*In this multi-part special edition of The Freedom Analects, we will be featuring the excellent written work of author John Vallis titled “Money Messiah: God, Bitcoin, and The Evolution of Consciousness.” This essay beautifully depicts the deeper aspects of value and money, their indispensability to human action, and demonstrates why corrupt money is such a destructive force. John’s original work is available in its entirety here.
What is Bitcoin?
‘What is this thing’?
That’s the question that’s been rattling around in my head for several years now, as I continue to attempt to understand bitcoin.
I first became interested in bitcoin because I saw in it a potential alternative to what I believed to be an extremely unjust system of money, which I saw (and see) as the largest-scale, and therefore most significant injustice facing humanity today.
I still believe that ‘the money’ is the largest impediment to individual and collective human flourishing on this planet, and with each passing day I have less and less doubt that bitcoin is, indeed, the solution.
However, the significance of this phenomenon extends far beyond a simple replacement or upgrade to an outdated money system (or rather such a thing is far more significant than it initially sounds).
Despite constant study, contemplation, and interaction with bitcoin, and the apparently endless related fields, there exists in me a constant nagging feeling that the picture is incomplete, that the full relevance of this thing is yet to be fully appreciated, and this has inspired in me a never-ending appetite for any insights that might elucidate greater clarity — something that might put more coherent understanding to a tremendous ‘felt sense’ of meaning.
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The more I attempt to understand bitcoin, and its various implications, the more I’m drawn toward topics and insights that I never would have anticipated to be relevant to something as mundane as money. And yet, through this journey, I seem to inevitably end up arriving at ideas of the utmost significance and meaning.
It would seem many others share my feelings. In fact, many have expressed to me, sometimes hesitantly, surprise, or even disbelief, in the thoughts about bitcoin emerging in their minds.
Why is this?
Bitcoin seems to represent a great, and possibly unprecedented, mystery, and as a result, insights are sought from nearly every domain of existing knowledge, in an attempt to discover the proper context by which to understand the meaning of it. That is to say, it has inspired in me, and many others, a renewed inquiry, in which nearly everything must be re-considered, recapitulated, and reconstructed. This is not just due to bitcoin’s propensity to cause one to interpret differently (and often critically) the foundational institutions and mechanisms by which culture and society currently operate, but it seems also to be that a renewed interest in such disparate fields of knowledge, is an attempt to try and leverage the ‘truths’ to be found in those fields, to better discover or understand the ‘truth’ of bitcoin.
While this may seem to be a daunting, even redundant task, for me it’s actually been incredibly invigorating.
It’s such a joy to see so much of the world with fresh eyes, probing it more deeply than ever before, for whatever new meaning it might reveal. It has brought such an elevated richness to my experience of life, and for that I am extremely grateful.
But what is going on here?
Naturally, the more unprecedented a thing is, the more scouring for clues will have to be done, which necessitates a widening of the surface area of inquiry — a more broad set of ‘data’ is investigated for potentially valuable insights.
This is very much the case with bitcoin, and likely why the ‘rabbit hole’ moniker is so ubiquitous.
Adding to this mystique, is the fact that bitcoin is concerning ‘money’, which is for many, a very misunderstood and neglected aspect of our lives and cultures.
Money, as it turns out, is a far more mysterious, and meaningful, phenomenon than most people realize, and this indeed is what I and others are beginning to appreciate.
As it turns out, money, time, value, truth, meaning, energy, and many other fundamental concepts which constitute our experience of reality, are all intimately wrapped up together.
It’s becoming clear, that an exploration of this new form of money (bitcoin), necessitates an understanding of these fields, and likely many more.
What do we call the search which leads to the revealing of the ‘truth’ of so many things?
What do we call a phenomenon, which results in the emergence of a landscape of action more informed by, and grounded in, truth, and the beauty which radiates from it?
What, ultimately, is the value of ‘truth’? Of ‘freedom’?
These, I’ve come to appreciate, are questions with incredibly profound implications, and which lead, inexorably, to the enterprise for which they’ve been the greatest concern — religion.
I can understand why such a notion may sound absurd to some, but the more I seek to understand bitcoin, the more I seem to unavoidably wind up in such territory.
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I also recognize that words like ‘god’ and ‘religion’ carry a certain amount of baggage in today’s world, among certain people, and don’t necessarily think such a perspective is unwarranted. But as I will explore here, and as a prime example of the ‘renewed inquiry’ mentioned above, my journey of attempting to understand bitcoin has caused me to reflect on and think about the ‘religious enterprise’ quite differently than ever before.
As I revisit it, it seems far less irrational, even less ‘anti-scientific’, than I previously assumed, or which its modern critics often proclaim.
The ‘ought’ may be far more difficult to discern than the ‘is’, and require fundamentally different approaches, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it doesn’t ‘exist’, nor that discovering it, or continuing to understand it more deeply, is not a worthwhile pursuit — indeed, it may be the most worthwhile pursuit.
The centrality of this endeavour to every great culture and civilization since the dawn of time would seem to suggest the same.
To put it simply, religion (the insights, if not the institutions) seems to me to be about how to ‘engage’ reality, and one another, optimally — a pretty rational pursuit if there ever was one.
Of course, I have no answers, and could very well be misguided in the thinking I’m putting forward here. However, the consistent re-emergence of certain thoughts and insights seems to at least warrant a more thorough analysis.
Finally, whether you adhere to a particular faith or not, I hope my exploration can be interpreted for what it is, speculation — fodder for further discussion and inquiry.
Thank you for reading Money Messiah (Part 1).
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Money Messiah (Part 1)