*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.
Bitcoiners
This, of course, is no small assertion. If true, and if the primary pursuit of the alchemists was individual transformation, would we not expect to see dramatic changes in those who first encounter and engage with the ‘truth’ of bitcoin?
I believe we would, and that indeed is precisely what I’ve been observing in the so-called ‘Bitcoin Maximalists’.
This is not mere analogy. It seems to me that understanding and engaging with bitcoin represents a literal encounter with certain fundamental transcendent principles, similar to those sought by the alchemists, which is eliciting a powerful re-framing of value, and thus perception and behaviour.
It would seem that it’s this initial cohort in which the impact of bitcoin’s emergence on the psyche of modern people, and the transformation that it motivates, is being first, and most powerfully, represented.
Peterson:
“The hero is the first person to have his ‘internal structure’ (that is, his hierarchy of values and his behaviours) reorganized as a consequence of contact with an emergent anomaly….the information he now carries (or perhaps is) will appear disruptive and destructive long before it proves redemptive…the individual troubled by anomalous and anxiety-provoking experience is suffering equally from the disintegration, rigidity or senility of the society within….It is very likely, however, that he will be viewed with fear and even hatred, as a consequence of his ‘contamination with the unknown’, particularly if those left behind are unconscious of the threat that motivated his original journey.”
Carl Jung refers to these people, who are first to encounter such novelty, as the ‘most refined and differentiated minds of the age’, who ‘detect emergent anomaly, and begin the process of adaptation to it, long before the average person notices any change whatsoever in circumstance.’
Engagement with this anomaly doesn’t inspire change solely by contrast with the ‘corrupt’ world in which it emerges (though that certainly plays a role), but it also seems to transmit the very principles which animate it, into those who ‘explore’ it most deeply.
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Arnold of Villanova, an alchemist from the 13th century offers an insight as to why:
“There abides in nature a certain pure matter which, being discovered and brought by art to perfection, converts to itself all imperfect bodies that it touches.”
Bitcoiners, it would seem, are being ‘converted to’ the qualities and principles which have been ‘brought to perfection’ in bitcoin.
Why is this?
It seems logical to me that the extent to which something is (non-coercively) ‘successful’, reveals the degree of congruence with the truth of the environment in which it’s operating or acting (whether that be, say, the demands of customers in a market, or the unseen forces of reality).
Even if this is not consciously appreciated, the ‘success’ of the item (in this case bitcoin) in achieving such a congruence, may subconsciously communicate, perhaps necessarily, that the attributes or properties by which it does so, are ‘good’, ‘valid’ or ‘true’. It may be the case then, that the more successful the item, actor or system, and therefore the more valuable it becomes, the more its attributes or properties will be perceived as being congruent with a deeper truth. For this reason it seems likely, or at least possible, that they might be emulated by the individual (who values, or comes to value the same truths), or in some capacity be transmuted into them, for the very reason that the deepest truths are likely to be resonant (similarly valued) across the broadest scales.
Put simply, bitcoin is founded on and instantiates certain principles, and its success may serve to confirm the deep and broad validity of them.
Do you believe in the power of truth, fairness and freedom to deliver a better world for you and all others?
This would seem to be the proposition which bitcoin poses to people, and you might say that the simple perception of that proposition, combined with it’s apparent and growing acceptance, represents the ‘emission’ of a kind of morality, which seems to be having some sort of ‘in-kind’ effect on people.
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Erich Neumann speculates on how what is ultimately just an idea, can have such a profound impact:
“Consciousness is only affected by the proximity of the idea to the archetype.”
If true, and if such dramatic, even unprecedented transformations truly are being inspired by bitcoin, should we then assume that the ‘idea’ or ‘truth’ which bitcoin represents, is extremely ‘close’ to a fundamental archetype? Or, perhaps even the very representation (or externalization) of it?
It seems to me at least possible.
If bitcoin is appealing to fundamental archetypes deep within our psyche, while simultaneously motivating, even if unconsciously, improved organization and engagement with our systems of value, how would this impact our perception of the existing culture? And how would this changed perception effect behaviour?
Peterson:
“In relation to when the ‘collective dominants’ of human life fall into decay: at such a time there is bound to be considerable number of individuals who are possessed by an archetype of a numinous nature, that force their way to the surface in order to form new dominants…This state of possession shows itself almost without exception in the fact that the possessed identify themselves with archetypal contents of their unconscious, and, because they do not realize that the role which is being thrust upon them is the effect of new contents still to be understood, they exemplify these concretely in their own lives, thus becoming prophets and reformers.”
As was likely the case in the development of religious narrative, long before we can articulate what we observe to be true (what Peterson calls ‘semantic understanding’), and precisely how it’s affecting us, we will act it out (‘procedural understanding’).
This is precisely what I see happening with bitcoiners.
In Part 14, we will explore the deeper aspects of the question “What is Bitcoin?”…
Thank you for reading Money Messiah (Part 13).
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Money Messiah (Part 13)