Blockchain’s as good as Soma

“Hug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till I’m in a coma: Hug me, honey, snuggly bunny; Love’s as good as soma.” — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

I got into blockchain a bit more than a year ago. Like everyone else, I can say it’s the most mind-stimulating, empowering and best decision I have ever made. My paradigms shifted, my thoughts evolved.
My social circle has grown so exponentially, that I lost track already. “You know everyone” I hear — but everyone knows everyone. Yet in this incredible process, I have also realized that I lost touch with my old reality.

Getting together with old friends, or family and having a conversation that grasps my interest has become impossible. Everything ends up in abstracting myself and not understanding why they look at me weirdly when I tell them about my DAO projects, why they need to delete Facebook, and why they need to adapt to decentralized technologies from now onwards.

My poor father (who I’m sure is reading this as he signed up for my Medium updates) attempted his way into the rabbit hole, to understand what the hell I am talking about. He is dead smart, and I think this is growing on him, so we’re all good there. However, he is a minority — you need time, patience and mind-openness, plus love because I reckon he puts up with this because I’m his daughter, to understand what the hell we are all talking about.

And by all, I only mean us — the ones that are so deep into the rabbit hole that’s impossible to have a superficial conversation without getting introspective and thinking everyone else is superficial.

Have I become a decentralized fundamentalist?

The answer is probably yes, I took the Soma, and I cannot be in abstinence from it.

Should I go into Blockchain rehab?

Definitely not. I stand firmly by the convictions, culture, and values of the community, most specifically, of the Ethereum one. I have found friends from all walks of life that I would have never probably met if not in this space.

Now, back to fundamentalism:

It is natural for those who have lived in the dark trying to build this brave new world, to abstract from the “other world.” Most of the people that started it were outcasts, “nerds” oppressed by competition and people disappointed by institutions.

Bruce Pon, of Ocean Protocol, just mentioned he chose to live in Berlin because “nerds can feel safe in the city, they don’t feel pressure or bullying or under the threat that someone will steal their ideas.”

In the dystopian novels we learn to love, the outcasts take over and dismantle the oppressive models from the ground up: it begins with one or two dissenters coming together jaded by uncertainty and outcasting, and the thought that they are being conditioned — Guy Montag at Fahrenheit 451, Bernard, Helmholtz and John in Brave New World; or Winston in 1984. Yet unlike the novels, this particular story has a happy ending so far.

However, we need to be aware that anything that’s believed so fervently, that breaks free from oppression can quickly become a tool for fundamentalism — and I will refrain from real-world references so that this does not get so apocalyptic.

Maybe we can break free of the Dystopian model. I personally think that a way to do so is to grow more empathy towards our peers, to do the mental exercise of going back to our longtime friends and doing our best not to evangelize — for once. We know we are on the right path, but pressing it on others won’t help anyone. If we want everyone to join us, we need to detach and go back to basics. We are all in the same situation here: eventually, others will realize that institutions are failing us, and will be curious and ask- we don’t want to scare them away from the start.

O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in’t.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206