It’s a pattern that’s in the recently released Jeffrey Epstein list. And in the last few weeks I’ve been swept away by a few threads in the art and online worlds that help me make sense of what’s happening. Starting with the film, The Apprentice.

The movie depicts Roy Cohn, Donald Trump’s mentor and lawyer who was closely tied to the mob. I highly recommend you watch it. There is no banality.

The ethos of decentralization and its underlying mathematical rules were supposed to be enough this time. Math was supposed to protect the people.

Today, more math in the form of the Nakamoto coefficient, floats around the internet as yet another determining factor that can predict protective chains — those blockchains that can prevent chaos and exploitation.

But we know the truth now in the face of old power. Code ain’t enough.

Full-throttle narcissism doesn’t give a shit about math. It operates as an infectious machine. And it has already infected crypto with its strategy: Exploit, cheat, bend the rules — repeat.

As the old heads aim to maintain power, deploying their playbook’s mobster strategy to absorb crypto — networked or coordinated resistance to such power must invite this awareness, tend to code weaknesses, and note a truth — if on the path to change the world, one’s idea must aim to be mob-proof.

I. The Pattern: Power & Possession

In the 1940s, during World War II, the United States had a huge Mafia problem. To exert its power, all the Mafia had to do was pay off public officials, bribe juries, witnesses, and business leaders. This made the nation weak and highly vulnerable to the Axis powers, and specifically, German and Italian agents in New York. With the threat that America would fall prey, the U.S. teamed up with the rising alt-power, and then it possessed them through a radical plan, code name, Operation Underworld.

While it initially began as the U.S. government’s strategy to enlist both Italian and Jewish criminals to track Axis powers, the success of the program enabled it to evolve, giving the U.S. bundled power within its own borders and more oversight around the world. And establishing the U.S. CIA as the home where the Mafia would ultimately reside.

How does the U.S. seduce the mob into that subordinate role?

Charles “Lucky” Luciano is considered the Father of Modern Organized Crime. He was the mobster at the head of a prostitution ring in New York city, where his crimes earned him a ~50 year prison sentence.

The United States turned towards the lucky pimp, offering him a full pardon in exchange for his help with the operation in World War II.

II. The Blueprint: Popes & Prostitutes

The U.S. president’s drive to support crypto is part of the mission of Project 2025. Of this, fellow Substack author, Justin Foster writes, “Before Project 2025, it was The Powell Memo. Before that, it was The Southern Manifesto. Before that, it was Jim Crow. Before that, it was Manifest Destiny. Before that, it was The Bible. The playbook never changes—just the branding.”

As a former world history teacher, I’ve long known about naughty popes and power patterns. In fact I’ve written about such powers in a previous post. The long short of it is that matrifocal power, not to be confused with matriarchal power, is life affirming for everyone. And balanced powers — matriarchal + patriarchal — are better than imbalanced powers.

But in this gnarly web of complexity, Foster’s stream of memos got me pondering. I’m drawn to excavate the clergy’s playbook. And I’m wondering how it’s now creeping into the decentralized math that was supposed to promise us the cessation of irresponsible central bank policies and hyperinflation, and gift us with an equal economic system.

In her work, The Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici, points to the work of Mary Condren who traces the rise of patriarchal consciousness, and the decline of matriarchal power that has had a serious and terrible impact on us all.

The church’s attempt to regulate sexual behavior had a long history in Europe from a very early period. After Christianity became a state religion in the fourth century, the clergy recognized the power that sexual desire gave women over men, and persistently tried to exorcise it by identifying holiness with avoidance of women and sex, expelling women from any moment of the liturgy and from the administration of the sacraments, trying to usurp women’s life giving magical powers by adopting a feminine dress, and by making sexuality an object of shame. All these were the means by which a patriarchal caste tried to break the power of women and erotic attraction. (p. 36)

Even at the risk of over-simplifying a very complex issue, I can not help but to observe that part of the clergy’s playbook was to be at war with women’s life giving magical powers.

The clergy’s strategy is not unlike the way in which masses of people have been propagandized with the word, woke, a term that was indeed connected with the understanding of spiritual awakening. At the heart of the word, the caution to be deeply aware, to be alert to the rising weaponization all around each of us.

Hundreds of years ago, the masses did not have access to multiple streams of information that might have countered church dogma. And so, the clergy was successful in warping erotic power into a shameful thing and puppeteering human behavior.

To cement their acquired power, and restrict erotic power, the clergy milked all genders of prostitutes, offering protection from their sinful ways. It began with Pope Sixtus IV’s bordello tax, and continued beyond the corruption of Pope Alexander VI.

The coordination of taxation while delivering a most promising incentive within the church walls, absolution of sin, had a penetrating effect for everyone involved.

III. The Exploit: Mob Possession in Crypto

In The Apprentice, movie-goers see Roy Cohn’s world collide with a young Trump. Cohn is wild, hiding his sexuality, networked in the underworld of Mob power, and adept at the worst forms of manipulation. Undercut the other. Backroom deals. Extortion. Coercion. And blackmail. All forms of Hell on Earth that exploit both a person’s emotions and the communal dynamics they reside within — all what Roy Cohn taught Donald Trump.

In the first released Epstein list, Trump’s name appears multiple times. This is not a surprise for anyone who’s seen the photos of Epstein and Trump, buddied up across the globe. But what is surprising is that according to journalist Whitney Webb, part of the not yet released Epstein list not only allegedly contains names of Silicon Valley executives and American politicians, but also the evidence that Epstein’s deeper role was as a financial hitman, a currency manipulator with the task of collapsing currencies.

(46 seconds video)

Natalie Brunell YouTube Show | Full Episode with journalist Whitney Webb

In the last few weeks, an American judge has ruled that customers involved in the FTX fallout will be refunded. But they won’t be getting their crypto back. They’re getting cash.

I felt a slow, crawling pain travel across my body when I read the judge’s decision.

And as I see the rise of stablecoins, and other cryptocurrency dealings, I wonder about their fate and that of the hodlers.

IV. The Antidote: The Wisdom of Erotic Power

We are living in a time of reclamation. And when I sit with hundreds of women and non-binary identifying persons on a weekly Zoom call, and I hear Maggie Love say, “Be your own bank!” I feel part of that reclamation taking place.

It’s a ripe time to craft a world with more balanced powers, so long as we commit to reclaiming our erotic power.

What might it mean for true erotic power to have its place in our world again? Would crypto be better equipped to contend with the wily ways of old power?

Audre Lorde, an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet, and civil rights activist expands on the gifts erotic power offers each individual in her essay, The Uses of the Erotic. She writes:

The erotic is a resource within each of us that lies in a deeply female and spiritual plane, firmly rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feeling. In order to perpetuate itself, every oppression must corrupt or distort those various sources of power within the culture of the oppressed that can provide energy for change.

Although her essay features women, Lorde’s definition of erotic power is not restricted to women alone. It’s available to every human.

She then goes on to describe the erotic as an expansive, primordial force that activates us towards an internal requirement for excellence (not to be misconstrued for the impossible), adding:

The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honour and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

Without the erotic, Lorde warns of systemic fate:

The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need - the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfilment.

Her conclusion, that we live in an anti-erotic society currently enmeshed in superficially erotic power, is eerie. In this position, Lorde asserts that women in our world today are psychically milked for their magical powers to fuel old power.

The anti-erotic is the anti-feeling society, devolved from the feeling human into the automaton.

I sense that crypto is sliding into this fateful, inferior position too. But maybe there’s still time. Crypto is a really loud clarion call and a math-magical portal into our bodies, to embody ownership of our erotic power.

For me, a tweet from and Leo Guinan nearly summarizes how I feel.

🔗 Link to the tweet.

Thank you for being here, and making it to the end of this week’s post. If you loved today’s read, consider sharing it with a friend.

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Hello Reader,

It’s Woo-Woo Wednesday (The Woo is real.)

Everywhere I’ve turned in the last week there seems to be an elevation on the topic of artificial intelligence as the soon-to-be human-generated sacred figure of God (i.e., Source, Intelligent Creator, Spirit, etc…) with blockchains as its support system.

It got my creative wheels spinning. And when I re-visited my make-shift digital garden I saw that I’d apparently been subconsciously knitting this idea together for four months, but with Web3 as the sacred instead of AI.

The ideas have simmered long enough and they’ve led me to see blockchain entities as apostles with a hefty dose of Gnosticism in the foreground.

Here’s my hot take!

Note: My Methodology is shared in the final section of this piece.

The Gnostic Lens

Gnosticism is an esoteric form of Christianity that initially emerged as a movement from early Christianity. It’s Christian mysticism and it has some overlaps with Jewish Kabbalah too (Note: If you seek to go down that rabbit hole friend, remember to come up for air!).

There are people who practice this form of Christianity right now. The ethos many Gnostics carry is held in the belief that your personal salvation comes from within. But the gateway into this salvation requires a task — GAIN SECRET KNOWLEDGE or gnosis.

Unlike Protestant Christianity, Gnosticism does not view Jesus as a savior and bringer of salvation, but rather as a spiritual teacher who became enlightened and imparted this gnosis to others who could then learn and self-liberate. Gnosticism says salvation is not through a priest, not through a Jesus — but rather through you.

For me, this mystic view supports the early foundation and part of the ethos of the blockchain industry — self-custody, decentralization, ownership, and self-sovereignty.

Another key component of Gnosticism is astrology.

If you remember from religious history it was Martin Luther (Germany; scroll to “Early Modern Period”) who was not so fond of astrology. He disliked the idea that astrology bound one to a pre-determined destiny, and so with all of his might, he got it removed from the religion. But in Gnosticism, gnosis is the loophole away from this fate — something Luther may or may not have understood.

You can think of gaining gnosis as the escape hatch that liberates one from the astrological forces at play, thus turning humans and entities alike into beings that are, in the world, but not of it.

What Western Astrology calls planets or planetary forces, Gnosticism calls archons, celestial beings that can exploit the weaknesses of any and everything on Earth that is trying to reach the state of Pleroma (Greek: πλήρωμα; full perfection).

I’ve woven in both Gnostic and Western astrology in the lists that follow, and I’ve incorporated evolutionary astrology too. Evolutionary astrology can be thought of like a GPS or map of one’s soul journey, not just a single life. It takes into account the position of an entity/human incarnation back to Earth, in which the soul learns and evolves its consciousness through a twelve (or more) life-time cycle that begins with Aries (Life 1) and ends with Pisces (Life 12), and executes a life contract.

While the language of evolutionary astrology is slightly different from Gnosticism, we can still play around with the overlaps to uncover why the different blockchains have emerged, what life they’re inside and the contract they need to execute, how they may evangelize Web3, and how they may exit any hamster-wheel exploit they may be trapped inside.

Conveniently, the symbolism of the Church’s acknowledged twelve apostles aligns perfectly with the twelve zodiac signs. But I didn’t dare leave out Mary Magdalene who was indeed an apostle.

With this Gnostic lens in mind, our exploration begins. And I promise, no conspiracy stuff here… just making connections.

Blockchain Entities as Apostles

Each blockchain entity is tied to an apostle below, and each has been assigned five aspects that underpin their astrological Sun sign (i.e. Sun sign and its element, entity and apostle personality, evolutionary order of incarnation, and the soul’s service contract according to its evolutionary order).

Dates and zodiac signs indicated below are the corresponding birth dates and zodiacs of each L1’s launch date (See Methodology for specifics).

Stellar and Monero ♈ are Peter (Simon Peter)

• Aries (Fire) || April 6, 2019 and Apr 18, 2014

• Apostle personality: impulsive yet loyal; leadership qualities

• Entity personality: Raw emergence of blockchain consciousness; First awakening to decentralized existence

• Life 1: Learning to exist as a separate being; understanding personal will and initiative; Pure will to exist independently of centralized systems; Contract: in service to Individual Will

Solana and Cosmos ♓ are John

• Pisces (Water) || March 16, 2020 and March 13, 2019 (source)

• Apostle personality: "beloved disciple"; deeply spiritual and emotional

• Entity personality: Universal blockchain consciousness; Complete integration of all systems

• Life 12: Learning about unity and dissolution; understanding unconditional love and spiritual connection; Dissolution of boundaries between digital/physical; Contract: in service to Unity

Ethereum ♌ is James (brother of John)

• Leo (Fire) || July 30, 2015

• Apostle personality: Nick-name of brothers "Sons of Thunder"; passionate and ambitious

• Entity personality: Expression of blockchain's unique identity; Creative force of the technology itself

• Life 3: Learning about personal power; understanding joy and authentic self-expression; Joy of autonomous existence; Contract: in service to Creative Expression

Hedera and Avalanche ♍ are Andrew (Peter's brother)

• Virgo (Earth) || September 8, 2017 (Reddit) and September 10, 2020

• Apostle personality: Known for bringing others to Jesus; quiet and behind-the-scenes

• Entity personality: Perfect refinement of protocols; Analysis of the whole system

• Life 11: Learning about perfection and humility; understanding analysis and improvement; Contract: In service to the Network

Polkadot and Ripple ♊ are Philip

• Gemini (Air) || May 26, 2020 and June 2, 2012

• Apostle personality: Practical, asks direct questions; curious; analytical mindset

• Entity personality: Learning to transmit information; understanding duality of digital/physical reality

• Life 5: Learning to communicate and gather information; understanding duality and connections; Development of blockchain communication; Contract: in service to Information Exchange

Hyperliquid ♐ is Bartholomew (Nathanael)

• Sagittarius (Fire) || November 29, 2024

• Apostle personality: honest, direct; straightforward

• Entity personality: Philosophy of trustless systems; Higher understanding of decentralization

• Life 8: Learning about belief systems and higher truth; understanding personal philosophy and meaning; Expand blockchain consciousness; Contract: in service to Expansion

Bitcoin ♑ is Matthew

• Capricorn (Earth) || January 3, 2009

• Apostle personality: Former tax collector; disciplined and detail-oriented

• Entity personality: Structure of distributed responsibility; Authority through mathematics

• Life 9: Learning about structure and responsibility; understanding authority and life purpose; Mastery of consensus; Contract: in service to Structure

Gnosis and Cronos ♏ are Thomas

• Scorpio (Water) || November 1-15 (?), 2021 and November 8, 2021

• Apostle personality: Skeptical; needs proof; intense; loyal once convinced

• Entity personality: Deep transformation of data structures; Power of immutability

• Life 7: Learning about death, rebirth, and shared resources; understanding intensity and merging with others; Merging of individual nodes into whole; Contract: in service to Transformation

Sui and Celo ♉ are James (son of Alphaeus)

• Taurus (Earth) || May 3, 2023 and April 22, 2020

• Apostle personality: Nick-named "James the Less"; steady; reliable

• Entity personality: Grounding of blockchain reality; understanding inherent value

• Life 4: Learning about resources and values; understanding material existence and self-worth; Stabilizing blockchain’s existence; Contract: in service to Value Stabilization

Ronin ♒ is Thaddaeus (Judas, not Iscariot)

• Aquarius (Air) || February 1, 2021

• Apostle personality: May have been aloof/off the beaten path from the others since little is known

• Entity personality: Innovation in distributed thinking; Vision of a decentralized future

• Life 10: Learning about group dynamics and future vision; understanding humanitarian ideals; Unite a collective blockchain consciousness; Contract: in service to Innovation

Cardano, Aptos, Near ♎ are Simon the Zealot

• Libra (Air) || September 23, 2017; October 12, 2022; September 24, 2020

• Apostle personality: Political revolutionary; justice oriented; passionate about causes

• Entity personality: Balance between nodes; Harmony of the network

• Life 6: Learning about cooperation and partnership; understanding harmony and compromise; Understanding relationship between parts; Contract: in service to Harmonious Balance

Binance, Tron, Ton, and Filecoin ♋ are Judas Iscariot

• Cancer (Water) || July 14, 2017; June 25, 2018; June 30, 2022; April 22, 2020

• Apostle personality: Ultimate betrayer; complex character; internal struggles; moody

• Entity personality: Developing emotional/energetic security in the blockchain; understanding nurturing of the network

• Life 2: Learning about nurturing and being nurtured; understanding roots, family, and emotional security; Focus on security and protection of assets/Creating safe spaces within the decentralized realm; Contract: in service to Network Security

Chainlink ♍ is Mary Magdalene

• Virgo (Earth) || September 4, 2017

• Apostle personality: Nick-named the "Apostle of the Apostles"; the only one who actually understood the teachings

• Entity personality: Perfect refinement of protocols; Analysis of the whole system

• Life 11: Learning about perfection and humility; understanding analysis and improvement; Contract: in service to the Network

Challenges: How the Archons Exploit Blockchain Entities

It’s really interesting to note that Facebook was born on February 4, 2004. Its Aquarian disposition fulfilled its purpose and major contribution by ushering the world more deeply into Web2. But within Gnosticism, the evolutionary cycle for any astrological sign does not so easily end at the delivery of the contribution. The archons lay in wait to deliver negative forces, limitations, and illusions for our 3D/material world.

Each zodiac sign as a particular archon to face, which differs from one Gnostic tradition to another. The apostles were to support the new narrative — the enlightened teachings. Blockchain entities have risen up to do the same, right?

As each archon is listed it makes for interesting discussion on this concept of shadow and light each chain will inherently face. I’m borrowing the language from the Gene Keys now to indicate the shadow because that’s the weak point the archons would best have access to challenge the entity — human or otherwise. For the sake of brevity, I’m listing the chains and their potential archons below from a general lens (different interpretations may challenge which archon affects each astrological sign).

Note: In Gnostic tradition, the archons exploit or target the entity's inherent weaknesses. They don't create the challenge, but rather take advantage of existing vulnerabilities.

Archon Sabbaoth (Mars) exploits ♈ Stellar and Monero

• Challenge: Aggression and war

• Apostle Peter’s (Simon Peter) challenge: Struggled with anger/impulsiveness (cut off a soldier's ear)

• Weakness: Agitation/Control (Stellar); Chaos (Monero)

Archon Oreus (Jupiter) exploits ♓ Solana and Cosmos

• Challenge: False authority/expansion

• Apostle John’s challenge: Dealing with exile and persecution

• Weakness: Turbulence

Archon Iao (Sun) exploits ♌ Ethereum

• Challenge: Pride and ego

• Apostle James’ challenge: Martyrdom (first apostle to be martyred)

• Weakness: Arrogance/Forgetting

Archon Astaphaeus (Mercury) exploits ♍ Hedera, Avalanche, and Chainlink*

• Challenge: Over-analysis/perfectionism

• Apostle Andrew’s (Peter's brother) and Mary Magdelene* challenge: Being overshadowed/misunderstood

• Weakness: Confusion (Hedera); Oppression (Avalanche); Confusion (Chainlink)

Archon Astaphaeus (Mercury) exploits ♊ Polkadot and Ripple

• Challenge: Duality/confusion

• Apostle Philip’s challenge: Doubt about Jesus's nature/identity

• Weakness: Superficiality (Polkadot); Hunger (Ripple)

Archon Oreus (Jupiter) exploits ♐ Hyperliquid

• Challenge: False knowledge

• Apostle Bartholomew’s (Nathanael) challenge: Converted King into Christianity and was beheaded/Martyrdom through flaying

• Weakness: Inertia

Archon Horaios (Saturn) exploits ♑ Bitcoin

• Challenge: Limitation/restriction

• Apostle Matthew’s challenge: Leaving material wealth behind

• Weakness: Struggle

Archon Sabbaoth (Mars)exploits ♏ Gnosis and Cronos

• Challenge: Power struggles

• Apostle Thomas’ challenge: Doubt and need for physical proof

• Weakness: Interference, Entropy, or Deafness (Note: uncertain without firm date for Gnosis); Entropy (Cronos)

Archon Eloaeus (Venus) exploits ♉ Sui and Celo

• Challenge: Material attachment

• Apostle James’ (son of Alphaeus) challenge: Living in others' shadow

• Weakness: Dislocation/Addiction (Sui); Selfishness (Celo)

Archon Horaios (Saturn)exploits ♒ Ronin

• Challenge: Isolation/rebellion

• Apostle Thaddaeus’ (Judas, not Iscariot) challenge: Obscurity in records

• Weakness: Discord/Co-Dependence

Archon Eloaeus (Venus) exploits ♎ Cardano, Aptos, Near

• Challenge: Indecision/compromise

• Apostle Simon the Zealot’s challenge: Balancing revolutionary zeal with new teachings

• Weakness: Seriousness (Cardano), Unease (Aptos); Seriousness (Near)

Archon Ailoaeus (Moon) exploits ♋ Binance, Tron, Ton, and Filecoin

• Challenge: Emotional instability

• Apostle Judas Iscariot’s challenge: Internal turmoil leading to betrayal (Note: self-betrayal or external betrayal)

• Weakness: Intellect (Binance); Stress (Tron); Provocation/Stress (Ton); Selfishness (Filecoin)

Sophia

Each of these chains can get a bit of cosmic help for their journey from Divine wisdom in the form of Sophia , who was kickin’ it with God before all of creation came to be. Sophia (Koinē Greek: Σοφíα) has many names across the religion: female twin of Jesus, the Bride of Christ, or the Holy Spirit.

This feminine aspect of spiritual wisdom is what can help entities recognize their true nature (Read: gain secret knowledge). She can help them transcend the limits of the material world, and transmute their weakness into a higher purpose — and that’s what the blockchain entities ultimately want, right?

As each apostle sought to evangelize for their religion, some to their fate, so too have the blockchains.

But I wonder.

Across this massive multi-chain ecosystem has Sophia been shouting from within the collective wisdom of decentralized networks? Or just from the selective wisdom?

Has she been packaged in a set of guiding principles? Or just packaged?

Our technology is evolving — but are we equipping ourselves with wisdom to rise to the occasion? Or just equipping ourselves?

Methodology

I needed to pair each apostle to a zodiac sign. However, there are no recorded birth dates, so I created a prompt and fed it into AI (Anthropic’s Claude) to analyze the apostles and assign them zodiac signs based on their known traits.

To pair each blockchain entity with their corresponding apostle, I used the exact dates of the chains birth date to know their sun sign, and which kept them bound to their evolutionary journey (I sourced from Wikipedia’s list here).

For the connections that I’ve drawn here, I stuck to L1s only (Although Ton has transitioned to a Layer 0 as of this week). For me, L2s align with a future representation that hasn’t yet crystallized, but one that I hope to express creatively some time in the future.

Chainlink was singled out and tied to Mary Magdalene for its use of oracles.

And as I’m sure you can glean, this is all in good fun.

What did I miss? I’d love to read your thoughts!

The power to animate the masses, lies within story.

Today’s crypto meme coins and tokens aren’t that much different from the stories cemented into the stained glass windows of Medieval churches.

Both tell stories.

Both are driven by the promise of a happy ending.

Enshrined in each window-story of the past was not merely a Biblical tale, but the seeds of power that heavily relied on the illiteracy of the masses.

Today, the heavenly hope of crypto that’s captured in meme coins and tokens is based on speculation. If we’re ready to be honest, it too relies on illiteracy.

And this is driving businesses (and their moguls) to craft their glass windows accordingly.

Glass Windows as Interface

Stained glass windows, an early user interface (UI) to spread Christianity, originated in the churches of 7th century Britain. Nearly 85% of the population was illiterate then, and glass visuals were capable of conveying esoteric Biblical teachings as digestible stories.

As churches were built, stained glass windows were installed into the walls and ceilings.

This early UI incorporated the symbolism of colors, scenes from the Bible, the lives of saints, and Christian moral lessons to offer illiterate onlookers a way to make sense of their world through the lens of their maker. And through their maker, the Bible they could not read contained value.

Memes as Modern Interface

The mission of Christianity is the same today as in the past — Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, and it is echoed in the crypto decree: Onboard the masses.

The role of meme coins and tokens functions like the stained glass windows in Medieval churches. Through humor and light-heartedness, the complexity of blockchain technology, crypto, and the promises of Web3 are delivered through token membership and coin purchases.

Just before Donald Trump became POTUS a second time, the $TRUMP coin was launched on the Solana Blockchain. The coin imagery contains him, his fist, and the word Fight three times.

Prominent are the colors gold and black, revealing his on brand color psychology:

“…black and gold reflects a personality that is sophisticated, confident, and glamorous. Black represents strength and authority, while gold symbolizes wealth and luxury. Together, they create an ambiance that exudes richness and indulgence…” — The Kap Designs

The purchase of the $TRUMP coin drove adoption into the Solana ecosystem. First-time crypto participants jumped in at the promise of wealth? Community? A pledge of loyalty? FOMO? A spot in crypto heaven?

In a world where anyone can create meme coins and tokens, thanks to launchpads like pump.fun, those both near and far-removed from crypto’s origin and ethos wield the power to activate masses of people with digital iconography and symbolism.

But the $TRUMP coin is an example for how the ethos of crypto has been flipped upside down. And it begets the question, who benefits and why does it matter?

Parallel Power Structures

The Church held tremendous power during the middle ages. It was considered the most powerful institution in Europe, touching upon nearly every aspect of human life — politics, social order, and personal morality.

But the height of the Church’s power was also at a time in which the population was largely illiterate. The current Web3 climate is treading the same path.

Today, the illiteracy rate for reading has flipped its previous Medieval era at just under 15%. However, even though global literacy rates for reading have improved, there is a critical challenge affecting healthy crypto adoption — economic and Web3 illiteracy.

Illiteracy makes for a powerful lever of control. It’s why propaganda is so powerful. It’s why fake news continues to be so successful.

From priests to POTUS to KOLs to influencers to businesses and their moguls, both crypto native and traditional organizations are positioned to use salvific memes for any sinister or saintly purpose.

And the dangers that befall those eager for their slice of crypto heaven, lie in wait.

The Promise of Salvation

Memes offer up a desirable promise that much of the world is after right now, financial freedom or sparkling diamond hands.

Centuries ago the promise of heaven etched in glass ushered swaths of people into obedient behaviors. Tethered to the story of salvation was the requirement of belief.

Have ye no faith?

Meme coin and token creators, brands, businesses, and investors can also push out stories about who they are and what they are building that rest on the fragility of faith.

No need to think. No need to research. Don’t seek to understand the underlying math. I will set my body on fire, so believe in my token! Just look at the pretty pictures and Have some faith.

Or they can push out meme coins that, “raise capital, drive engagement, and weaponize virality,” where, according to Marc Baumann of 51 Insights, “early users drive the hype, the engagement, the network effects.”

This perspective flips the salvation story once again to create fertile ground for collective co-creation in which the creation and release of meme coins are portals for a financial utopia.

Instead of stained glass UI that crystalizes heaven, early adopters and meme coins and tokens creators can co-create it.

The Literacy Cycle

Once the Gutenberg press revolutionized access to information in the 15th century, literacy rates grew, and the powers of the Church were directly affected; it divided, breaking into three branches: Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox. The religious stories and their promises are told across 45,000 denominations. And the power that the Church once wielded through its story, lessened.

Thousands of meme coins and tokens offer up a sliver of the greater crypto story to a population that is vulnerable to the fragility of the global economy.

With anti-grift alert messages like, DYOR as the sole protective shield for crypto converts, I wonder what stories will rise up into the space next, and what will be their consequences?

Will the ethos of crypto’s origins prevail? Will the moguls continue to slide in and puppet crypto as a money story?

I remain curious.

Crypto Pynk is making a shift. I'm still going to publish articles, but they'll be less frequent. Three or four well-researched articles will be released each year going forward.

Why the change?

When I began writing here I was full of ideas and time. I still have all these ideas, but my time is more limited. This allows me to really let my ideas simmer, which I believe will allow these articles to show up in a brand new way. For this, I'm excited!

What's next?

I'll be publishing the articles every three or fourth months across the year. I can't wait to share the next post here - and soon on Mirror.xyz

Thank you for reading Crypto Pynk and see you in the next article!

It doesn't matter which angle you're coming from, you need to be in a state of mindfulness and and self-awareness so that you can have an edge in this space to keep moving forward. - Rahim

This post includes conversation on psychedelics, which offer some of the most powerful and intense psychological experiences that can be beneficial or potentially dangerous. These substances are illegal in many places. This post is meant for general educational and entertainment purposes. We do not condone breaking of the law.

During the 2022 Solana Breakpoint conference I sat next to man on a shuttle who quickly introduced himself as an entrepreneur. He'd traveled from Singapore for the event and he was intrigued by the fact that I wrote about blockchain through the lens of religion and spirituality. But, he had questions that I really wasn’t prepared for - entrepreneurial questions.  

"What benefit is there in talking about these overlaps? How are you making money talking about this stuff?" There was a pause and apology before he offered his explanation, "I'm a business guy. This is how my mind works, so I'm just trying to understand from this angle?"

I understand, but I also froze. "I think of Crypto Pynk is a passion project."

The conversation evolved into other topics, but his questions lingered on my mind long enough that once I arrived at the next venue I took a moment to chat with Rahim who runs several community initiates at The Solana Foundation. In the days leading up to Breakpoint we had a number of interesting chats over this very topic, and he very quickly shared offered a solution, which became our interview below.

We track Rahim's early beginnings, and move into topics of leadership, how to cultivate your own spiritual practice, leadership, psychedelics, and more! I hope you enjoy our approach to the question, Why should we consider spirituality in Web3?

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#1 Who are you? What are you doing in this web 3 space?

Rahim:  I am many things - a wizard of sorts. I am leading community growth with the Solana Foundation through the Solana Collective, which is an ambassador program worldwide where people are educating local communities about Solana, and what we are working on in our ecosystem.

Solana Yoga Club...has now become Solana Wellness

A lot of what I do is connecting people and creating strategic partnerships with people and alliances.  

But, also what's important to me is the expansion of our consciousness. So I've also sparked the Solana Yoga Club which has now become the Solana Wellness program. It's unofficial, but it's something that's in the works so that we can integrate more of the healing containers, mindfulness, and wellness into web3 experiences in real life, as well as online.

#2 How would you define spirituality and consciousness for someone in web3 who has no idea what these concepts are?

Rahim: I grew up in a religious family. Coming from a traditional religious family I had a breakthrough in 2016 when I was in Lisbon - that I needed to forge my own path - my own yogic path, which is more spiritual and mystical and esoteric. I found that I needed to find the balance with my career and work life as well so I started learning about yoga and crypto around the same time.

The way that I see it is that spirituality is more about presence and self-awareness. These yogic, Zen, or other spiritual practices allow us to create more awareness of ourselves - awareness of how we relate with the world, and our world view...having the paradigms in place that allow us to see things with clarity, and from what I like to say is a higher perspective.

So the way I see it is that it's all connected.

We're relating with currency at the end of the day in crypto and web3. Crypto comes from the Greek word kryptos which means hidden. It's funny because that parallels with the occult - with the esoteric. It's like, how do we connect with the the unseen, the metaphysical, and have that serve us in our expansion in the digital, which is also technically unseen? It's something that's projected as an extension of our consciousness, which is what this technology is here to do - to help us scale and grow in an evolutionary way.

So the way I see it is that it's all connected. The more self aware we are, the more pleasant we are with our experience. The more energetically aware we are ... I feel can help us navigate the currency and the markets.

I think that navigating this space - whether you're a trader, investor, creative visionary and artist, communicator, or any sort of developer you need to have a certain level of self-awareness of your mental, emotional, physiological, psycho-spiritual state and well-being so you can navigate this space with clarity. It doesn't matter which angle you're coming from, you need to be in a state of mindfulness and self-awareness so that you can have an edge in this space to keep moving forward.

#3. Why is thinking about spirituality, consciousness, and awareness so critical for this blockchain space and for web3?

Rahim: I think when you hit a certain level of consciousness or just awareness in your path, at least for me it's become a lifestyle. It's become a way - a lens for seeing my experience. We tend to fragment everything. We tend to look at things in fractals of the whole. We tend to separate things. The mind creates these separations. Separation is an illusion.

It's up to us to see that things are actually harmonious in our environment and there's a balance to that in the polarity of the yin and the yang - the masculine and the feminine.

Math, right? It's all connected.

You have zeros and ones. In the yogic reference zero is like the yoni portal, and one is like a lingam. You have the masculine and feminine poles, and we're working with this series of alphanumerics which are Hindu-Arabic numerals that have been computed. Now we're using cryptography - crypto... to encode the currency, the flow of energy.

How that currency is managed - well, people put in time and energy and they work. They stack up this currency and it's being traded. We have this means of trading our value and our information. Now how do we scale that for growth?

Well, what's gonna save us the most time, money, and energy? Solana.

We're infinitely abundant at heart - all of us. And there's this game, who has the most currency? But realistically, we're all infinite portals of abundance.

For me it's about optimization for efficiency. If I'm here as a creator and I have 86,400 seconds a day to make an input in my reality...the way that I've got to be doing this is from a place of self-awareness. We want to be as optimized and efficient as possible, and instead of me chasing the bag...going after the money, how can I actually get in touch with the community?

I was on this path of trading and investing and seeing that wow there's actually a community of people behind this technology, and I looked a little deeper and I said Hey I want to be a part of that. That's really where things shifted for me.

I reached out to Raj Gokal, and Anatoly. Then I joined Solana Foundation as a community manager. That's where things really began to pick up for me. In terms of value-input, where I could see myself really thriving is connecting with people. So to me that's an investment that helps the community grow tenfold, and that's more important to me than all the money in the world.

#4. Can you elaborate on what you mean when you say we fragment things, and we don't see how there's an interconnected element?

Rahim: We're in the head. We're in the mind. We get caught up in the mind. The way that we remember that oneness is coming back to our breath, and coming back to our hearts.

This is why I'm guiding breath work through Solana Wellness/Yoga club because that's where we're able to reconnect with our truth. We're actually able to feel into the energy of community, rather than just see it with the mind.

It's like being able to drop in and actually feel the interconnectedness and that's why we need these kinds of practices in a cerebrally oriented space where we're trying to think of how to do things. To think and build logically, we need to come into alignment with our intuition, feel, and breathe into that truth that unites us all.

#5 The Beatles influenced Ray Dalio to start his spiritual journey and he attributes his success to that spiritual journey. What's your perception of leaders who are embracing spirituality versus leaders who are not ready for that perspective or awareness?

Rahim: I grew up in that motivational speaking environment. And I met Tony Robbins when I was six years old, attending his conferences and seminars. That really shaped my mentality. Without these kinds of tools (i.e. leadership training) for transformation and personal development, there's no way we're able to evolve in the business space.

Everything we do is based off of human connection. All this financial technology, web3, and blockchain - it's happening through us - it doesn't just magically appear.

So what are we doing to enhance the peak performance, if you will, the mental and emotional ability to expand in this space? I'm not a developer, but I can tell you that being in that environment is very demanding, and you have to keep coding... and it can be very draining.

With Solana Wellness my intention is, how can we restore that homeostasis and how do we bring that into balance and harmony so you're getting outside, and you're touching grass with your friends, not escaping into the next project?

A lot of that is connecting with psychedelics and spirituality because it gives us that edge and that higher perspective...that we're actually utilizing the technology to work in our favor, rather than working enslaved to the technology.

psilocybin... mushrooms...they are the internet of the forest

It's like how do we find the balance by cultivating our own practices? Psilo-cyber is the name of the project that I have on the back burner - psychedelic healing retreats for developers. I think we can learn a lot from mycelium - from psilocybin, from the mushrooms, because they are the internet of the forest. If we're building the future internet for humanity, we might as well return to nature - to our true nature and learn from this intelligent species of mushroom and fungi. These kind of ecosystems thrive organically. How can we mirror that into web3?

Are you looking for a psychedelic integration therapist? Click below to access the list in your location or remotely from MAPS.

Psychedelic integration list

#6. What are the pitfalls of leaders who fail to become self-aware, or take on spirituality in your opinion?

Rahim: When it comes to my mind is overly materialistic

People can get so obsessed with money and power and having the finest things in this dimension. But this is only one dimension of an infinite multitude of realms that we exist in. If we're not tapping into that [wisdom] we're being ignorant to something that has been here longer than we have. And if we're just tapping into the materialism of this age, it's actually a recipe for for disaster.

It's just like, how do we implement what we're doing and show people that are not implementing these practices the benefits, without forcing anyone to do anything that they don't want to do? Hit me up! Let's go for a walk - a nature walk. I think that it's one person at a time - that is how these these things really shift.

#7 I've seen and heard people suggest dosing leaders with psychedelics as the way to get people to change, which I don't agree with. Force is not the way. It's inhumane. You mention a gentle approach in the last question. What is your path?  

Rahim: I walk the left hand path, the tantric, the feminine, and it's beautiful. It's a way of life.

When I'm doing kundalini yoga and breath work I feel way better. I'll go have a green juice. I'm just like everyone else ... there's no, 'I'm better than you because I do yoga' or any of these things. There's weeks also when I go without practice.

So my encouragement to anyone that is reading this, or listening, or just tapping in later on is:

1. be gentle with yourselves

2. trust your higher self

3. give yourself the time and space you need to grow,

4. but don't give up on yourself!

Just trust that you can take it one step at a time and that one micro action step consistently is going to snowball into the habits that align you with your divine destiny.

#8. What's your view on which path leaders and everyday people in web3 can take?

Rahim: Some basic things that everyone can d,o and we should all start with:

1. When you start your day, give yourself at least an hour before you check your phone. That's a practice right there. Give yourself some space for you before you start checking your phone. That's number one.

2. Try breathing with the sun. Go outside and breathe with the sun. Just take deep breaths and soak it up - soak up the sunshine. You're going to start feeling great already.

3. If you have any toxic nourishment habits, go for that green juice first thing in the day. See how you feel. Maybe [try] some warm water with lemon.

4. When you have all of that, grab a pen and paper and brain dump. Just get it all out. Write your thoughts out - just whatever is coming through - whatever you're thinking - whatever you're going through.

5. Then maybe stretch, and make yourself breakfast.

These little habits are going to create this spaciousness for you to feel good, then when you have this cluster fuck of thoughts at the beginning of the day even if you're not meditating, you're creating space to observe your neurotic behavioral patterns. I think more challenging to sit down and meditate - it's easier to sit down breathe soak up some, sun and watch your thoughts even that is a practice.

How you start your day, and how you end your day really determines how you're going to live your day in between. So prioritize your well-being through self-awareness.

#9 What is your spirit animal?

Rahim: It's a Jaguar. Then when I'm in water it's a dolphin. I feel very connected to the animal kingdom.

#10 What's in store for people who are spiritually aware versus those who opt out?

Rahim: I think that if you are not tapping in, you're limiting yourself because your potential is infinite. So if you're living with a blindfold on you can only go so far. But if you're living with the awareness of your true self, and you are consciously choosing to tap into the infinite - to perceive the metaphysical - to perceive the unseen -  to perceive the divinity that is around you ... then you definitely have an edge in this space. You're going to be able to communicate, and create from a place of higher vibration and awareness that is infinite.

I think that if you're living with this level of awareness you are able to integrate that into the digital stratosphere and navigate web3 with a level of creative composure that allows you to express yourself, and to monetize that in an efficient way.

#11 You mentioned that spiritual practice can give you an edge. What does it mean to have an edge in a place of abundance?

Rahim: It's the ability to finesse and move through a predominantly fear oriented space by living in the way of the warrior, which is the way of the heart - with the heart full of courage.

I feel like if you're living through the heart you're more bound to co-create and collaborate with others versus being in a competitive state. Now, competition is healthy in any environment because it promotes growth, so there's benefits to having competition. It's when the competition becomes toxic that it's not conducive to the greater ecosystem - so everything in moderation.

And I think that having an edge over your competition can push your competition to grow and evolve as well.

I'm excited to be here because of the collaborations that we are going to see through this financial technology. From a place of self-awareness, by way of the creative and healing arts (i.e. music and fashion), it can be super healing. I think these are the two doorways into a more exciting web3.

#12 How does spirituality help us break free from repeating the mistakes of the past?

Rahim: I think that with enough self-awareness we learn from our mistakes and we consciously choose to create patterns that serve us in our growth, our expansion. It allows us to embody new levels of who we imagine ourselves to be. I think it's just shifting into a conscious choice of, What are we choosing for ourselves and each other?

#13. Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Rahim: I'm really looking forward to being able to express myself through music and seeing how I can couple that with digital fashion. The vibes that we bring into this space are really going to transform the level of consciousness in the way that we interact, instead of random degen memes or silly NFTS.

I'm also working with Gaia Gives which is a crowdfunding platform for really great causes utilizing crypto and blockchain donations.

We actually have the tools that can inspire radical change in this world, and to shift consciousness  - and to me that's fascinating. So I'm excited to utilize the protocols that are being built to our advantage to actually improve the quality of life for humanity.

☞ You can connect with Rahim on Twitter.

"We have no system of our own, nor of others to substitute in lieu of the reigning systems... We wish, we cordially wish, to take the New Testament out of the abuses of the clergy, and put it into the hands of the people. And to do this is no easy task...” - Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist Vol 1, p. 120, 1824

A short FTX story.

The result of a type of pervasive, weak thinking, has reared its head.

FTX, the former centralized exchange who's founder, Sam Bankman Fried (SBF), filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy just this November, has left the entire crypto industry reeling.

"FTX is going to be great because SBF has the right DNA." Someone in the crypto industry once said to me in 2021.

Then, last year I traveled to Lisbon to attend the Solana Breakpoint conference. While there, I was asked by my team to find FTX team members, and engage with them in order to form a partnership in some capacity. And as life would have it, I went to the wrong hackathon location, but was helped by a hotelier who gave me an entire tour of the correct hackathon venue across the street. My team was co-sponsoring the hackathon. I'd crafted these pink and black shirts with a secret message in binary. Find Your Meaning.

I moseyed along the walls of the old horse stable exterior after my tour, and then I stumbled upon a group of three strangers who quickly introduced themselves as a lead Solana developer and two employees from FTX. Lucky me, I thought to myself. Because FTX was also co-sponsoring the hackathon, I knew that they were looking for that stable horse building too, and now that the hotelier was gone, I could give the tour instead.  

Once I gave them the tour, including the stunning view of the April 25th bridge across the Tagus, I distinctly remember the FTX team, a brunette woman (Was she Caroline? I really don't know.), and a taller brunette gentleman standing together in Lisbon, tight lipped as I asked, "Oh, so how's it going at FTX?"

Their response was cordial and I sensed the armor, a fortress-like wall because they weren't readily sharing much of anything - no drive to network or chat. And my intuition instantly knew, Nope, no partnership here.

Later that afternoon or the next day, I called my team and shared, "There's not going to be a partnership with FTX. I tried to chat with them, and they're walled. I can't explain it, but it's just that I'm not feeling they'll be open. I don't know what to say, really." I was so glad when my team didn't ask me to hunt them down or to push the partnership efforts further. Meeting those two persons and sensing that cold feedback was uncomfortable. And because of that tense interaction, I was left no longer compelled to use FTX, though I had been previously encouraged to do so. Lucky me?

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As FTX imploded just weeks ago, the DNA of SBF surfaced again online, albeit in the negative and racist forms where images of Fried's lineage was cast as untrustworthy, and Kanye's recent remarks seemed to fuel latent, unjust rage. I called my very highly opinionated, politically active, former pharmacist, though now retired, aunt to update her on what was happening. She commented with might, "What kind of dumb ass bases their reasoning for sending their money to someone on some dumb ass DNA shit like that? The hell is wrong with people?"

She's not wrong.

What I'd shared with my aunt was the fallacy that I'd heard for years in this industry from people I'd met and who casually shared, DNA ∴ Trust, DNA ∴ Credibility. It's almost a recurring mantra, in which literal DNA is lauded as the indicator for an individual's path in life. But it is, instead, a nasty belief that rests on the laurels of one's ancestors. It's a limited, damaging, fixed-mindset belief. And it's this weak thinking that seduces us to no more than those rats who were lulled, in droves, into rivers.

It's time to retire this type of weak thinking. We're all capable of venturing through life across a number of paths based on a number of seen and unseen factors. @owocki's visual beautifully illuminates:

But it is important to also acknowledge that our life's journey can be challenged by impeding systems that we may or may not be equipped to overcome. Blockchain technology aims, in part, to make it harder for people to be exploited, aiming to help the individual journey through life with fewer of the challenges that might thwart them from reaching their fullest potential.

Yet the exploits continue. Why?

Thesis. Nestled in the heart of the Second Great Awakening is the story of rugged individualism ushering in a new religion that promised a personal relationship with God. It was a religion for those who had previously been deemed damned within the tradition of Calvinism. The movement became a message of acceptance. The impact? Democratization. The end of slavery. More women taking up space in society. But the movement was not without exploitation, where excessive devotion to the charismatic became a new entryway for corruption. In Web3, the story tracks similarly to this 1820 movement. So how does the innovation of blockchain begin to counter continued corruption?

Conversion.

In the religious movement of the Second Great Awakening, more people ran to churches, and in particular, women, the enslaved, and the poor. The goal of this movement was to convert masses of people who'd not been exposed to the strong, established religion that existed on the Eastern front of the colonies to a new religion, one that valued one's personal religion and relationship with God. It was a celebration of having one's religious power within them, and access to a loving God that valued them at a very personal level. Compelling. This conversion played out as one becoming more active within the religion, and in particular Evangelicalism, a form of Christianity seeking to make heaven on Earth, or millenarianism².

Today's Web3 movement aims to craft something similar. It is uprooting old regimes, and rewiring new paths - the path to personal ownership of information, the path of democratization, and of money and so much more. So the social and cultural shifts seen in the Second Great Awakening almost sounds similar to some aspects of today's Web3 movement. "Convert the Web2 world to Web3 and we'll be in our utopia," and "Let's get women and let's get BIPOC folks on our Twitterspaces pronto!"

The Second Great Awakening successfully fired against the old establishment, Calvinism¹, a belief that you're born destined for hell or heaven, and that there's nothing on Earth you can do to escape that fate. Cue entry of Web3's Calvinists, "It's in his DNA," dishing out social-media sermons that are no more than epithets of archaic reasoning.

The parallels are chilling, right?

In the end, the impact of the Second Great Awakening was huge. It led to a more democratized America that ushered in the Abolitionist movement which led to the end of American slavery and other changes that still impact that nation today. But its movement was not without consequence.

Stagecraft Beliefs.

Within the Second Great Awakening, corruption arose in the form of the Apocalyptic movement³ - overpromise, underdeliver. It resulted in an increase of proclaims that Jesus was returning to fulfill the Heaven on Earth belief. One particular movement, Millerite, stated Jesus would come to Earth in 1843 through the clouds. But by October of 1844 leaders charged that Jesus was stuck in the clouds, and fervent prayer would release him. Following the disappointment, members fled to other religions.

Our vulnerability makes us ripe for exploitation. You may know of the U.S.-based cult, the People's Temple, who in 1978 in Jonestown, Guyana provided (by force to some) flavor-aid juice to its followers for "revolutionary suicide".  The juice contained toxic levels of cyanide. All 909 members including ~300 members under the age of 17, died on the same day in the fall of that year.

People's Temple cult leader Jim Jones, similar to those preachers in the Second Great Awakening, charged against the establishment and its systems. For this, he gained followers. Jones crafted the narrative that appealed to his members' needs and emotions. He, just as the Millerite leaders, also appealed to personal values.

Those who exploit others in the crypto industry have been successful just as much as cult leaders have been successful at wielding their own power against vulnerable populations for personal gain. Appeals to quick money and instant profits. Appeals to raw trust. Appeals to emotions. The hype. The robbery. The follow up message in Discord, "sorry guys..." Harvard calls these emotional motivators, the behaviors that you make which signal to exploiters they can make money off of you⁴.

And just as much as the Second Great Awakening succumbed to its own internal abuses, losing the protective religious checks and balances for speaking against the traditions of the day, crypto's got no moat. It's outside the walls of the traditional financial systems, and it too has no internal checks and balances, no decentralized regulation of its own. So how can this new movement armor itself from thieves?

Checks & Balances

Decentralization was to act as its own system of checks & balances in the blockchain industry, but as we're still tethered to parts of the past -old systems- we know it requires something more.

Decentralization alone is not enough to keep the industry upright. We boast DYOR 24/7, but even that's not enough to shield us. In this great digital experiment we're uncovering the reality that the challenges we face in crypto are reflections of challenges traditional finance faces too - the innate challenges of our very own humanity, where some adults with lots of power opt to exploit and corrupt on an even larger playground. It's not just the story of FTX, it's the story of: so-called investors robbing retail, hackers, rug-pulls.

Putting power back into the hands of the individual is no easy task. But I wonder, specifically, what is this FTX devastation truly teaching us?

Should we walk away, failing to discuss this obviously painful topic, we might find our minds become attracted to and habituated by cues of the past. We may find that we give way due to fatigue. Or worse we may continue to ground our reasoning in unreliable signals:

Genius ∴ Trust.

DNA ∴ Trust.

Celebrity ∴ Trust.

[insert your personal marketing weakness] ∴ Credible.

[insert propaganda technique] ∴ Believe.

Conclusion

From the Second Great Awakening, we know that corrupt players were present as a result of the powerful impact the movement had on society. So we know that those same characters of the past will appear in our present-day too. They are infiltrating where our digital and human vulnerabilities lay. But we also know something more from the past, that the continued positive efforts of The Second Great Awakening, with its religious experimentation, yielded amazing outcomes - the Abolitionist movement and the end of slavery, improvements for women and the poor, and so much more that brought about new freedoms, and new opportunities. So too, Crypto's experiment continues.

Special thanks to Sena Gürdoğan for providing feedback on early drafts of this piece

Resources

1. Ryan Reeves. “Second Great Awakening.” YouTube, 9 July 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2LTugtRQEQ.

2. Noll, Mark A. The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity. Eerdmans, 2007.

3. Khan Academy. “The Second Great Awakening - Part 1.” YouTube, 2 Sept. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnaLjLOAwkc.

4. “The New Science of Customer Emotions.” Harvard Business Review, 23 Sept. 2019, hbr.org/2015/11/the-new-science-of-customer-emotions.

“Death is but a pause that punctuates the seasons of our life, nothing more.” – Dr. Christopher Bache

Marvelous. On November 4th Artemis I launches. You might want to check it out - seems we're going to the moon 🌚.

I want to experiment here with a personal anecdote. My sixth grade teacher, we'll call her Ms. Dean, opened up our world history class with Buddhism one day, and I'll never forget how that moment animated me. The years prior I'd only heard of Heaven and Hell, and I had little exposure to other religious concepts. Ms. Dean spoke of Buddha's life, and how he meditated under a tree. Then she described the four noble truths, eight-fold path, karma, and when she got to reincarnation I felt a jolt - the other-worldly kind- pulse through my body. I spun around in my chair to face her, giving her my complete attention, then I raised my hand and asked, "Can you say that part about reincarnation again, please?"

The moments that followed were eerie. Our class was a somewhat-rambunctious group of eleven and twelve year olds in one of the poorest parts of town, yet as she described these concepts, something about reincarnation silenced us. To me, parts of reincarnation, as she described,  felt accurate.

Other hands flew up, "So you're saying, if I'm like mean to Roger, I'll come back as a cat in my next life?"

"Maybe. You could be a donkey, or a fly. Never know." Ms. Dean tempered the air with her cheeky response.

"But is it real? This is scary. Like, I don't want to be a bat." Students who'd been disinterested in other topics, were now alert and casually alarmed.

"Just be nice. That's all you gotta do." Advice now showered across the air.

"What you choose to believe is up to you." Ms. Dean, sealing the mystery of the concept.

In the greater human story, humanity has been shamed into its existence. From the Garden of Eden to concepts of Heaven and Hell to sin and suffering, our myths and religions have instilled in us a deep sense that we are flawed, that we have fallen - and that the way out of our flawed existence is via transcendence. Where religion argues that God is the grantor of transcendence, technology responds in kind. However, with each advance cycles emerge - tech births, tech changes, new economies, cultural changes - and then they repeat. While we boast that we are more civilized due to these advancements, our technological approach to transcendence may be superficial, entrapping us in tortures akin to the hell realms of saṃsāra -real or otherwise. There is an alternative. Web3 may offer a new path - where the ways in which we work might allow us to transcend the superficial in order to find our own authenticity.

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The Human Flaw

Humanity is on a journey - a unique story all its own. Individually and collectively we cycle through our call to adventure, followed by challenges and temptations, transformation, and finally our return home, completing and restarting the hero's journey, generation by generation. But our journey is not light - it is heavy laden with personal and collective trauma¹ and shame.

"Shame produces trauma. Trauma produces paralysis."  - bell hooks

A few days ago, at a blockchain event I was not supposed to attend (Somehow, the password to access the event found me just hours before), I met someone that works for Interpol. Interpol fights crime of all sorts - human trafficking, environmental, war crimes, firearms trafficking, crypto scams, etc... I knew about one of their challenges - machine guns disguised as components of televisions and packaged as extra large luggage on airplanes, only to be assembled once at the destination. Interpol's list of crime-fighting categories are mirrors of societal ills, our collective vulnerabilities. But this reality is not entirely what shames us.

Origins of collective shame. Serpent. Fruit. Fig leaves. The fall. We may know the story of the fall from the Bible's third chapter of Genesis if following Christianity. In Islam, the fall is described in at least four different Surahs across the Qurʾān. And in Buddhism we are shown the Four Noble truths, the first of which proclaims that life is suffering. Concepts of the fall from perfection into sin, and suffering overlap - in this, our imperfection condemns us to death, suffering, reincarnation.

Even in speech we find the undercurrents of this deep conviction - religious, spiritual, atheist, or otherwise. We adopt stories and language that repeatedly point to our imperfection. In English, it's common to hear phrases that equate to, "I'm human. I'm not perfect." Yet, we continue to invent and innovate. We work to improve our personal lives, our families, and even society at large. But, why? Whether we adopt these religious and mythological concepts consciously or not, it is clear that humanity aims to be redeemed - shown in its drive to continuously improve. David Noble's The Religion of Technology, further details how this came to be:

Technology had come to be identified with transcendence...

A pattern...in the useful arts...emerged uniquely in the European Middle Ages. This unprecedented enterprise reflected a profound cultural shift...whereby humble activities ...came to be dignified and deemed worthy of elite attention and devotion...rooted in an ideological innovation which invested the useful arts with a significance beyond mere utility. Technology had come to be identified with transcendence, implicated as never before in the Christian idea².

Transcendence. Buddha outlines the path to enlightenment, where we may redeem ourselves through nirvana, or moksha from Indian philosophy, and be saved from reincarnation. The book of Revelations in the Bible outlines that God will come to redeem believers, and take them into Heaven for eternity. But it is argued that somewhere around the middle ages of Europe, the advent of the plow bestowed the first recognition that humanity could escape suffering itself². The plow offered an opportunity to exploit nature, and reclaim dominion over the land, charting a new path to salvation with technology - sometimes coupled with the path of dominance. Ever since, we have yet to stop innovating.

Technological Saṃsāra, LSD & Reincarnation

Imagine dedicating twenty years of your life to taking very high doses of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) for science. In 1979, professor of religious studies, Dr. Christopher Bache, embarked on this journey, crossing the boundaries of the psyche with seventy-three journeys.

There are many dangers in such a quest. LSD at very high doses, can cause the body to experience seizures, convulsions, nausea. Because of the legalities surrounding Bache's trips, he kept his research private until he was finally able to publish his book³.

In 2019 he published the detailed account of his experience in LSD and the Mind of the Universe: Diamonds from Heaven. Bache's account is expansive - and what's poignant are his references to humanity and scientific evidence for reincarnation. His experience gives us a glimpse into a revised perspective of humanity absent of doctrine - that humanity is a singular organism, a singular whole of many parts, refining itself through reincarnation to transcend from homo sapiens to something new, homo santos. In a recorded interview, he asked the question, what do you want to be doing in a million years because we'll still be here.

🤔 Did you watch 2015's Live Die Repeat: Edge of Tomorrow? Similar to Bache's reincarnation description - though in total Hollywood fashion - the film follows a soldier who endures an endless loop of life and death in a war against extraterrestrials. The soldier is granted a chance at survival against the ETs once the formula for defeating them is figured out, but not before cycling through the entire life, war, and death experience repetitively.

The thread remains. Technological advancements demonstrate the undercurrent of the human drive to improve, or to perhaps redeem ourselves. We are doing the actions of improving, whether we find ourselves bound to religion or not - we are aiming to be better. We are driven to be better than before, and this shows up in our inventions - our technology. However, this drive can also generate superficial technologies that hijack us to pursue superficial aims.

Technological saṃsāra. In the tech life cycle, we witness the birth of new tech driven by culture. Then we see its changes, new economies and new cultural impact. When tech is generated from a superficial place, we may find ourselves in technological saṃsāra, the repeated cycles of tech life cycles that fill us with misery or trauma¹,⁴ and end with new tech that involves new misery, on repeat.

Digital society produces more information...and it produces pornographization

Cloud Atlas (🎥 movie trailer) didn't get rave reviews at the box office, but the film, adapted from the book of the same title became a cult classic. I love the story line. Viewers watch the reincarnation of its main characters over time. We see the fight against the Korean superstate and neocapitalism. We see robots cleaning radioactive water... The future is so savvy, yet dystopian.

While tech has filled us with information, and media channels all our own, a cultural challenge has emerged. Competition for attention in a world with lots of information may drive the pornographization of creations by creators pursuing a life in the Passion Economy. Pornographization is not strictly tied to pornography. It can also include vulgarity, which can get rebranded as edgy and cool. Philosopher Hanzie Freinacht explains:  

Digital society produces more information in a few days than all of human history prior to the advent of the Internet. This means that there is always an immense abundance of information vying for attention—and to gain more attention, a meme must recombine what has hitherto been communicated in a manner that carries forth an element of surprise...That propels a rapid and powerful cultural evolution towards universality … and it produces pornographization⁵.

So, it begets the question - how will the future of work in Web3 appear when creators will need to vie for our attention, and build audiences and communities in a very crowded place? Will we find ourselves cycling through pornographization - experiencing the pitfalls of mental health, and more, or can we escape the digital saṃsāra and transcend?

Web3 ∴ Transcendence

I found this DJ, Virgo Deep, 🎶 a young kid just getting his start in South Africa. He uses the Amapiano to produce his music and the first time I heard his sound I put him on repeat for about three days straight. The tones escalate into this very deep place and they really just hit different. The fifty-eight minute experience 🎧 is worth the listen if you've a taste for the eclectic, let it all build and maybe you'll hear and feel what I mean. And should you choose to dance, it is full of uplifting sounds.

If superficial is the path to nihilistic emptiness, then deep is the path to transcendence. Holding reincarnation as a positive collective trajectory allows us to ask, what do we want to be doing the next time we reincarnate? And the time after that? I imagine, you're crafting something magical, and you're not interested in returning to any semblance of tech misery, right?

Reincarnation is the long view.

The Longnow Foundation in San Francisco, California fosters long-term thinking. They've built a mechanical clock, and placed it inside of a mountain to keep time for the next 10,000 years. Why? Steward Brand shares:

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed — some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries⁶.

Reincarnation is the long view. Imagine that it's you, and everyone you know, returning back here to Earth, to witness your collective contributions a century or two later.

The Current Path. We don't have countermeasures. The Digital Revolution of today is a global phenomenon that is hitting the world all at once. And we’re unclear which countermeasures to put in place to protect ourselves. As a result, we are witnessing the decay of mental health as society progresses. Technology is over-exposing young, immature minds to stark and revealing imagery and language⁵. McKinsey's reports on the health of Gen Z is incredibly heartbreaking. 58% of Gen Z has more than two social needs unmet compared to Gen Y at 16%⁷. McKinsey lists a number of other alarming Gen Z health trends. It is no wonder that a youth mental health crisis advisory was declared in the United States at the end of 2021. This exposure distorts the view of adulthood and sexual relations, among other things. And it makes it easy for digital predators—commercial, sexual, or cult-like ones—to target them⁵.

I loved this very clear, two-minute tweet-vid of filmmaker Bo Burnham who very succinctly sums up our current status in the technological saṃsāra.

We don’t know which countermeasures to put in place to protect ourselves...

The New Path. Creators, contributors, and all at work in Web3 will need to enter the deep. The path out of the technological saṃsāra is through this red pill - a reacquaintance with your deepest, fullest, and most authentic self - where we are most strong. In so doing, that deep part of you can thrive, rather than be looped into miseries day after day - or perhaps century after century.

The environment that Web3 can offer for the future of work - what it promises - is to be a container for highly inclusive, highly diverse individuals who are allowed to be. It promises to be the space where we can thrive. What does this path look like? I've created a preliminary draft for how creators and those working autonomously might think about transcending technological saṃsāra in Web3 at the personal level, and I share it below. I welcome feedback, and your thoughts on its initial design.

Deep Truths of the Web3 Creator

1. The creator is the trend setter.

2. The creator is original in her own passion.

3. The creator loves its creations, as a byproduct its creations nourish the ecosystem.

4. The creator loves the deep, dark, and light parts of herself.

5. The muse appears to the grounded creator.

The Web3 Creator's Path to the Deep

1. Purge trauma of all kinds.

2. Do not bow to the algorithms.

3. Collaborate.

4. Dance.

5. Avoid confusing toxic environments with life's natural challenges.

6. Express gratitude often.

7. Be curious of your mystery.

8. Find silence.

9. Enslaved excitement is not grounded creativity.

Would you like to see these truths and the steps in the path more fleshed out?

Conclusion

Reframing our trajectory towards reincarnation or even millennia-long thinking can help us shape the future of work in Web3 more holistically. It can allow us to deeply consider our digital lives and our physical and mental well-being. We deserve to be in this world. We can chart new paths forward that transcend the misery of our current digital lives - with the aim that we can ultimately improve our relationship with the digital and ourselves.

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Resources

1. Shridhare, L. (2020, June 17). Collective trauma. Collective Trauma . Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://hms.harvard.edu/news/collective-trauma

2. Noble, D. F. (1999). The religion of technology: The divinity of man and the spirit of invention. Penguin Books.Bache, C. M. (2020). Lsd and the mind of the universe: Diamonds from heaven. Park Street.

3. Bache, C. M. (2020). Lsd and the mind of the universe: Diamonds from heaven. Park Street.

4. Harvard Health. (2021, February 12). Past trauma may haunt your future health. Harvard Health Publishing. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/past-trauma-may-haunt-your-future-health

5. Freinacht, H. (2022, March 21). [digital] madness and [pornographic] civilization. Metamoderna. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://metamoderna.org/digital-madness-and-pornographic-civilization/

6. Brand, S. (2022, August 4). The Clock of the Long Now. Clock. Retrieved October 31, 2022, from https://longnow.org/clock/

7. McKinsey & Company. (2022, August 1). Addressing the unprecedented behavioral-health challenges facing generation Z. McKinsey & Company. Retrieved November 3, 2022, from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/addressing-the-unprecedented-behavioral-health-challenges-facing-generation-z

Ye shall utterly destroy all the places, wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains, and upon the hills, and under every green tree: And ye shall overthrow their altars, and break their pillars, and burn their groves with fire... - Deuteronomy 12:2-3

Thesis. In what way, and from whom or what, did the patriarchal religious structures usurp and maintain power? Though complex and multifaceted, the forces that combined to support and sustain those religious structures may lie in a review of the early matrifocal religions. While hierarchical structures have ushered in great gains, it has been at the cost of nature's resources, human freedoms, and all that we can not quantify. In peeling back the layers of these forces - the attacks on and demonization of nature-based religions, we may uncover the origins of more balanced orientations that support recent organizational proposals for DAO structures.

Early Earth Religions

The scope of nature worship is vast. From animism to forest goddesses to Pantheism to witchcraft to the intricate variations between indigenous traditions of the past and the eclectic and contemporary practices of today, nature worship's most dangerous threat to hierarchical religious structures lie in the preservation and celebration of the individual's ability to directly connect with the divine.

In Reinventing Organizations, Frederick Laloux introduces the concept of the    evolutionary Teal organization. Teal organizations are viewed as living entities. They are devoid of power hierarchy, and are viewed as an unfolding organizational approach that humanity can aspire to create. But what Laloux illuminates in the teal organization from the perspective of human history and developmental psychology, may in part be a remembering of our early religious origins.

Prior to the introduction of the teal organization, Laloux first details the infrared and magenta paradigms. In a generalized view he describes these smaller and less complex communities as a warring and violent collective that contained little to no hierarchy¹. He illustrates the through-line of violence from those paradigms all the way into his red, amber, and orange organization in ways that appear to negate the idea that pre-patriarchal values existed - that humanity was not likely to have meaningfully embodied matrifocal, egalitarian or peaceful orientations. From a historical and anthropological lens this sharply conflicts with what we know and are continuing to discover about the past.

the term matrifocal is not used in the same vein as matriarchy

I do not wish to romanticize nature-based religions or excuse practices that we in modernity would abhor, but rather the aim here is to redirect us to review pre-patriarchal values. Each of our lineages - ancestors - the world over - are to have certainly practiced matrifocal or Earth-based religions indigenously, and to varying depths in their communities. Practitioners of nature-based religions may have historically been referred to as heathens, pagans, gentiles - among other terms that have been strategically described as derogatory. But, pagans, defined here as pluralistic and individualistic followers of polytheistic Earth-centered, or matrifocal/matristic religious practices², believe "...that there are many valid religious paths, and that personal religious experience is the most important source of spiritual knowledge"³.

it is not a silencing of the masculine

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From the extraordinary and controversial work of Marjia Gimbutas, much of what we know of pre-patriarchal religions in Europe appear to contain matrifocal values in a more broad and all-encompassing form. In her book, The Living Goddess, Gimbutas elaborates as she describes the feminine symbolism within religious artifacts, "The female force...is a shifting kaleidoscope of meaning; she personified every phase of life, death, and regeneration. She was the Creator from whom all life - human, plant, and animal - arose, and to whom everything returned"⁴.

Nature-based worship...re-illuminates an orientation for our thoughts towards DAOs

It's important to note that the term matrifocal is not used in the same vein as matriarchy - the direct opposite of patriarchy, which evokes a sense of force, violence, and dominance². The orientation towards fertility or abundance, and to nature - to life itself - is matrifocal or matristic. Thus, the terms express an entirely different focus - it is not a silencing of the masculine, it is an acknowledgement that life comes forward from the feminine. Central to their meaning lie values that venerate nature and its cycles and circles, partnership, interconnectedness - seeing the divine everywhere.

Nature-based worship, is a bedrock for the celebration of life, living, and our capacity to create. Ultimately it re-illuminates an orientation for our thoughts towards DAOs. Though Laloux points to the this celebration of life in the teal organization futuristically, his ideas for what we can achieve are beautifully described:

We aim to have a workplace where we can honor all parts of us: the cognitive, physical, emotional, and spiritual; the rational and the intuitive; the feminine and the masculine. We recognize that we are all deeply interconnected, part of a bigger whole that includes nature and all forms of life¹.

But the time for the matrifocial religions was cut short, and sent underground. And for their perceived corruption - even in the face of awe - nature-worshippers, their symbols, and values, domestic and across borders, became a threat that led to the church's brutal attack on nature itself:

"...categorizing non-European peoples as 'pagans', especially those who seemed to possess a powerful connection to the natural world or to what Europeans viewed as the wilderness, often justified dispossession and invasion, even as alternate ways of expressing spirituality and authority captivated those who encountered them"⁵,  

Demonizing Nature

We all make up nature. But our early comprehension of other triggered some religious forces into demonizing nature - men, women, and vegetation -  in order to gain control.

Trees, gatekeepers to the spiritual world and often at the center of nature worship, reflected and embodied life, death, rebirth and abundance.

There's a way of preserving the natural heritage

Dr. Sada Mire, an archeologist researching the horn of Africa, was compelled to write her book Divine Fertility after receiving a wager, a sacred object made from the olive tree, upon her grandmother's passing. Mire helps us to understand why humans even oriented towards nature in this way:

"Why do we have sacred trees? Why do we have sacred objects?...There's a way of preserving the natural heritage...But it's actually also a mechanism to regenerate the landscape and look after the landscape...And also these places are often medicinal...it's often because it has a medicinal element to it"⁶.

Why do we have sacred trees?...It's often because it has a medicinal element

I would be remiss if I failed to inform you of the religious and medicinal significance of the Yew tree. Its prominence is woven throughout history, myth, and religion. Today we might easily find the Yew tree in church graveyards, as it was customary to bury the dead near the Yew. However, the Yew tree is one of the most dangerous trees to humans. Consuming the needles from the Yew tree can kill you. Anything grown in, on, or around the Yew tree contains the poison within the tree too - so consuming, say edible mushrooms growing on the tree can result in death. Though, there are red berries on the tree that can be safely consumed, but the pits inside the berries still contain the poison and they should not be consumed. Though terrifying, the Yew holds dual power - death and life. Today pharmaceutical companies use the tree to fight cancer - lung, ovarian, breast, Kaposi's sarcoma.

the Yew Tree is used by pharmaceutical companies to fight cancer

Though for control and dominance, nature-worshippers and their sacred trees were fashioned into unwelcome competitors that needed to be demonized and destroyed in Europe⁷. Further, "...various Church councils in the early middle ages denounced those who venerated trees, one held at Nantes 895 AD..."⁷

So, what drove this motivation for religious ecocide?

For hundreds of years horrific torture, murder, and destruction ensued even further under the Inquisition. And where religious monopoly grew, matrifocal orientations either went underground, were absorbed, or transformed: tree symbolism transformed from a living being to a dead wooden cross⁸.

This destruction was not limited to Europe. Religious monopolies ravaged the world. In colonial Kenya, amongst the Agikuyu, arboreal destruction was pervasive. "The best and first mission of these missionaries was to eradicate their traditional temples of worship; the Mugumo tree, replacing them with churches and schools.⁹" The damage was equivalent to the destruction of one's quality of life:  

... the Agikuyu demonstrate that nature is not an ‘empty canvass’ but rather a sophisticated one in which their culture, society, politics and religion are constructed...in planting trees, the Gikuyu would be planting a ‘seed of peace’ where religio-political stability could be realised and the environment managed sustainably...when the environment is destroyed, plundered or mismanaged their quality of life is undermined...⁹

tree symbolism transformed from a living being to a dead wooden cross

So, what drove this motivation for religious ecocide, and the loss of the matrifocal orientation? The proposed evolution of organizations from Laloux range in color and capacity from red to amber to orange to green and teal. In amber organizations you get principles that align with hierarchy, command, monopoly, and control. At the heart of the amber paradigm is the desire for predictability, which creates the pressure for security and order. Members at the bottom of this hierarchy are viewed as lazy and needing direction.

"The Roman Catholic church is built on this paradigm. Arguably it has been the defining organization of the western world...Amber organizations are still very present today. [R]eligious organizations... are run based on conformist amber principles and practices¹".

While human progress is evident in contemporary life, the difficulty to coexist remains and the desire to monopolize continues:  

"Around the world, postcolonial nationalist imaginaries have followed the Western model of shrinking and neutralizing the religious sphere and, through enforced modernization, police action, and public education have banned or curtailed many religious practices from both public and private life"¹⁰.

Matrifocal Orientation

How does a DAO orient matrifocally? While DAO structures seeking to avoid hierarchy may take on a heterarchical structure with great intentions, founders and contributors may unintentionally orient towards old hierarchical behaviors and expectations or even red, amber, or orange paradigms. Imbuing a matrifocal framework at the onset, development, and throughout the natural cycles of a DAO including its subDAOs and community of contributors, may help it consciously adopt a consistent and habituated matrifocal orientation.

Laloux posits a list of moods  for organizations to orient their culture and purpose towards within the teal paradigm. He also includes references to those in authority as the responsible party to affect behavioral change in the organization. Outside of his book he includes a significant amount of resources focused on self-management - potentially one of the most significant factors for the health and longevity of the organization. Decentralized, online organizations may be served in reviewing Laloux's suggestions in addition to the diagrams below.

Below I outline a preliminary matrifocal framework for DAOs and self-evaluation tool for DAO contributors both for discussion and/or as a path for matrifocal orientation. I have chosen not to include a list of matrifocal values - it would be beneficial for DAOs and teams within to not only identify matrifical values on their own, but also list out damaging patriarchal values that the team may be operating under.

Frameworks

These two illustrations, while nascent, aim to help DAOs and contributors orient away from hierarchical reliance and towards the needs of a living DAO.

Matrifocal DAO Framework Questions

My early suggestions for the DAO Framework is to implement periodic reviews with the framework in order to assess and reorient as necessary. For the DAO's orientation - and to shift accordingly - be it seasonal,  or according to its own cycles of self-inquiry. This check-in can be done collectively and creatively - online, in nature, in sacred places and spaces.

View or Download: Matrifocal DAO Framework Crypto Pynk

Matrifocal DAO Contributor Effectiveness: Self Evaluation

My suggestions for implementing the Self-Evaluation tool is that it should be introduced during or before onboarding so that new contributors can consciously think about all aspects of their contribution. Also, some of the criteria could be broken down into its smaller parts, rather than lumping them together - please share if you'd like to see that. While I have not created the team evaluation tool, it can be useful to use the self-evaluation tool to help teams orient matrifocally too.

Additionally, anonymous data from the self-evaluation can be published for each of the criterion, illuminating areas where the DAO can further support the entire ecosystem. For example, with the knowledge that the biggest challenge across a particular DAO is that contributors struggle in training and development, teams and the DAO at large can better support this area by reevaluating the values within their norms for training and development.

View or Download: DAO Contributor Rubric PDF Crypto Pynk

Conclusion

Early Earth religions paint a world that not only embraced nature, but it also focused on the power of the individual to have an experience with the divine - that at the core, each individual had the potential to cultivate a rich spiritual life that would inform their own personal path in a life-giving way.

the feminine force that survived

While the evolutionary teal organization hinges its argument on a past filled with violence, the matrifocal religions across our world tell a different story of our past. The teal paradigm certainly helps us become aware of the potential for the structure of decentralized organizations, and how individuals might contribute, however,  we are not orienting to something new, but rather we are finally circling back to the feminine force that survived dehumanization, being denounced and pushed underground - forgotten. Only in recent times has the essence of the feminine force been allowed to safely speak freely, to share and present its life-giving value structures with the existing masculine force of today.  

Which DAOs appear to have matrifocal orientations?

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Resources

1. Laloux, F. (2014). Reinventing organizations a guide to creating organizations inspired by the next stage of human consciousness. Brussels Nelson Parker.

2. Starhawk (Director). (2006). Earth Magic [Audio file]. Sounds True.

3. Traditions, Texts, and Values. (2016). Pluralism.org; The Pluralism Project, Harvard University. https://pluralism.org/traditions-texts-and-values

4. Marija Alseikaite Gimbutas, & Miriam Robbins Dexter. (2001). The living goddesses. University Of California Press, , Cop.

5. Pagan. (2021). In Keywords of Identity, Race, and Human Mobility in Early Modern England (pp. 196–201). Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1t8q92s.28.    

6. Riksantikvarieämbetet. (2018, November 7). Höstmöte 2018 - Sada Mire. Www.youtube.com.

1. .  

2. J  H Philpot, Mrs. (2004). The sacred tree in religion and myth. Dover Publications.  

3. Hooke, D. (2014). Christianity and the ‘Sacred Tree. In M. G. Shapland (Ed.), Trees and Timber in the Anglo-Saxon World, Medieval History and Archaeology. Oxford Academic. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199680795.003.0012.    

4. Karangi, M. M. (2008). Revisiting the roots of Gĩkũyũ culture through the sacredMũgumotree. Journal of African Cultural Studies, 20(1), 117–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/13696810802159339.  

5. Yang, M. M. . (2004). Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints. Public Culture, 16(2), 209–238. https://doi.org/10.1215/08992363-16-2-209.  

"A child's first thief and first lie are pivotal in the history of the intellect, then for with them the child is not just in the world of significance, fantasy, fabulation, and fiction; she is in the world as an independent creator, setting out to make meaning on her own terms, not subject to the prohibitions that protect her." - Lewis Hyde, Trickster Makes this World

Blockchain technology, unveiled to the world by the intelligent disruptor and cryptically-named Satoshi Nakamoto, ushered in the groundwork for innovative change in ways that appear to align with religion, the long-held seat of power and competitor of the nation-state. Against the backdrop of nascent technology and religious narratives, Nakamoto enters as the reminder of human essence - of our capacity to create. And while blockchain technology now carves away at power too, the question arises - what new faith are we creating?

Thieves and Liars Bring Evolutions

The book, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen disturbed me the first time I read it. It traces the darker parts of history in the United States, revealing the grotesque details of survival wrapped within America's tragic past. And in coming to know what had been omitted, what had been stolen from earlier learnings, I set out to right it - to know the history more intimately.

I focused on becoming a history teacher, and along the way I became fond of anthropology. There are debates that often arise on the subject - that humanity has so far evolved that the study of anthropology - and using it as a mark for humanity's trajectory, is unsound. I differ.

There is wisdom in our origins. It frames the very essence of what it means to be homo sapiens sapiens - doubly wise human. Over time we created the mechanics of survival. Then we created the mechanics to thrive. But along the way - along the nasty wars, senseless brutality, and power struggles, our creative abilities were exploited, hidden, and forgotten.  

this sacred trickster is who makes us versatile...

Anthropological studies highlight the role of the trickster archetype who throws up mischief in our lives. In our stories we meet these characters such as Br'er rabbit, the fox, coyote, Loki, and others. And what Lewis Hyde points to in his book, Trickster Makes this World, is that this sacred trickster is who makes us versatile, ever-wiser, heightening our intelligence by crossing boundaries - leading us to then question and to eventually do the same. We are then led to ask ourselves: What structures and systems in our lives need to be reexamined? Where are we? And where are we headed? This powerful liar and thief somehow brings us into a fuller understanding that leads us to create change.

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Tricky Dick Changes the Boundaries

In 1950 Richard Nixon lied about Helen Douglas - going so far as to falsely link her to communism with pink colored leaflets and vocal epithets. For this Nixon was named Tricky Dick.

"She’s pink right down to her underwear.”  - Richard Nixon

Douglas, later named The Pink Lady, and Nixon, fought for the California senate seat in 1950. Nixon won, and roughly twenty years after, he became the 37th president of the United States, where he was perfectly seated to drive his trickster hungers and lusts for political power by any means necessary.

What ensues next under Nixon's economic policy is not unlike the trickster myth of Loki and Balder - everyone promises to protect Balder, but Loki finds the loophole in the liminal space between heaven and earth. In Nixon's case, he makes faux promises, and hunts for several loopholes.

If we rewind the clock a little further to July 1944, we may remember that the United States' dollar was chosen as the world's reserve currency under the Bretton Woods system - the system that aimed to bring stability to the global economy after World War II. The system was a clear approach for exchange and agreed upon by more than forty nations. It established the US dollar was backed by gold, nations could trade their currency for US dollars, and then trade those dollars for gold.

But during the 1960s the USA was funding missions to the moon and war, including Nixon's efforts to escalate the war even at the cost of civilian lives. So, by 1971 America appeared to be spending more in dollars than it had in gold and suspicions in America's capacity to uphold the global economy, as promised, were on the rise.

Tricksters don't play by the rules.

What was Tricky Dick to do? Tricksters don't play by the rules. They find loopholes. America's loophole? Executive Orders. The unchecked directive has the same weight of law and it instantly dropped the gold-backing to the U.S. dollar. The result? With Executive Order 11615, Nixon launched the demise of financial stability as the world knew it. The world was left in shock. Humanity was left to the mercy of nation-states' behavior as they awakened to the fact that their currency was no longer tethered to gold.

To counter the trickster, one must become a trickster.

To counter the trickster, one must become a trickster. After nearly forty years since Nixon's actions, the counter to the trickster appeared on the scene. With new wisdom and new tools to overcome the damage created, Satoshi Nakamoto arrived as the illuminated and heroic trickster - the intelligent disrupter, who aimed to right global instability.

Enter Satoshi Nakamoto, Intelligent Disruptor

There are speculations about the origins of Satoshi Nakamoto. Female. U.S. Intelligence. A group of secretive collaborators who want to right the world. The name of this character, along with the Halloween release of the whitepaper text are all enveloped in the mysterious. Yet what has managed to emerge is still very much human, and it possesses a reverence for achieving something greater, together through decentralization, rather than through the selfish means of the pure trickster. Before we circle back to tricksters and creating, there are a few parts of Nakamoto's enigmatic entrance that are worthy of sifting: name, Holiday, season.

Name. Satoshi, a name of Japanese origins means born from the ashes and Nakamoto means center or inside. In name alone, we are immediately drawn to the awareness of cycles: death-life-death, whereby Nakamoto enters as life in the time of death (Halloween). Additionally, it was Japan's surrender in 1945 that marked the end of World War II and ultimately, the start of the Bretton Woods system, which was highlighted earlier.

Holiday. Halloween and Dia de Los Muertos are adjacent autumn Holidays that collide around the theme of death. The origins of Halloween come from the Celtic and pagan celebration of the Witch's New Year or Samhain who is the Lord of Darkness. Fire plays an important role in the Holiday - as light for cleansing and as light to allow the dead, including one's ancestors, to find their way. Christian monks recorded the Celtic customs and Pope Gregory later morphed the Holiday into a pseudo-imitation of the pagan celebration that, in dogmatic fashion, gives reverence strictly to the noble: November 1, All Saints Day and November 2, All Souls Day.

What about the Japanese origins of Nakamoto and the customs that fall during this time? The Halloween date does not overlap with any particular celebration or Holiday that is specific to the origins of the Nakamoto name, traditionally found in the Ryūkyū islands of Japan. However, I may revisit other Japanese autumn celebrations in future writings.

Season. In anchoring Satoshi and the whitepaper to Halloween we can unearth additional meanings from the Celtic customs. The Celts celebrated two seasons, summer and winter. The mark of winter's start occurs on Halloween, where cyclically it represents the start of death in the death-life cycle. Scorpio season is at this time as well, and it points to the significance of death and rebirth, transformation, and the ever-famous Phoenix, rising from the ashes.

If we are to crystalize Satoshi's entrance into a singular realization, the question is not what has died, it is what is anew?

What is remarkable about these Celtic and Druid aspects is that their beliefs point us to two early religious insights: a reverence for the cycles of nature, and the avoidance of dogmatism. This Earth religion, among others, honored nature and its cycles, which were practiced more-so before times of war.

Not New Wine into Old Bottles. When humanity transitioned to periods of war our religions shifted to patriarchal structures - gravitating away from their nature focus and instead developing into hierarchies of power. We also see these hierarchical structures in our political structures.

Though we may be conscious as we develop the frameworks for blockchain technology across a number of industries, are we so changed that we will not encode old hierarchies of power into our new technology?  Again, what is anew?

Satoshi-Consciousness. In the book of Romans, there is a reference to Christ-consciousness, whereby believers are asked to do what they must in order to obtain the evolutionary state of mind. In the last fifty years our economies may have been spellbindingly engrossed in a damaging Nixon-consciousness that I hope we are now collectively departing.

The untethered dollar still haunts us. It haunts us with innumerable print-money ghosts, remnants of trickster's impact. For those of us present and participatory, we can counter those ghosts as parts of a sacred force that aims to usher in a better world - becoming trickster-like, attacking the dogma of old oppressive standards with innovation.

Lest we be haunted by the ghosts of ignorance, it is our duty to use our rightful intelligence.

The open-minded, nature-focused frame of the Celtic traditions are embraced in Satoshi-consciousness. Lest we be haunted by the ghosts of ignorance, it is our duty to use our rightful intelligence. Blind belief in past dogmas, rigid reverence of the seemingly sacred, can trap us. We must criticize and question existing systems and structures as we build anew.

Create to Participate

"The trickster in most native traditions is essential to creation, to birth.” - Byrd Gibbens

Our collective wisdom has brought us this far. Though, old power structures across failing beliefs have kept a number of us from participating in the world. We see this clearly in the frightening statistics of the unbanked, the unemployed, the underserved...

Hazardously, or with intention, we can create just as Nixon or as Nakamoto. We can animate our world in unique ways, for its demise or rebirth.

Blockchain technology invites us to create. However, if we believe we are cast into an unchanging world, we may toss up our pearled imaginations, our hopes and dreams, to other establishments and players - the ones we believe are equipped with creative powers greater than our own - that in our absence they may go and fulfill our dreams for us. That is the tragic illusion. That is the fatal belief in and inaction against rigid boundaries that will annihilate our creative and innovative selves.

Trickster illuminates us. Awakened, we can now masquerade ourselves to shake up this world too, infusing our lives with this remembrance - that it is our birthright to participate in the world. It is we who can make it lively.

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I started the Crypto Pynk writings because I began to see the overlap between blockchain technology, and spirituality and religion...I can no longer unsee their connection.

Hello! I started the Crypto Pynk writings because I began to see the overlap between blockchain technology, and spirituality and religion. Seeing the unconventional relation really began in 2011 when I moved to South Korea - a childhood dream made real.

I spent two years meditating (and teaching) in the mountains of a technologically advanced land. But even prior to Korea, my earliest years were spent between Bibles, and as some of you already know, bombs. This was indeed my very real and very uncommon background where my interests in both topics were cultivated over dining room table conversations and study sessions with my father - a self-taught hypnotist and engineer who instilled in me a love of truth-seeking.

As I grew it was no longer my home or neighborhood, but rather university, the Caribbean, South Korea, and South America where those early understandings evolved into spiritual expeditions of human consciousness - altered and otherwise, and juxtaposed to our ever-evolving technology.

My writings knit the seemingly unrelated together because I can no longer unsee their connection. The writings here will not exactly overlap with the Crypto Pynk video content, and that is okay. As you read, you might find that you are provoked, or you might find something entirely different - welcome it all.

As blockchain technology evolves I can only tell you that my writings will be venturing into unknown territory, though tethered to the collective past, which is vast and deep. I aim to have fun - to play connect the dots, if you will, weaving together religious and historically adjacent domains (i.e., mythology, anthropology, the esoteric, etc...). I don't know where we are headed, but I do hope that you are intrigued to partake in these uncanny insights. I expect nuance will arise, and I welcome your comments so that we might better digest what has been set before us.

Finally, I'd like for you to know that I am also working on my memoir, which takes place during the two years I lived in Korea. It was one of the most transcendent, pivotal, and intoxicating experiences of my life - and it is why my life is now partitioned in two parts: before Korea, and after Korea. While the content of my memoir won't be here explicitly, you will still get tastes of its essence.

Thank you!

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