What is value? What can be considered valuable?
Do you contribute anything of value to society?
Does society find value in the things you contribute?
How does value relate to money? How does value equate to our ability to live?
What infrastructure, railways & systems have you put in place to receive value in your life?
After years of contemplation as an artist-entrepreneur, I have identified some questions that come to mind about capturing, transmuting, providing & recapturing value.
As we continue our move into this new paradigm of Web3 & the Internet of Value, I seek to employ these innovations to improve my ability to garner abundance through my creative works. I'll explore this full circle, in due time.
For now, I'd like to start with an exploration of Value.
More than ever before, I am abundantly grateful for the meandering multitudes I've explored throughout my life.
What once felt muddled & incoherent, now begins to morph into pathways of unifying metaphors. I am witnessing more vividly the essence of that which intertwines all. To see in this way, helps me to recognize an important lesson: Value is Growth, and Growth is the ability to flow freely towards a new stage of evolutionary being.
Growth is 'quantumly' entangled with nourishment, expression, acknowledgement & perceiving.
Growth
Nourishment — That which feeds, fuels, sustains, enlightens, or evolves our very being.
Expression — That which we declare, utter, demonstrate or share with the world as a way to represent our existence.
Acknowledgement — That which brings our awareness to those that recognize, reflect, critique, observe, or triangulate our existence; An affirming relation to any other entity.
Perception (Perceiving) — The ability to intuitively observe and understand the world around us. It involves recognizing and understanding feelings, expressions, and aspects of reality.
If value is growth, then what can be considered valuable is that which protects or sustains one's nourishment, expressions, acknowledgement & perceptions. When phrased this way, the next question becomes — Do you contribute anything that helps protect or sustain the nourishment, expressions, acknowledgements or perceptions of other members of our society?
Can society find value in the ways you choose to contribute?
For (almost) every human being on the planet, those answers can always be, Yes. If that is truly the case, however, then why do so many people suffer from poverty? There are many, many factors to this particular equation. Still, there is one in particular that I wish to highlight first & foremost.
Tell me, how challenging has it been for you to recognize and embrace the unique value that you are truly capable of contributing, and more importantly, the value that you genuinely desire to contribute in your own life?
I for one, find it to be no easy feat. The path I discovered that helped me to identify what I desire & am capable of contributing in terms of value, was the art of stillness. Meditation & calm reflection as a means to separate the signal from the noise; that which calls out to me from the very essence of my being, in resonance & alignment with whom I perceived myself to be — and whom I knew I desired becoming.
This forever remains a dynamic realization and is never static in nature. So the process of identifying self & the value we wish to contribute is a perpetual one. Yet & still, it is a process in which we can stamp down a foothold for a foundation amidst the iterations of our growth.
Epochs in the Cycle of Value
Capturing Value — Partaking in & the ability to identify value.
Transmuting Value — Digesting & converting value into a usable format for one's growth.
Providing Value — Generating value that can be captured by others as a byproduct of one's actions, expressions, perceptions, or otherwise.
Recapturing Value — Ability to receive value; as in, the infrastructure, mechanisms or systems that are established for one to be able to capture value provided to them as reciprocity for the value they themselves have provided to others.
For most of us, we were born into this world capable of capturing the value others provide us and the value we extract from life & living itself.
We breathe, we see, we feel. We were nourished or found nourishment; we were clothed, able to find joy & entertainment. We were educated by academies or by community or by life experiences. We were born into this world capable of capturing value. Still, that is just one part of this equation.
We can infer that identifying the value that one can best contribute to the world, proceeds any ability to proficiently transmute & provide that value — let alone completing the cycle & recapturing the value that returns as reciprocity for one's contributions. That part.
If the cycle is incomplete, if we are unable to close the loop of value, then we are unable to flow freely. We become unable to grow. So in order to flow freely, we must interface our ability to give value, with another's ability to receive value — and vice versa; interface our ability to receive value, with another's ability to give it.
I wager most have mastered the art of capturing value, but not the ability to provide it & recapture the value born from that which they themselves have provided.
We live in a complex & diverse world. At the dawn of societies interfacing & exchanging value, systems like bartering came to be. Yet the challenges found were that, one may find value they wish to extract from another, yet that individual may not desire the value they had to give. And thus, as time went on and our societies diversified and became more nuanced, money as a medium of value exchange arose. This leads us to addressing our next question — How does value relate to money?
What is the real purpose of money, versus the affinity our current society has for it?
Money, contrary to popular belief, is not value. Money is the vehicle of value. The 'API' of value. The liquid, convertible & agnostic means for which value can reach & be utilized by a diverse, eclectic people. Money is the medium of which we measure & account for value & its exchange; it is the I/O (input-output) connection parameter of value, not value itself.
With this in mind, it should help to bring the realization into view, that money is the lubrication that allows us to flow freely & experience growth in our society, as it completes the cycle of capturing, transmuting, providing & recapturing value. It lets us do so through a broader spectrum of possibilities than what the bartering system could have ever provided.
Web3, promises to broaden that spectrum even more & exponentially so. Still, I'll come back to that at a later time, as there is more to be addressed on the topic of transmuting & providing value as a means to flow freely in growth...
What makes the free-flowing nature of growth so profound & so impactful, is written inherently in the code of life & how growth is observed & manifested here in our reality.
The free-flowing nature of growth is inseparable from constraint.
An apple seed will forever & always grow an apple tree; its roots forever budding apple seedlings and leaves. A baby born from a wolf, will always be (at least in part) a wolf.
Constraint, then, becomes one of the most beneficial elements of growth, which can flow freely only because it is grounded by the constraints that let it flow with a deliberate intent.
How this relates to our ability to consciously navigate our world with autonomy, is also tied to our ability to manifest & call into existence that which we desire for our lives. Growth in nature requires, & benefits from, constraints, which can be observed as the deliberate intention of that which is experiencing the growth in order to further sustain & protect its ability to gain nourishment, to express, to be acknowledged by that which it perceives & to keep on perceiving so that it can reach its next stage of evolutionary being.
Constraint as it applies to us, therefore, is Discipline. Discipline is the key to exponential growth — which, as we defined, is value.
Discipline is the tool we can utilize to extract the highest potency of value that we have to contribute to society. Of one of my own lyrics, I quote, "True freedom lies beyond the door of discipline."
We flow freely with the constraint of discipline, which articulates our ability to transmute value for ourselves & provide value for others. Mastering this understanding is a critical key to life.
Now, where Web3 comes into play is by enabling more access, control, composability & freedom of choice to the recapturing of value by those who provide it — along with positively augmenting the experience of receiving (or capturing) value by potential patrons.
Web3 is the infrastructure component to recapturing value. The monetization piece & the method for which to enable it across a vast array of creative expressions in a way that (often) retains the autonomy of an individual & their desires.
Rather than having to rely on legacy industries, their infrastructure, their banking & financial logistics, their standard operating procedures & predetermined models for compensation... now, individuals can have a refreshing new take on their methods of distributing the value they have to provide & the recapturing of the value their expressions have earned.
To earn value is to be acknowledged as one who's expressions have provided value to others.
Legacy models provided distribution with the caveat that all value must be channeled through them first. The new era will see more direct, peer-to-peer opportunities for value exchange, and even more opportunities for a new variety of methods that can be employed to recapture value on behalf of those providing it.
New methods & all, there's something that remains true here. Having a surplus of value coming in, along with an optimized system to proficiently intake, transmute & channel it, will be the keys to your exponential growth (or said in a different way — "cash flow is still king").
Be mindful enough to observe & calibrate your "cycle of value", to understand which stages or epochs in that cycle might be causing strain, stagnation or depletion. Identify the value you have to provide our society, then ensure that the framework or systems you need to monetize are in place.
From my perspective, the message contained within this post is a profound one that can unlock a greater level of understanding for those that may not understand money, value, the power of web3 or "the internet of value". I quite often speak to the creative entrepreneurs, the artists & those who might be amongst the underserved.
It is my hopes that these reflections can help reframe your perspective to focus in on:
The value that you wish to provide to society.
The methods you've employed to recapture that value; and how they might evolve for greater efficacy.
The balancing of your epochs in the cycle of value, for the sustenance & longevity of your life.
That's all for now on this post. I appreciate you for making it all the way through.
With these publications, I will be sharing creations, concepts, ideas and resources on: Music, Notion (Productivity), Web3 (Tech), Anime (+ Pin Collecting) & then some. If you want to hear more of what you can expect from me within these areas, check out this post.
It is also possible to support these ideas by securing this post as a digital collectible, whether in full or even by highlighting your favorite quotes.
Lastly, if you feel that this post can provide value to others, I would be grateful for you sharing it with your tribe.
All the best,
Mr. Wildenfree 🐺🍵🎵
Cover image generated in Midjourney (AI), by Mr. Wildenfree®
