*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?
Given this, how should we answer the question ‘What is bitcoin?’
Mircea Eliade coined a fascinating term that may be useful in answering this question — ‘Hierophanies’ — which he described as ‘breakthroughs of the sacred into the world’, which go on to ‘ontologically found the world’.
However, such things are not always obvious or easy to identify.
Eliade:
“The paradox of the hierophany consists in the fact that it manifests the sacred and incarnates the transcendental in a ‘base thing’…The same paradox is evident in the Philosopher’s Stone: it is beyond the comprehension of the uninitiated…although it is everywhere, it is the most elusive of things.”
He goes on to comment on the significance of such a discovery:
“In the mind of many alchemists, the procuring of the Philosophers Stone is equated with the perfect knowledge of God. This, moreover, is why the stone makes possible the identification of opposites.”
According to another alchemist; “evil must become the same as good”,
and yet another describes the Stone as the “reconciliation of contraries, a making of friendship between enemies.”
A ‘base thing’, difficult to ‘see’, which provides access to profound truth, ‘reconciles opposites’, unites even the competing motivations of enemies, and in doing so, establishes a new ‘ontological foundation’ by which to perceive and engage the world.
Is this what bitcoin ‘is’?
Perhaps.
The Orange Pill
If so, and as anything we value is also inherently a judge (used to determine the value of other things), what would be the impact of something of such great value — something with the qualities and capabilities of bitcoin — on, or perhaps ‘entering’, our perception?
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Well, the simple answer seems to be that it would, acting as a new kind of ‘ideal’, restructure our value hierarchies.
More specifically, as valuation is the (mostly automatic) promotion or demotion of things of value in relation to one another, the consequence of perceiving extreme value, would be the diminution of all things of relatively lesser value — of anything that can’t ‘stand up’ to such contrast.
So, which values remain, or which, by virtue of their ability to ‘stand up’ to other value(s), can ascend and reside at the top of such a value hierarchy?
It seems obvious to me that it would be primarily those things of equally transcendent or ‘priceless’ value — love, beauty, joy, family, health, freedom, wisdom, time etc.
Effectively, these are things which seem to be most difficult or impossible ‘to value’, and therefore cannot easily be subject to comparison. Further, it appears that in this way, the things (or ideas) of highest transcendent value, seem to become that by which more of ‘their kind’ are to be discovered and integrated. It’s almost as though they ‘recognize’ them, and ‘pull them up’ the value hierarchy, rather than ‘push them down’.
This would seem to result in a consciousness which experiences an increasing concentration of the things of greatest meaning, playing off one another for their continued refinement and amplification. These then become the very things that consciousness most orients itself around, and as a result, which become imbued or manifest in the lives of those in whom such a process is occurring.
Perhaps this is why the continual process of discovering the thing of greatest value, or motivational significance, is so important, and why choosing or pursuing the ‘right god’, as portrayed in mythic story, is so often seen as being rewarded by access to infinite wealth (value), love, fulfillment etc.
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Mathew 13:11:
“For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath.”
It may seem an exaggeration, but as we’ve explored thus far, money is far more than a simple economic tool. It is a dense array of information and implicit agreements, which has a significant influence on how we experience the ‘socio-cultural world’.
In this way, it acts much like a prism, which influences perception, and the world which emerges from it.
When you change it for another, you see differently, and the contrast it creates elucidates many fresh insights and motivations.
Bitcoin appears to propagate more truthful information than any money before it, and therefore grants, or at least greatly supports, the construction of a consciousness more grounded in truth than ever before also.
This creates often dramatic change in how bitcoiners see the world, what they value, and what they ultimately strive to become — a process that has affectionately become known as being ‘orange pilled’.
If, as we said earlier, the meaning of an object is determined by the behaviour conducted in its presence, then what are we to say about something which is having such a transformative effect?
One by one, individuals all over the world are experiencing an increasing sense of liberation — a kind of ‘awakening’ — which appears to be driven by a relief from the incongruence which has long been felt between the system in which they’ve been ‘forced’ to act, and the yearnings of their soul for truth and freedom. The excitement and appreciation for the ‘richness’ of life that flows from this, is proving to be quite powerful.
Peterson:
“The spirit underlying the transmutation of culture resolves unbearable intrapsychic conflict with shattering revelation, first to the individual, then to society at large.”
In Part 15, we will take a hopeful perspective on Bitcoin…
Thank you for reading Money Messiah (Part 14).
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Money Messiah (Part 14)