This weeks contributors: Ron Rivers
Approximately ten months ago, I held the first physical copy of Self-Actualization in the Age of Crisis in my hand. Six years of effort—three of research, three of daily writing—made real. Where one might expect a sigh of relief, I could not help but feel drawn to what lay ahead. The book and the vision contained within represent an alternative, but in a relational universe governed by the single truth, alternatives only exist in relation to our choices.
Today I feel more strongly than ever about the necessity of reimagining spirituality to more accurately represent the nature of being as we understand it. To spread philosophies and practices of a non-religion religion that synthesizes spirituality and structure into a more harmonious whole. Necessary to most accurately represent who and what we are as individual humans, but also because we deserve more. The present arrangements are not enough and diminish our powers of redirection. At the same time, theocrats worldwide are leveraging their philosophies of dominion spirituality to discriminate and subjugate marginalized peoples aggressively. Hierarchical visions of spirituality will always enable this, so we must spread an alternative. I feel this more pressingly now than ever before.
Over the past ten months, I’ve prioritized my focus and energy towards four distinct verticals of my life—family, work, research for and building SpiritDAO, and spreading the message. I am happy to share that the infrastructure for SpiritDAO is near completion, which will open up additional time to focus on family and spreading the message. I’ve learned much over the past ten months. Physics, cosmology, and even evolutionary biology continue reinforcing the claims of Self-Actualization in the Age of Crisis. We witness the universe’s unfolding awareness, and I look forward to spending more time telling more people about it.
There is still much to do, but we’re so close. Our onboarding process is almost complete. It’s an equitable process that prioritizes value and purpose alignment over quantity of members. We are leveraging a combination of self-guided learning and community gathering that each member must complete to unlock full voting rights within the DAO—the total required time clocks in at three and a half hours. Members leveraging our free Proof of Curiosity tier will have thirty days to complete the onboarding. Paid tier members will have no time restrictions outside their membership tier but cannot create proposals or vote until it is complete. The onboarding only needs to be completed once, as a unique voting NFT is provided to the member upon completion. Note that members who choose not to renew their membership will lack access to our collaboration tools to vote.
This process helps to emphasize the action-oriented nature of SpiritDAO. The ideal is members who feel deeply aligned with our values and purpose. At the same time, it enables supporters to make charitable donations and keep informed about our activities while not participating in governance. As a non-profit organization, we want to empower as many possible people to participate in the directions of their choosing while also ensuring that they are well-equipped to do so within the frameworks of our stated intentions. It also addresses my initial concerns: maximizing alignment without burdening prospective members. The present process allows a frictionless membership activation and the freedom to explore and engage at one’s own pace. Crypto wallets are still a hurdle to overcome but can be addressed soon with abstraction layers.
Our tech stack is nearing completion as well. We’re launching on the Optimism chain, which I believe is the most value aligned with our efforts. For coordination, we will leverage Charmverse, Snapshot, Hats Protocols, and possibly Tally. We’re also signed up for a Fileverse Beta, which I believe will be ideal and aligned with the future of decentralized micro-communities, allowing us to communicate and share knowledge unbound to any third-party platform. Discord and telegram remain our communication channels, primarily for lack of better options. In the future, we’ll focus on building a community-specific app to migrate off of these too.
In the coming weeks, we’ll announce a formal launch with an updated, easier-to-digest roadmap broken down into seasons. Of course, it is subject to change, but the intent is to provide prospective members with a clear visual of what they are signing up for. Some technical things still need to be done, such as redoing our website and building a membership cart. Still, these are relatively minor tasks compared to what we’ve accomplished.
Deeply grateful for all of you who have chosen to be a part of this journey to date. If you’ve been observing from the sidelines, now is the time to commit and be early. I’ll be sharing more details over the next few weeks. Until then, breathe deep and embrace the totality of the moment.
Weekly Happenings
🎦 Self-Guided onboarding setup is complete
🔨 Charmverse integration / setup almost complete
🔗 Memberships ported to the Optimism Chain.
🟡 $SELF Tokens (SpiritDAO intercommunity, time-bound currency) setup and transferred to community vault.
Thank you for reading!
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