*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.
How Does This Relate To Bitcoin?
Well, no ‘thing’ (which we engage with) exists in isolation — our involvement is part of the chorus of forces which constitute its ‘environment’, and give it its ‘form’.
Furthermore, and as we said at the beginning, things aren’t things, what they mean to us, are what they represent for action.
In this sense, we are not ‘separate’ enough from bitcoin to call it ‘incorruptible’ by itself. It’s an extension of ‘us’ (the individuals who use it and uphold, or opt-into, its rules), and we are therefore a critical component of it.
The question then, is how do we keep ourselves, and more accurately, the faults, delusions, fears, presumptions, and ego’s within us, from ‘destroying’ bitcoin?
How do we keep even our best-intentioned logic from presuming to know everything about ‘what it is’, and what it ‘could’ and ‘should’ be?
Peterson:
“Since the unknown always transcends the limits of the known, no final statement about the nature of existence (John’s note: Or any creation) is possible.”
So, how should this circumstance inform our actions with regards to bitcoin? How do we account for the ‘eternally unknown’ aspect of our relationship to it?
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It would seem to me to suggest that ‘ossification’ is of paramount importance. This means increasing resistance to, or total refusal of, changes to its existing core rules — especially those with ‘economic’ (Read: value-hierarchy-relevant) consequences, like monetary policy, block size, and Proof of Work — is of paramount importance. This is not because it will never seem as though ‘it could be better’, through some change or optimization. There are many who already believe this, and most likely will continue to be in the future. This is even quite rational and to be expected, given the (seemingly) arbitrary nature of some of bitcoins fundamental parameters.
It should not be changed (alternative rules accepted by users), because it may be the case that the key ingredient that makes it incorruptible, is our humble submission to what we cannot (and will never) comprehend about both it, and ourselves.
It should not be changed, because the value of such an absolute (limitation) is, paradoxically, likely far greater — that is, fosters far more complex and generative order — than any transient, subjective understandings, and the meddling they might inspire.
As a corollary, would we prefer that the laws of physics were always changing, or changeable? Or, is their permanence more desirable?
While it might at first seem favourable to be able to transcend them at will, it seems to me that this would, perhaps counterintuitively, be detrimental. Their changeability would create chaos, or perhaps is chaos, disallowing any dynamic or complex order to coalesce. Alternatively, a bedrock, unchangeable truth, is what permits all order to form (from chaos), via constant reference to that very permanence. Such a bedrock ‘limitation’ thus promotes the emergence of complex order, motivated via the pursuit of liberation which it inspires, and achieved via perfect coherence, acceptance, or ‘submission’, with/to the absolute unchanging parameter(s).
It should be noted, that none of this is about being ‘anti-competition’ or ‘anti-progress’, nor is it about ignoring the incentives or attributes that make bitcoin the most economically competitive system of money.
That is to say, bitcoin (or more accurately, ‘bitcoiners’) may never need to invoke or consider such an idea, as bitcoin’s dominance, path dependence, and other components of it’s success, may always be sufficient signal to confirm the value and validity of its defining characteristics, and the dangers in changing them. However, to my mind, this is by no means a certainty.
What this is, is the recognition of the critical role of transcendent (or unknowable) value or truth, and the importance of determining how best to leverage it.
In this light, it’s interesting to consider why and how bitcoiners make the choice to ‘adopt bitcoin’ (and only bitcoin). Is it not the willingness to be bound by certain rules, to submit to having their time and energy ‘preserved’ by those rules, rather than those of any other ‘system’? Can such a choice, forever surrounded by ‘unknowns’ as it is, be made absent a kind of ‘faith’?
Furthermore, if all of this ultimately comes down to simply ‘choosing the best rules’ — the ‘truest’ or ‘most likely to succeed’ — by which to interact with one another (again, sound familiar?), is it not critical that those rules remain unchanged, in order to maintain the integrity and validity of such a choice?
Is this entirely or exclusively rational? Why those rules over others? Why only those rules? I’ve never met a bitcoiner who would be so bold as to claim to know everything there is to know about bitcoin, and yet it would seem many have adopted a ‘bitcoin-only’ perspective, often far in advance of knowing exactly, or at least fully, why. Of course, seeing ‘enough’ of bitcoin’s value, following the market’s ‘signal’, or following the actions of peers, may be sufficient motivation to make such a decision, but if we’re all being truly honest with ourselves, it seems to me that we’d have to admit that a kind of faith is involved too. If so, can we see evidence of this in the propensity for many bitcoiners to increase their attempts to understand bitcoin, perhaps to further rationalize their decision, long after its been made?
As the Oracle in The Matrix noted to Neo:
“..you didn’t come here to make a choice, you’ve already made it, you’re here to try to understand why you made it.”
Is this why we all continue to burrow so feverishly down the ‘bitcoin rabbit-hole’?
Fun questions:)
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I suppose what I’m exploring here, is the possibility that bitcoin’s ability to compete with other monetary competitors may not solely be determined by technical attributes, per se. It may be the case that the application of this kind of ‘faith’ to it, and the behaviour which that elicits by each user who does so, is what extracts from them the very thing that makes it indomitable.
Furthermore, it seems possible to me that, for this reason, bitcoin (and the potential value it represents) may be a choice ‘presented’ to humanity only once — or rather may be a choice we only have the capacity to make once — because of the trade-off’s required from us in the act of doing so.
If we don’t recognize the importance of imposing limitation voluntarily, by accepting the opportunity to submit to a profound truth, we may forever be deprived of the freedom that doing so grants (at least with respect to ‘money’).
However, if each of us can establish such a relationship, such a covenant, with the rules of bitcoin, it might indeed represent the (re)emergence of a powerful ‘ordering principle’, facilitating the discovery and communication of truth — and therefore meaning and value — across time and space, in a more ‘transmittable’ and high-fidelity form than ever before.
In doing so, it may promote humanity’s ability to confront, contend with, and refine the collaborative search for the truth of what resides in the heart, mind and soul of each individual — the further discovery, emergence, and perhaps evolution, of the ‘logos’.
This does not guarantee harmony, flourishing and the construction of meaningful lives, but it may just be the best possible method of striving for it.
In Part 12, we will admiringly regard the alchemical achievement of Satoshi…
Thank you for reading Money Messiah (Part 11).
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Money Messiah (Part 11)