are given liberating structures. The photo above is me on main stage warming up the space with some energisers.
The Psychedelic Map For Change in 2024
- Third Wave Course
After a few small IRL workshops at Regens Unite last year, Paul Austin invited me to deliver a 3-part live online seminar for Third Wave. I was real chuffed that some people found my 90 mins teaching in module 1 inspiring (Passcode: 8ssdtv5?). In module 2 Ruth Veda guided participants to anchor their conscious connected breathing onto the Realms of Reality, one of core components of the map. Module 3 was about integration using the stellar 17 journalling questions from the Presencing Institute, founded by Theory-U researcher at M.I.T. and fellow German emigrant Otto Scharmer.
- Six-Part Article
After getting several nudges this year to write a book about the map, I decided to start with a series of articles. Before you click on the links below, bit of context: one of the intentions to write these was to test a potential re-branding:
from: Psychedelic Map For Change to: Map for a Higher Civilisation
Did you notice the word crypto above in Part 1 ? I am deep into this space, especially into higher. ↑ is a headless brand which is only possible via blockchain-based coordination; owned by no corporation, but everyone who wants to contribute. This emergence of organisational life form is highly aligned with my work on the PMFC.
Wait, where is Part 6?
I am not ready to write this yet...if you actually read the first five parts you'll get a few hints about the reason (reading time in total 23 Min).
Spoken NFT
If you only have 85 seconds, here is a vocal outburst of mine in a local forest with birds in the mix. You can also mint this as an NFT for 2 dollars, just to show some appreciation.
Migrating onchain
As Ally Beiner writes in his brilliant book The Bigger Picture, Psychedelics like magic mushrooms or DMT are great tools to prepare you us what's coming: parts of our lives will move into the metaverse with AI clones of yourself and blockchain-based cameras and robots to notarise reality (so that you know whether a photo is real aka issued by the owner/author or a deep fake). The latter is perhaps the most audacious project in the crypto space I have come across to-date.
I bake much smaller bread and have started with small experiments onchain, and I have also largely left web 2 social media and spend most of my time on farcaster instead. The only Boomer Platform I still use is Linkedin and I have just shared my reasons for my migrating much of my on-screen life onchain there.
PMFC and Crypto?
100% - but that's for another newsletter
My new course: Blockchain for Beginners
On a related note, I was pulled to create this weekend course next. One of my VP-level clients asked me to deliver a workshop in-house. It was such a surprise success that I felt compelled to open it to the public - including you, dear reader. If you click this link you get a 10% discount based on the price of $150.
Co-evolving towards a Higher Civilization (Part 5)
How have you been complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want?
This is one of the most powerful questions in my coaching practice.
Surely you don't want a world in which C-Corp companies maximise profits at the expense of everything else, including your health.
Do you really believe the best we can come up with is an economic system that is based on a zero-sum game of cut-throat competition? Race to the bottom? Do you really want teenagers or social media influencers feeling they must use Snapchat filters that make them look ‘better’ because everyone else does it, and otherwise they would fade into oblivion?
This is Moloch, the god of bad incentives. Listen to giga-brain Liv Boeree on Moloch & The Beauty Wars for the bad and the ugly if interested.
I love beauty, I am a highly aesthetic person, which is one key reason why I am drawn to ↑ higher. But beauty is way more than that. Philosopher Charles Eisenstein asks what is the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible? What do you actually believe in? Is it this?
I believe in this:
More altruism, less selfishness
More collaboration, less competition
More regeneration, less extraction
This is what aiming higher, together is about.
In Part 3 we explored the Realms of Reality: self, relationships, organizations, humanity, earth and cosmos. As part of my research I discovered something surprising; there seem to be trade-offs between these six realms, like force fields pulling into different directions. They are not necessarily either-or polarities, but rather competing commitments, choices that come with stark consequences the more you move to the end of one spectrum.
Coincidentally, these trade-offs are stacked vertically in my visualisation. There was that magical moment back in March 2024 when I realized how higher-aligned my work might be; the choices below indicate that the top one aims higher e.g. collaboration is ↑ than competition.
This part of the map is still work in progress, schematic, and simplified, but not simpler (Einstein). It resonates with my construction of reality and has been tested with around 100 people in IRL and URL workshops over the last four years. I am very keen to get your feedback, too, especially if you are on Farcaster. Let's dive into these competing commitments one by one.
Altruism vs. Selfishness
This conundrum shows that the trade-offs are not either-or, but both-and. Babies are naturally selfish for survival. On the Titanic, most people instinctively put themselves first — life wants to live.
However, as you age, you often need to prioritise others' needs to maintain relationships, whether in personal life or at work. The key question is: are you aware of your choices? I score low on altruism in psychometric tests, but I've learned that giving first and taking later fosters meaningful relationships and feels rewarding. Being altruistic feels ↑ than being selfish.
Adaptation vs. Preservation
"If ever I to the moment shall say: Beautiful moment, do not pass away!" — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
We want to hold onto beautiful moments, especially shared ones like team off-sites and weddings, even though they soon become memories. Farewells and last rounds at the bar are poignant examples.
Groups resist change because trust takes time to build, and altering the group dynamic disrupts equilibrium. The loss of a team member at work feels significant, as it potentially weakens the group. We fear the unknown more than the known, even if the new member might be better.
Romantic relationships often cling to the familiar, even when toxic. I stayed in a co-dependent marriage for 13 years, despite knowing it was wrong.
Organizations, however, prioritise adaptation over preservation to thrive in changing markets. The COVID-19 supply chain disruptions highlighted this need. In business, survival depends on the ability to adapt quickly.
As an Organisation Development expert, I am so bullish on new org life forms like DAOs, Headless Brands, and Onchain Financialised Networks because they will likely have an edge over traditional org structures.
Since change is the Single Truth (as established in Part 3) I think that over-indexing on adaptation is going ↑
Collaboration vs. Competition
Most companies engage in a PVP (Player versus Player) game, racing to the bottom in labor laws or environmental practices. These are finite games with the sole goal of winning.
Given that humans became apex predators through coordination and collaboration, it's bizarre we compete relentlessly with each other. Moloch! Crypto is a perfect example: instead of replacing outdated institutions, many still play the "my-chain-is-better-than-yours" game.
This mindset often stems from a worldview not yet at the pluralistic stage of development — only 25% of people have reached this stage, according to Ken Wilber. Up to 75% can't see that other perspectives might also be valid. US politics, anyone? Developmental stages aren't about IQ.
What gives me hope is that most people in my Farcaster feed seem to be interested in or even practicing collaboration, aiming to create more infinite games. That said, healthy competition is beneficial in sports and business as it pushes you to aim ↑
Regeneration vs. Extraction
The fact that you can read this on your digital screen is because we are an extractive species. Period. That's what sometimes tests my empathy with extreme eco-warrior lefties.
At the same time, we have to regenerate our soils, water, air, bees, pretty much everything in our biosphere to WAGMI. And with that I mean ALL - all species, because without for example the bees most food baskets will collapse pretty quickly. Planet Earth is more or less a self-contained system and once we hit certain tipping points it's game over, at least for us humans. Some creature will surely survive, unless we blow the entire sphere up somehow.
Contrary to popular belief, there is absolutely no evidence that we can create a thriving society on Mars within the next 100+ years, so the 1000x more promising business case is to regenerate nature including ourselves.
I have a lot to say about regeneration and the fallacies of carbon markets, greenwashing and Colonialism 2.0 (yes, you EV driver) but I want to stay focused here. I encourage you to study ReFi OG' like Gregory Landua and the Regen Network, which does regeneration right bc from the ground up. Also, I love my friends at Regens Unite, thanks for green-pilling me.
Since I have been green-pilled, I moved into a forest, have reduced driving a car, consume less, eat local organic food (omnivore, incl. deer/squirrels shot 100 m from our house). As much as I am a Degen, the Regen in me is aiming for a ↑ level of consciousness all the time.
Infinity vs. Boundary
This trade-off is less salient for most people. I started to think about this after certain psychedelic experiences. We experience time linearly - Chronos - where the day has 24 hours and the week 168, and you can't change that. Einstein called it Space Time. Yet the Ancient Greeks also had another concept of time that is infinite - Kairos - the right or critical moment. Joe Dispenza calls it Time-Space and it has indeed no cause-and-effect a la Newtonian Physics but all possible outcomes everywhere and at once.
Why does this matter? If your cosmology is defined by boundaries then you will likely continue to play zero-sum games, which means you will likely remain more selfish than altruistic.
Embracing an infinite universe opens up your mind (and heart) to infinite possibilities. It's a true game changer because you don't have to play by the rules of gravity or mundane 9to5 work life. This worldview (which is a belief) helped me to look forward to my death, seriously. What is going to compost the essence of my stint on this lil rock hurtling through space?
Knowing vs. Not-Knowing
We know a lot about the universe, but that only applies to about 5% of what we think there is. We only only know that dark matter and dark energy must exist, but we can't see it let alone fathom what it's purpose is.
Ultimately, modern physics tell us hardly anything about the nature of the cosmos. That reminds me of consciousness: we know that it exists, but we don't know what exactly it is, and more importantly, how it could possibly emerge from just atoms.
My laymen sense of the world wouldn't be surprised if consciousness IS dark matter for example. At the end of the day no one knows, and we are probably playing on a pretty low level of the Cosmic Game with a fuck ton of potential to go ↑
Wen higher civilization?
It does indeed start with your mindset, and the thoughts it utters moment by moment:
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” ― Lao Tzu
Hence, the purpose of life simply is to stay alive, and it seems that life likes to create ever higher degrees of complexity more; I am both the sum of the 80 billion bacteria in my gut and the host of my brain, the most complex structure known in the known universe.
Ethereum, the emerging World Computer, might create many orders of magnitude more complexity once we fix the brain-computer interface and let AI connect the dots.
Tangent: What's interesting about Ethereum is not it's degree of decentralisation, but it's roots in Pluralism. Imho Ethereum as a whole (incl. all L2s etc.) operates on a higher level of consciousness than the Bitcoin does (or Solana/Alt-L1s). I say this identifying as both a Bitcoiner AND Etherean.
Start by starting
Ok, so how can we all go ↑ higher today? I invite you to have a second look at the illustration above. How can you turn the dials towards the higher realm, assuming that this on balance would improve the lives in your community?
My stance is that everyone shall do this to their own ability, circumstance, information at hand. No berating others, no unhealthy comparison, just become a better version of yourself by the end of today. Compound your choices by making them more conscious. Yes, the more aware you are of your choices and their (unintended) consequences, the higher you can go.
What condition do you say again you don't like? How might you be complicit in creating them?
Don't be a victim blaming politicians of bankers for the world we live in. Believe in something. Do something. Build something. Co-create magic with your chosen collaborators and notice how that naturally regenerates your soul.
This is the 5th of six planned articles. Thanks for reading thus far. Part 1-5 are based on my ongoing research and practice based on the Psychedelic Map For Change (very old site, notice the slight embarrassment)
Part 1: Crypto needs to aim for a higher consciousness
Part 2: Level up in the Game of Life
Part 3: Realizing the Realms of Reality
Part 4: Commit to the Cycle of Change
Part 6 – Idea for a higher-aligned and very different Farcaster Client
I hope this will prompt comments, critique, ideas and above all: higher ↑vibrations.
antaur.eth
Co-evolving towards a Higher ↑ Civilization (Part 4)
Why are you reading this?
I don't know, but you must have an intention - and intention is directed attention.
And what might you be doing afterwards as a result of paying attention to my writing?
For sure you will do something if only infinitesimally different. In other words, you will, intentionally or not, integrate having read this article into your emerging future.
Study Change Cycles. I find this one very useful:
Intention
Time passes by anyways. How many days have you unintentionally scrolled your social media feed? (unless mindless distraction was the intention). For me, intention has a higher priority than attention: I can proactively guide my attention - rather than experiencing life as happening to me which we explored in Part 2.
My intention for each day is to not get fearful or angry (Complex PTSD), to have as little back pain as possible (long-term recovery process) and to be of service to something greater than myself: my family, my clients, systemic change, the fantastic farcaster flywheel etc. So how do I not get stuck in my rut, or regress to my younger parts that are not capable to be of service?
Intervention
I define an intervention as an intentional act to get out of my rut, to disrupt the patterns of my auto-pilot. My structured morning routine is a good example for this. Instead of just getting up and start working, or eating, or reacting to the incoming demands of life (or checking my Warpcast feed) I structure the first few hours in a particular way: breathwork, meditation, and on most days also walk in the forest and cold shower in the garden. Why?
Integration
Because I am then much more likely to access flow states, more capable to solve problems and stay positive and resilient no matter what the day has in store for me - incl. brutal red candleson the charts. What others might call their day job between 9to5 is simply my integration of a carefully curated sequence of self-care practices before 10am into my daily proceedings of life incl. work after 10am.
Chance Cycles
Intention-Intervention-Integration is just one variation of a theme. You can see change cycles almost everywhere. If you have a business background you might be familiar with these:
Build - Measure - Learn (lean start-up)
Plan - Do - Review (Lean Mgt)
Observe - Intervene - Interpret (Systemic Consulting)
Politics has cycles, too. 2024 is the year with the most national elections in a century or so, and it basically follows this cycle:
Campaign (postulating your intentions for being in office)
Election (voters making an intervention in distribution of power)
Office Term (integrating your intention - and adapting to emerging realities
I bring in politics with a specific intention: we all know that most if not all politicians are not honest with their intentions. (Quick tangent: the system unfortunately doesn't hold them accountable enough to deliver on their promises. There are hardly any KPIs or OKRs (Objectives, Key Results) that anyone in charge of a country is held accountable against at mid-term review. All they need to do is convince enough people on the next campaign trail to take more pain away than their rivals. This is one reason why our political institutions are not fit for purpose imho).
Back to you and me: how can I be sure that my intentions are pure, honest, and in service of others? Well, this is inextricably linked with my level of consciousness explored in Part 1:
If I am stuck in the egoic state coloured Red where it is all about me, my needs and my advantage, then my intention will direct my attention towards extracting from others. If I am on the path towards the integral state called and coloured Teal, then my intention will most likely be taking into consideration the needs of others, and not just you, but all animals, plants, all life form on our planet, Gaia. What got me out of the egoic state?
Psychedelics and Change Cycles
I have ten years of experience in using psychedelics with a specific intention: to heal, grow, transform and seeing the bigger picture. A ceremony is usually a biggish intervention in the flow of my life as it can involve weeks of preparation, days of dieting, stopping any work, and if in a group, building the social container when on the land where the ceremony takes place.
You may have heard of the term set & setting. You can take MDMA on a festival to dance your face (and arse) off and descent into a love puddle with fellow ravers...or you can lie down, blindfolded, in silence, and receive agreed prompts by your therapist or sitter to evoke traumatic childhood memories with the intention to process them here-and-now by releasing them somatically where they are stuck in the body. Same medicine, totally different experiences and outcomes.
Integrating Psychedelic Experiences
The latter (outcomes) is particularly influenced by the degree and duration of your integration. The same trip can be life changing or just that, a nice trip. It's really hard to convert altered states into altered traits without meaningful and disciplined integration. Why?
Psychedelics are one of the best technologies known today that get your mind out of its rut. It sends the Default Mode Network out for lunch and allows other parts of the brain to communicate with one another, that this DMN normally prevents. This part of the brain loves the auto-pilot, which basically is your genetic and cultural programming, the imprint. The DMN is also largely where your sense of self lives, hence we speak of the ego-death during psychedelic experiences.
Integration practices
I integrate all the time, psychedelic experiences and any remarkable intervention that I made in my life. The intention of these integration practices is simple and self-perpetuating: to grow every single day so that I will have become the best possible self when I die, whenever that is (had a near death experience in 2013).
The following might sound tedious to some, yet it compounds over long time frames, just like most crypto bags would...;-)
Daily: I reflect on what has gone well and what I found challenging in the bath before bed
Weekly: I write down my key learnings (plus key results) in my /weeklyreview (check my FC channel)
Monthly-ish: I journal a bit longer prompted by some staple coaching questions (DM me if interested)
Quarterly-ish: I check in with my OKRs very broadly and loosely
Annually: I spend up to a week filling in this amazing booklet over Xmas
Biennially-ish: I update my comprehensive time cone on a Miro-board that comprises my 5-10 year vision of the future and the life I want to live incl. the structures I can put in place for that to manifest. I don't share this publicly but if you are really interested let's have a short Zoom
The point in all of this is to have maximum possible agency over my life by committing to the practice of riding the flow of life in a meaningful and impactful way. Change is the Single Truth in the universe as we explored in part 3.
But how does change actually work, in practice, IRL?
After studying change and transformation both personally and professionally for 30 years, one lens and one often overlooked book from the 1980s stands out from the crowd:
The Path of Least Resistance
In a nutshell, humans are hardwired to resist pain, discomfort and change, because the latter is potentially risky, so we fear the potential pain and discomfort that might come with it.
On the other hand, we are hardwired to seek pleasure, comfort and repetition because our brains are prediction machines and feel calm when they (think they) know what comes next.
As Robert Fritz explains in his seminal book, we can create structures in our lives that foster the desired behaviours. Drop a boulder into a river and the water re-forms almost instantaneously along a new path of least resistance.
For us humans, such structure could be a morning routine as described above, but it could also be a new identity or mental models. More on that in part 5...
As almost always, putting in a new structure into a system, making an intentional intervention, comes with unintended consequences. Those, too, form a new path of least resistance pretty quickly.
Intention of Higher ↑
Let's bring this back to the origin of this article series: the scene coin called $HIGHER on the base blockchain. What is the intention of this emerging headless brand want to be? What is the current path of least resistance in our niche of the internet?
What structures can we co-create so that we indeed go higher, together? What is our identity? What are our mental models? What are our conscious choices?
This is the fourth of six planned articles.
Part 1: Crypto needs to aim for a higher consciousness
Part 2: Level up in the Game of Life
Part 3: Realizing the Realms of Reality
Part 5 – Compound your Consciousness of Choices
Part 6 – Idea for a very different Farcaster Client
I hope this will prompt comments, critique, ideas and above all: higher ↑vibrations.
antaur.eth
Co-evolving towards a ↑Higher Civilization (Part 3)
Who are you?
I haven't got a clue. Yet I know three things about you:
You are unique. There is no benchmark, it really is n=1
You construct your reality based on your unique conscious coordinates
You, too, fight a battle we know nothing about
Who am ?
In Part 2 we explored the Four Levels of Life. Where I am playing at defines the story I am telling myself and others. In ascending order of the map, and loosely in chronological biography:
Victim: I was abandoned, adopted and beaten up at home. I have been misunderstood as an undiagnosed neurodiverse. Not knowing any better, I married the wrong woman and got stuck in a co-dependent marriage for 13 years. I was angry and played the blame & shame game.
Creator: I decided to become self-employed and divorced. I became a good father and reliable coach, facilitator, sparring partner, and friend. I reimagined myself and became a psychedelic coach and web3 enthusiast.
Co-Creator: I attracted the polar-opposites in terms of the Big 5 Traits (agreeableness, extraversion, conscientiousness, openness & neuroticism) for both my romantic and business partnerships. They complement me towards wholeness and help me let go of the need to be right and in control of the process on a daily basis.
Inter-Becoming: I have forgiven everyone including myself for who I was. In 2014 I nearly died. I was ok with that; total non-duality. Since then, I had sincere conversations with trees on psychedelics, and received telepathic instructions as a psychedelic space holder. I know that reality is not what it seems and sense that there is a Cosmic Game. Humans won't be the end of evolution. My role is to help the universe to attain a ↑higher level of self-consciousness.
I am all the above. On a good day I identify mostly with #2 and #3, on a bad day I regress a bit back to #1, and on psychedelic journeys and during my morning combo of breathwork and mediation I experience the gist of #4. That's the reality I construct.
What about you? Yourself Your Self?
The Illusion of the Self
Since Descartes (Plato really) humanity separates mind from matter. What solved a dire problem at the end of the Dark Ages (the separation of church and state) created an unintended second order consequence: the story of separation.
The Century of the Self by Adam Curtiz changed my world view. It's an eye popping four hour deep dive into how the ideological descendants of Sigmund Freud effectively created PR and Marketing. The U.S. deep state back then wanted to find a way to "control the minds of the masses in peace time" - by making us crave what we don't yet have...and to keep up with the Jones's...while feeling more and more lonely and incapable of being just with ourselves.
From Separation to Inter-connectedness
My favourite philosopher in this regard is Charles Eisenstein: we need to reconnect with ourselves, one another and nature; then the more beautiful world our hearts knows is possible can become reality. Check out this beautiful animated clip and this his seminal work on Sacred Economics.
Realms of Reality
In Part 2 you learned about the Psychedelic Map For Change. At centre of this work are the various realms of reality. Take a deep breath, have a look and make sense of the map below. Maybe close your eyes and travel from the inner circle of the Self to the outermost the Cosmos.
When you reflect on the above, what is the most astounding fact? The most astounding fact - imho - is the Knowing, that you are all these realms and they are all inter-connected. Here is how I experience this:
Self: My individual consciousness, thoughts, emotions, sensations in the body, are shaped by interactions and external influences as well as interoceptive signals from my body. How it feels to be me is the essence of this realm, and my nervous system creates a mix of pleasant and unpleasant neuro-transmitters moment-by-moment: dopamine, serotonin, cortisol etc.
Relationships: My interactions and bonds weave me into the social fabric. Every relationship, whether in a team at work or in private is an entity with a life of itself that I co-create. People who trigger me are often a mere mirror of the behaviour I don't like in myself.
Organizations: There is no such thing as the organisation. I am the organisation as much as you are, and together we form start-ups, corporates, political parties, networks or DAOs. Study ant colonies and for a deeper understanding of Ethereum: emergence occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviours that its parts do not have on their own, emerging only through their interaction within a wider whole.
Humanity: I am a consumer and citizen. It makes a difference whether I shop second hand or not, or consume less. I can make a stand and go to a rally against Brexit or stay home and watch tennis on TV. I can doom scroll on FB or IG or delete my profile (done both). I can ape into the re-emercence of $CUMMIES or not (didn't). I have a lot of agency over my choices. I hardly ever complain about politicians, or spend time blaming corporations. I critic by creation and doing my best every day.
Earth: I share a ton of DNA with ants, bananas, and trees. I breath the same air, drink the same water, that all life of earth needs to function according to its genetic instructions. I do believe in James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis, that Planet Earth is a self-regulating complex system, a ↑higher organism that I cannot grasp until I understand what dolphins, bees or fungi know about keeping life alive.
Cosmos: The atoms in my meatsuit originate from former stars that went supernova. On some psychedelic journeys I experienced total ego death, and I felt I am the universe feeling it self. My hunch is that consciousness is something like dark matter.
Ok, if this section was perhaps a bit too esoteric for you, that's totally fine: you construct your reality, and I do mine. What we can agree on is that the artificial separation of matter and energy is silly. Even Einstein knew this before went into the ether, but he couldn't rectify his Theory of Relativity with the then emerging theory of quantum mechanics. His surrendering words on quantum entanglement were simply: "spooky action at a distance".
Energy follows attention
The focus of my thoughts and awareness directs my mental and physical energy towards that point of focus, influencing outcomes and manifesting results in line with where I choose to concentrate my attention.
For a few years I intensively focused on building the best romantic relationship I ever had and still have. Now I am focussing more on being a builder as I want to contribute to various web3 organisations or networks.
What do you pay attention to in your daily life? What realms of reality do you mainly construct with your attention? Are mindful about that? Or are you lost in thoughts most of the time? (even if they are good or creative, you might still not be aware of them as they arise; meditation helps to turn the lights on. I meditate daily with Sam Harris's app.
Here are more coaching questions I often use in my practice:
What’s going well for you in each realm?
What’s holding you back?
How are you contributing to outcomes in each realm you say you dislike?
How do you make meaning of this?
You see, the world is exactly as it is, because you and everyone and everything is the way it is. In the graphic above you see small green arrows, and on the left it says: how it might be.
Change the world? Change yourself
If you do want to change something about yourself in earnest whilst reading this, I inveite you to stop reading, and change: change can only happen in the here-and-now. Reflecting about change is bound to the past, planning to change is aimed at the future.
The Single Truth
"We inhabit an infinitely evolving material reality...Our experience of being is only ever momentary totality. The past is inaccessible, the future unknown. We all occupy a set of conscious coordinates that no others may occupy. Simultaneously we are only ever a single happening." - SpiritDAO
Speed and control vs complexity and impact
In the graphic with the green circles above you find two dials: the further you zoom out the more complex any coordination becomes, but also the more impact you can have. There is a reason why Ethereum is sticking to its core values to build the World Computer as a Hyperstructure.
Also, the more you zoom out the less you control and the longer changes typically take.
Hence, it is fundamental to be clear about your intention on who you want to become and how you want to show up. Your intention will prime your attention, which is where your energy will flow.
Rounding up, I want to stress that you can have agency: you can manifest anything you want. You can step away from the screen when your ↑higher self knows it's time. You can delete your X account (I plan to do this by the end of 2024).
And then, you and I will fuck it up, and that's ok - life is just to complex to fully grasp it. Just like our ancestors surely didn't intend to let patriarchy emerge by inventing the plow (and other developments) all our actions will have a Butterfly Effect, now and forever.
This is the third of six planned articles.
Part 1: Crypto needs to aim for a higher consciousness
Part 2: Level up in the Game of Life
Part 4 – Commit to the Cycle of Change
Part 5 – Compound your Consciousness of Choices
Part 6 – Idea for a very different Farcaster Client
I hope this will prompt comments, critique, ideas and above all: higher ↑vibrations.
antaur.eth