Sometimes the best thing to do for your own wellbeing is to be silent. Inside and out. Then everything feels right. #innerpeace #silence #surrender

I haven’t felt comfortable for a while now. Still waiting on the great things 😂 #personalgrowth #life

We have no idea what will happen when humanoid robots, large language models and #Bitcoin converge in the near future. Expect the unexpected.

Now is when the fear of FOMO begins to grips the sidelined non-participants watching the great freedom movement that is #Bitcoin “It’s too late” they cry. “This ship has sailed they wail.” “I’ll have to buy PEPE instead.” Now is our time to reassure these worriers that IT IS NOT TOO LATE ⏰ You are still early folks. We can help you over the line. There is room on board this vessel.

Once upon a time someone had a vision of a greater world, a world that was fairer, more abundant and hopeful than the one they were living in. They birthed a daring dream, a hero’s dream, one that no one had ever been able to achieve before. It was the beginning of a myth, a cycle and a new reality, but they did not know this yet. Their name was Satoshi and they were an enigma, a person of unknown origin, or gender. Whether they were one or many we cannot say, only that they held within them the Promethean flame of inspiration, a new light to guide humanity towards freedom and hope.

Satoshi’s dream was to create money that would supersede all money before it. A money for the information age; digital, scarce, secure and decentralised. Money that would put power back into the hands of the people. To do this was far from easy, in fact it had never been done before. It would require bringing together concepts from maths, computing, cryptography and energy into a unique combination that could change the landscape of money forever. Satoshi was part of small band of misfits, geniuses and hackers knows as cryptographers. This motley crew specialised in cracking code, hacking the un-hackable and creating cryptography so secure it could never be compromised. They valued autonomy, sovereignty, freedom and subtlety and they preferred to be left alone. For decades members of this guild had been attempting to create a digital money that was incorruptible. They knew the history of money and the tendency for it to become controlled, centralised, manipulated and devalued. The powerful, technologically advanced, and cunning had always managed to find a way to capture money for their own devices and even the best money humanity had ever known, gold, had found itself manipulated. Money had become a series of empty promises, a government owned and controlled paper trail that was nothing more than ever increasing debt pushed forward into the future. Money was corrupt and they knew it, Satoshi knew it, and they were determined to un-corrupt it. There had been several prior attempts at creating a digital currency, but none had functioned convincingly until Satoshi found the combination that worked. In a moment of rare genius Satoshi was able to combine all the elements of money together in a digital form that was bound to the physical reality of the world through a process known as proof of work. Satoshi bound the intangible digital world to the tangible world of energy and scarcity through this process and against all odds Bitcoin was born. 

Initially it was a small success celebrated within the band of cryptographers. They knew the flame had been lit, the seed of something great planted, but whether anything would come of it was yet to be seen and for a couple of years the money had no tangible value. It was a plaything, a mathematically perfect system that was producing new bitcoins every 10 mins with incredible accuracy and could be run from a home computer with little energy costs. Bitcoins were created, sent and lost, Satoshi watched the process and let it evolve organically. As the creator of the money Satoshi could have held immense power, but this was not what Satoshi had in mind. Power over money was the issue and Satoshi was a hero of the people, willing to sacrifice for the good of all. They locked away 1 million bitcoins in a wallet, burned the pass codes and secured a portion of the total supply that could never be touched, like sending a ship full of gold down to the deepest depths of the ocean where no one could find them. As part of the genius plan Satoshi had set in motion they had pre-determined a supply cap on the currency; a precise number of coins that would be released over a set period and would never exceed it, a stroke of brilliance, creating the true scarcity that money had never seen before. The number, 21 million.

At some point in the journey Satoshi began to become quiet. Like a farmer who has prepared the soil, planted and watered the seed, fertilised the young shoots and set up caretakers over it they now began to withdraw and allow the harvest to come about on its own, organically. Eventually Satoshi went completely quiet, disappearing much like an apparition from the band of cryptographers to remain an enigma, a faceless presence who had blessed the world with something great and was content to remain anonymous. Bitcoin itself, the digital network, and the bitcoins that were tied to it started to spread through the digital landscape and at some point, spontaneously became valuable. Much like an idea, or a seed sprouting, the exact moment had to happen of itself and could not be forced. The first monetary transaction was rather simple, a young man decided to buy pizza with some of the bitcoin he had mined, two pizzas to be precise, for a grand total of 10,000 Bitcoins. Now BTC had value, it had arisen from nothing to become something, and word began to get out.

As the small shoots of the idea took root they were watered by the rains of curiosity. New technologies start gradual and then begin to shoot up fast. Satoshi’s visionary creation was now less of a plaything and more of a real opportunity. Freedom seekers, libertarians and developers began to mine it on their computers using energy to solve increasingly complex mathematical equations. As demand for bitcoins increased the first Bitcoin Spring came about. Shoots were popping up everywhere and they had value. The value was volatile, and people never knew when this crop of new money might fail. Risk takers jumped in, demand increased and the difficulty to mine the bitcoins went up. This meant more energy was required to mine them and investment into more powerful computers needed. Bitcoin miners required more energy and went in search of abundant sources of it the world over. The race had begun.

Competition is a powerful driver, and money will drive people to fight for it. In the case of Bitcoin, it is a bloodless war over energy, the kind of fight that levels the playing field. The flame of innovation was burning bright, the crop was flourishing, and Bitcoin Summer was born. An exchange dedicated to the buying and selling of bitcoins emerged and trading began. A Bitcoin boom was on and a harvest on the horizon. Satoshi’s inspiration was taking root around the world. Surely now was the time to take credit for what was becoming a global phenomenon, but Satoshi was gone, and the growth of this new internet money was left where it was always destined to be. In the hands of the people.

The beauty of the design lay not only in its scarcity and its tangible tie to energy but also its decentralised nature. Satoshi knew that even the best money if not adequately dispersed would eventually find itself centralised, captured by the hands of the powerful. They designed it that anyone could validate the network if they decided to do so. Bitcoin stands alone in its trustless mathematical nature. There is a ledger, known as a blockchain that keeps a record of every bitcoin every mined. It is immutable, in other words it cannot be altered, and it keeps a 100% accurate record of every transaction on the Bitcoin block chain all the way back to the Genesis Block: The very first Bitcoin ever mined by Satoshi in 2009. The issue with money as Satoshi knew was that you had to have someone, an intermediary, to validate that it was real. Counterfeit money has always plagued humanity and dishonesty is rife in our nature. Having to trust people is tricky and the only answer for an incorruptible money was to take out the human element, replacing it with maths. The blockchain is simple, it records transactions like an excel document and forever embeds them into one continuous chain of data back through time. Each bitcoin is mined with powerful computers and validated with more simple ones called nodes. There are now thousands of these nodes all over the world. When the nodes agree that the transaction is legitimate then it can be signed and placed into the blockchain. By allowing individuals the world over the chance to mine their own coins and validate the legitimacy of them in the network Satoshi created a truly powerful network of incentives that ensured each holder of these precious and scarce coins would be incentivised to protect their crop.

It is impossible to create something world shaking without making enemies. Those in power do not like to lose hegemony and the great controllers of money did not appreciate the idea of an organically created money they could not control. People having the freedom to mine their own currency, hold it anonymously, and transact with it beyond the reach of their tendrils was very affronting. As soon as Bitcoin moved from internet play money to something more tangible the incumbent industries began to attack it, demean it and try to stop it. Bitcoin has faced innumerable challenges since its miraculous conception, and they tend to come all at once. Many have tried to hack the network, corrupt it, ban the mining, attack it as criminal money, charge and tax the holders of it, and generally label it as a scam. No matter how many times Satoshi’s creation has been hit, it always comes back, and it only gets stronger. Much like a virulent plant that no matter how many times you cut it down it always grows back, so Bitcoin has proven itself to be a resilient and robust system; adaptable, evolving, unstoppable. Every myth must have its monsters, and this one is no different. The monsters of big government, big tech and big money have fought it with everything they have, and they are losing the battle. The cycle continues regardless because Bitcoin is a seven headed Hydra and no matter how many heads you cut off, a new one pops up. This is the beauty of decentralisation, robust cryptography, and energy.
 The time when this becomes the most paramount is during harvest when the crop has grown tall and abundant. The first harvest for Bitcoin rewarded these early miners for their commitment and the conscientious received a plentiful harvest. Bitcoin had proven itself to be money although the price in dollars swung wildly and people rapidly moved in and out of the asset. All harvests eventually come to an end and fear of winter creeps in. The euphoria of that first boom was intense and short lived. The price fell, people lost faith and sold their coins into stronger hands. Winter is a harsh season, and the first Bitcoin Winter was long and hard. Many lost hope, yet others gained conviction and began to see a future where a decentralised and secure monetary network based on maths could radically transform the landscape of money and abundance. Satoshi’s vision began to spread, and a new myth was born, a myth that people could cling to. Hope began to blossom in hearts and minds and the understanding that this ‘magic internet money’ was more than just a fad. It was a new paradigm, a truth in the world, something operating on its own unique cycle, unstoppable and uncontrollable. Get on board or ignore it, regardless it was underway and like a plant that spreads from a single seed and takes over a continent, Bitcoin spread from the Genesis Block and began to take roots in every country on earth.

Bitcoin is now a global phenomenon and is in its fourth cycle of spring, summer, fall and winter. Each new cycle more people plant their own seeds, reap a harvest and begin to believe in the myth that Satoshi has given us. Bitcoins are becoming scarcer now, every four years the amount of Bitcoin that can be mined is cut in half, an event called the Bitcoin halving. Conversely the energy cost to mine these Bitcoin goes up as the block reward is halved. The cycle revolves around this four yearly halving and the supply shock that follows it drives up demand and initiates a fresh harvest. It’s an inbuilt mechanism that makes bitcoin deflationary and gives the coins ever-increasing value. Like a finite store of seed that reduces by half every sowing season so does the overall bitcoin supply diminish with time and the loss of many of the coins by careless custodians.  Supply drops, demand increases, and more care is needed. As the farmer must protect their harvest so we must protect the Bitcoin we own to ensure it is not lost or stolen from us. This game of security is one of vigilance, in the Bitcoin game we are each responsible for our wealth, we cannot hand off this responsibility to others or we lose the heart of Satoshi’s vision. Empowered, self-sovereign wealth and abundance for all. Due to the remarkable incentive structure built into Bitcoin and its decentralised nature, an army of developers work endlessly to find new innovative ways to protect and store bitcoin for the future, a future where the value of our savings increases every cycle, and the winners are those who have the greatest conviction in the new myth.
 Satoshi knew there would come a day when having a whole seed would be next to impossible for new farmers. There were only ever 21 million bitcoin to be mined and Satoshi had already locked one million away for safe keeping. This meant that those later on might miss out and power could again centralise. There was plan, make the seeds divisible into tiny units, each bitcoin divided into 100 million smaller fractions which were named Satoshis or Sats. These sats enabled a person to own fractions of a coin and still get the benefits of a harvest. Like a farmer taking one seed and splitting it into many, abundance was multiplied and no one barred from owning bitcoin. Over time the amount of energy required to solve the cryptographic equation and receive bitcoin became huge and larger farmers began to work together to pool their resources and then spit the profits of the harvest. Bitcoin again showed its collaborative nature as miners took the bitcoins, sold them to the exchanges and the exchanges passed it on to the people. An entire industry of miners, validators, developers, exchanges, and applications began to build upon the profoundly secure and reliable network that Satoshi has built. All solid myths must have a foundation of bedrock upon which the evolving story can be built, and Bitcoin is that solid foundation. In all its years of operation it has never failed to produce new coins every 10 minutes and it has never been hacked. It requires no trust and hence it can be trusted. Those who can see the bright future harvest that belong to the patient person willing to plant, water, fertilise and protect their seeds have not only grasped Satoshi’s vision they have gained an entirely new mythology dedicated to hope, growth, evolution and abundance. They have found conviction, structure and dependability in a shaky and volatile world. They are the torch bearers bringing light into a world of darkness and the light is growing in intensity as more and more join the movement that Satoshi began.

#Bitcoin

Bystanders watching Bitcoin price appreciation who don’t own any (yet). “Wow, Bitcoin is really pumping!” Bitcoiners. “It’s a hard money; mathematically secured, divisible into tiny fractions, cryptographically unhackable, truly decentralised and genuinely scarce. It’s only a matter of time before it is the most valuable asset on earth.” Bystanders. “Cool” #bitcoin #hardmoney #wearesoearly

Men like to make money, women love to spend it. If you want the women in your life to understand Bitcoin get them spending it. Their curiosity will increase immediately. #bitcoin #womeninbitcoin

Promoting Bitcoin in a gruelling bear market to disbelieving friends and family can feel like Sisyphus, a king of Corinth, who was cursed by Zeus to roll a massive boulder up a steep hill in the Underworld. Whenever he would get close to the top the boulder would inexplicably roll back down, forcing him to begin the task anew. So, it is with Bitcoin when all the sceptics focus on is USD price and every time the price would rise it would find itself cast back down like Sisyphus’s boulder, giving the BTC wary another opportunity to suggest it is too volatile, too risky, and likely to fail. Now the trend has reversed, sidelined friends and family are taking notice of the digital money that just won’t die! This is our time to humbly and consciously begin to remind them anew that Bitcoin is more than a speculative asset, magic internet money, or a horse that’s already bolted. We can at last see the opportunity to roll the boulder up and over the hill bringing on board a new wave of future Bitcoiners.

All of us who have a serious level of conviction about the emerging monetary technology, the mathematical truth it conveys, and the spiritual evolution it is awakening are in no danger of un-believing. We have seen the light as it were and what has been seen cannot be unseen. The beauty of all complex decentralised systems is that they are always providing more depth. There seems to be an endlessness to systems that can offer the devoted an opportunity for a lifetime of study and growth. The deeper we go into something the more convinced of its worth we become and the more difficult it is to remember a time when we were sceptical or even downright antagonistic about it. The atheist who becomes a theist struggles to recall they once hated the idea of God. Naivety on a subject when lost is difficult to recall and many of us would struggle to teach very simplistic concepts on Bitcoin in a way that relates to the unconvinced. In fact it is often the very act of trying to convince that pushes people away. Evangelists of anything are often as repelling as they are compelling.

In most cases trying to convince somebody, especially in difficult conditions such as a bear market, may not be worth our time, especially if the person we are sharing with has a low level of interest or is antagonistic towards Bitcoin (or the idea they have of it). There are others who show interest and even enthusiasm but will not get over the line to owning the asset as they are too apprehensive and fearful; a normal and even rational response to something new and ‘untried’. In many cases this rejection is so total that the ego wants them to suffer for their ignorance and a “fuck you” mentality creeps in. ‘You get Bitcoin at the price you deserve’ is an example of proclaiming that the most intelligent people get Bitcoin early, get the rewards, and those less intellectually rigorous who fail to see the light deserve to miss out. It can lead to a tribalistic self-righteousness among the early adopters who may be quite content to hold onto their hard-earned wins (Bitcoins) and let the friends and family who mocked them for their commitment to Bitcoin miss out.

Challenge this mindset we must, and aggressively so. Unless we are Satoshi, or one of the early cryptographers who potentially created this supreme asset, we can recall a point in our lives when we were also ignorant and with a little honesty acknowledge that it was not necessarily our incredible intelligence that brought us to buy our first sats. Perhaps it was FOMO, greed, an appetite for risk, or some other emotion that pushed us over the line. The intellectual component of understanding typically comes later as we dive down the rabbit hole that is the Bitcoin network and everything is contains. With humility and some objective remembering we can ground ourselves once again in the beginner’s mindset, and from this place recall that it was things like price appreciation and media attention that pushed most of us over the line. Here we are again in this place where Bitcoin is in the news, the price is reaching almost daily ATH’s, and friends and family are beginning to reach out, ask questions and even applaud. This is not the time to bask in the glory of self-congratulation, it is our time to get the boulder over the hill for as many people as we can. To graciously accept the praise that comes of hard work and dedication using them as fuel to bring others on board so their lives can also be transformed.

No matter how many times we have pushed the metaphorical boulder up the hill we must not rest too long at the bottom. There is hope on the horizon and fuel in our tanks to power us now. As people reach out and opportunities arise to bring more Bitcoiners to our cause, let’s approach them with understanding and the conviction born of experience. It is our time.

#bitcoin #itisourtime #wisdom #abundance #bitcoinbull

Crypto trading is like riding a motorcycle in the dark, fun until you hit a tree 🌲 #bitcoin #hodl

Freedom = Personal Responsibility Less freedom in exchange for less personal responsibility and more hand holding. More freedom in exchange for more personal responsibility and less hand holding. How much freedom do you want? How much responsibility are you willing to take? How much hand holding do you need? Choose accordingly. #freedom #bitcoin #selfcustody #liberty #life

Working out Costa Rica style. #travel #fitness #costarica

No one gets followers by being middle ground. Extreme views create traction and interaction so all we hear are the wild opinions of unbalanced people. It’s not popular to talk about a balanced diet, it’s vegan or carnivore. You can extrapolate this concept out across the board. I look forward to a time when the middle ground is appreciated again. #balance #themiddlepath

Bitcoin has a beautiful cyclicality to it. The rhythm of the four-year cycle is bringing a stability into my life that mirrors the four seasons and the corresponding feelings that accompany them. Cycles bring a predictability to life that gives me a focus, and something to work towards. In this way as much as any other Bitcoin has been a positive influence on my wellbeing.

You can look at the four-year cycle as a mirror of the seasons with each season extrapolated out to roughly one year. My journey began in the Bitcoin Fall of 2021, just as prices were approaching their ATH and greed was peaking. It was this anticipation of a harvest that pulled me into my first purchase as I saw those around me bearing the fruits of their labours. My own ignorance of the Bitcoin cycle also led me to believe that demand and price appreciation would only go up from here and it was with the naivete of one who has never seen a harsh winter that I jumped into the cycle late in the day.

The winter following shortly after was harsh. A plummeting fall in price from such lofty heights was especially hard on those who had not enjoyed the fruits of their labours, and the Bitcoin winter which came in 2022 took many by surprise. In my case due to having not actually been through a Bear market, the fall in the fiat price was welcome news and I began the process of steadily storing away Sats over the year that followed. When the winter became especially grim after the collapse of FTX my conviction simultaneously grew that the sun would shine again and I worked my arse off that year to stack as many sats away in my cold storage locker, knowing a great harvest would be mine someday. It was this exact goal that pulled me through a very difficult year and brought hope when all was bleak in the World.

Spring came with a bright bloom of new hope in 2023. The world was opening again, and Bitcoin had survived another Winter. I was no longer a complete newbie and the value of having something tangible to focus on was becoming clear. Spring in the Bitcoin cycle as with the season is a vibrant time. The appreciation in the value of my holdings accumulated during the winter was becoming obvious and my conviction began to grow. I started absorbing more Bitcoin focused content and summer seemed to loom close. This part of the cycle is uplifting for the soul, and I felt in a way I’d never felt before that there was a predictability to this asset class that I could depend upon. The dollar price became less important other than waiting for pullbacks so I could convert more of my devaluing fiat into as many sats as possible. I began to dream of the freedom that BTC could bring me and my family in the coming summer if I could only double down on my conviction and work harder. I did.

When 2024 rolled around I had changed entirely. Not only had I survived a gruelling Winter, Spring had revitalised and encouraged me, and I was using this passion to learn new skills including running my own node, setting up more advanced cold storage, and considering how I would secure my families harvest into the future. Utilising a multi-signature vault was intriguing me, and the value of my assets continued to rise, be it in a volatile manner. The volatility began to bother me less as I started to see with clarity that all that matters is how much I can put away. This summer coincided with literal summer in my work and gave me the energy needed to put in long days with total conviction that something great was coming. It became clear to me that this cycle was going to be a permanent fixture in my life and that winter would return with all its opportunities. Suddenly what was most important was how I would enjoy the upcoming Bitcoin Summer, where I would be for Fall, and most importantly the following Winter. The cycle had captured me and was now a driving force in my decision making. Midway through the Summer I felt an intense compulsion to change my life and start fresh. Bitcoin had given me a focus, hope for a better future, and a reason to work hard. It had inspired me to dream bigger well empowering me with the means to break free of another cycle I was perpetually stuck in.

I finally broke free in July this year. With my family I left NZ and set forth with the hard earnt BTC locked in a multi-sig vault as a confident assurance that I had the means to start anew somewhere else. Bitcoin is fuelling my current adventure and allowing me the possibility of planting roots somewhere new, ready to sow a late season crop and reap an even greater harvest in the Fall of 2025.

The Winter will come again and the motivation that accompanies it. The Bitcoin cycle is bringing a structure and purpose to my life that I never had before. I look forward to completing a full Bitcoin cycle and the breadth of experience it brings. It is a beautifully un-predictably predictable thing. #Bitcoin #Bitcoincycle #life #seasons #finance #wisdom

If you aren’t learning you’re stagnating.

Life is one great opportunity to learn new skills, understand new concepts, and create new ways of being and relating. More so now than ever before.

For thousands of years you would have been restricted to the information you could access via listening, reading and apprenticing under a master. If you were lucky enough to be taught to read, then you also had to access written material. You could only listen when someone was willing to teach and you had the available time to be attentive. Finding a master to teach you was difficult and most teachers were specialists who could teach a lot on a niche but little on anything else. In other words, living in any period prior to the last 30 years was rather restrictive upon your ability to learn consistently, and should you have been born in a place without basic education in reading and writing then it was even worse. Education was a true luxury of the wealthy, the highborn, and males. If you were positioned otherwise in society, you would get so far and no further.

This is no longer the case. People in developing nations now have access to 24-hour information through the internet, online libraries, YouTube and large language models like Chat-GPT. These are free and available for learning audibly and visually, and every day more tertiary institutions are opening their courses for one and all. Even in a menial labour job it is now possible to put in ear buds and learn entirely new ways of thinking and behaving as you work. For more people than ever education is not a privilege but a right, so what humanity now faces is not access to learning but the desire to learn. Curiosity is lacking.

You must cling desperately to your love of learning, the voracious curiosity of your youth, and the passion to understand. Do not allow the simplicity of much of the world’s noise to cloud your senses and dull your mental faculties. More than at any time in history before us things are moving fast, and many are being left behind. Learning is itself a skill and the more you absorb the better at it you become. To be a master learner is to thrive in a world of rapidly evolving opportunities, and for the avid self-educator the time is ripe to excel in the field. 

Prosperity can be defined as the ability to solve problems, and we have plenty to choose from. As you learn your mind becomes more plastic, open and responsive. This type of mind is broad and deep, it is expansive and can see things from an interconnected view. Your mind when exposed to breadth and depth becomes a master problem solving computer that will aid you in your pursuit of prosperity and meaning.

Do not wallow in the mire of stagnation of the mind. Learn every day, across a wide range of topics. Think like a polymath and allow your intellect to grow and flourish under the education of an in-exhaustible flow of high-quality information. It is the time to learn, and you have every tool at your disposal. Use them. 
#learning #education #personalgrowth #excellence #life

‘They were naked and they were not ashamed.’

The symbolism of Adam and Eve resonates throughout the ages as the ideal of human physicality. You can be naked and not ashamed when you are proud of your body. The body should be the pride of not only the young but any adult in their prime of life and at any stage of life it is possible to be vigorous for your age. 
We have been given amazing bodies with the capability to be strong, muscular and upright, if we would only use them well.

All of us are different in our composition. Some are tall, others short, some lean and others broad. Not all of us have the capability to look like fitness models, however we can all develop our physiques into something we can be proud of. When we take care of our physical selves we feel more confident, have better energy and vitality, and experience an overall improvement in our wellbeing.

The four V’s; Vitality, Vibrancy, Vigour and Virility are all greatly enhanced through the development of a strong, balanced and fit body.

How we achieve this is totally personal. The necessary core elements are to regularly use our bodies in ways that test our strength, agility, balance, endurance and mobility, gradually increasing the difficulty over time. There is nothing to be proud of without effort and consistency.
 Pride in our bodies, the pursuit of physical capability, and the development of a physique we can be naked and not ashamed of is a worthy pursuit we can work on our entire lives. 

The best time to start is now.
 #fitness #strength #posture #wellbeing

Surfer at sunset Uvita Beach, Costa Rica #travel #photography

Bitcoin Jungle is a great vibe. After 6 weeks in Costa Rica we finally made it to Uvita and the Saturday #Bitcoin markets. Super nice vibes, lovely produce and products. Almost all vendors accepting sats as payment. Felt so good to spend peer to peer for once. Lightning ⚡️ worked a dream. #bitcoinjungle #costarica #travel #lightningnetwork #worldschooling

Crypto.com charge a fee of 0.0006 BTC for every single BTC withdrawal. That’s 60,000 sats or around $40 USD at todays prices. Wild stuff. How are retail entrants new to Bitcoin supposed to deal with this? Crypto does much to reinforce the same toxic issues plaguing traditional finance. #Bitcoin fixes this, but only if you can find the right exchanges to buy it and get it into custody.

It is time to renew the power and passion of ancient mythology, welcoming it back into our collective psyche. For lack of stories about ourselves we are rapidly losing our depth of tradition, character, feeling and expression. We need myths to guide us safely through the transition phase that is happening now and into a brighter future.

Myth is embracing of life in all its rich tapestry of experience. The world of myth refuses to cast strong moral judgments on its characters’ flaws but rather dives deeply into the human condition, embracing and even celebrating the dark, light, and all the shades which lie in between. Myth suits the times we are in, much as it suited the Greeks, Romans and Norse mythologies of the ancient West, or the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, and Jews of the Middle East, there are moments in History where myth must by necessity find itself experiencing a resurgence. Re-written and interpreted anew to bring back meaning and purpose where we have lost our way.

The person who is comfortable with ambiguity understands that morals are more a concern of Religion than myth and story. Yahweh of the Old Testament is extremely concerned with moral behavior.  Zeus on the other hand is not. Religion, especially the monotheistic ones are strictly adhered to and certain interpretations on behaviour and the nature of God and man so concretised as to be almost impossible to shift our understanding on. One such example is that of Solomon. According to the traditional interpretation Solomon’s wisdom was given him by God in a dream, downloaded like a new software program as a reward for choosing the gift of wisdom over wealth and pleasure. As the story goes Solomon then chose to pursue wealth and pleasure anyway and in the end was led astray by his hundreds of wives and mistresses. This can of course be interpreted differently. Solomon more likely developed his wisdom over decades and was in fact positively influenced into a less warlike and more open-minded reign than his father before him through his exposure to all the cultural, religious and behavioural differences of his wives and lovers. This was clearly the experience of the Greek King of the gods Zeus who’s many love affairs, conquests, mistakes and adventures led him to grow in wisdom and understanding over time. Zeus is a nuanced character and Greek mythology can accept that. Christianity on the other hand cannot accept a God who is not perfect, or a man who learns as much through his sin as his spiritual devotion. Hence we have the mythic Christ, made into a real life character who is supposed to be the literal incarnation of a perfect God, intolerant of any moral deviations whatsoever.

At times in history such a mythology as that espoused by the major Abrahamic faiths has been welcomed, relevant and even necessary for society to thrive. This is not one of those times. Hard and rigid ideas around morality, behaviour, relationships, ethics and faith are not what most people are looking for. We understand that rigid concepts can quicky lead us into tribalism, fear and hatred of those with different views to our own. Do we really need to go back here? Mythology on the other hand has no problem with fallible human nature; mistakes, death, hedonism, taboos (incest, patricide, rape and homosexuality) and even welcomes these concepts as deep parts of ourselves that we entertain but do not openly admit. Myth has a way of bringing the dark to the light and exposing our more shameful desires and behaviours for what they are, human. Mythology when followed loosely for its lessons and guiding principles on behaviour does not demand of us to judge others when they show themselves to be flawed, in fact it is our expectation that they are indeed flawed, for mythology has shown us this and taught us to accept and expect it. If the gods are flawed, and the heroes of humanity also, it is no surprise that our neighbours, colleagues and family members are also capable of doing hurtful, prideful and selfish things.

This is exactly why myth is more empowering for culture than religion. It has a lighter touch and in so doing allows for more flexibility and growth of new concepts and ideas. Religion moves slow and struggles with evolution (there are some exceptions of course), in general it is fixed. Myth is fluid and this fluidity opens it up for constant new iterations and additions to the story that naturally evolve as our concepts of the world shift and move. Religion and science struggle to see eye to eye, myth has no problem with it as they are completely distinct and separate realms of thought. It is the same in politics, religion worms its way into it, myth stays separate and is more commonly found in the arts, performance, film and storytelling. There is a beauty to its form and function that more closely follows nature.

At its core the stories of myth change but the essential themes remain. It is to these themes we much look for our inspiration and our guidance. Despite their antiquity they are as relevant now in these modern technological times as they were in ancient Babylon thousands of years ago. We cannot say the same for the religions practiced by the ancients, their archaic behaviours would in no way suit modern Western culture, because religion has a way of getting stuck. It is related to a fixed mindset in a way that myth is not. In the times we are in, fixed mindsets cannot possibly serve us. During a transition phase what is needed is flexible and malleable minds and behaviours that can adapt to rapidly changing environments. Closed and ossified beliefs and ideals will crack and crumble under the pressure of rapid and sustained change, or at best simply become obsolete leaving the individuals and cultures who observe them in the dust of the ones who can pivot quickly to a new way of living.

Let’s reconsider the ancient themes behind the myths, not becoming hung up on the stories themselves but rather on the characters, how they faced challenge, where they won and lost, their successes and failures, and their willingness to embrace all sides of their divinity and humanity. Without the richness of myth and the lessons gained from embedding it into our psyche, culture, and education we risk slipping into religious fanaticism, the emptiness of cynicism or the vagueness of confusion. At worse we will slip backwards into a dark age of violence, tribalism and fundamentalism that undoes decades of progress towards a more open minded, collaborative and equitable future for all humanity. Myth has power to focus our minds, aid us in accepting our flaws, and bring passion and purpose into our lives individually and collectively. Let’s embrace it, grow with it, reinvent it, and create new traditions and practices suited to the times we now find ourselves in. Myths contain hope for a brighter future.   #myth #wisdom #lifelessons #life #philosophy #religion

Information technology is moving so fast, if you aren’t using it you are losing it. We are being offered an extremely rare opportunity to harness emerging tech that can rapidly and radically change our quality of life. The only caveat is that we must make the choice to adopt it now on our own terms, or be forced in the future to adopt it on somebody else’s.

Artificial Intelligence will become completely centralised and captured by big tech companies if we do not concurrently support and use decentralised and secure money. Humanity cannot flourish individually or collectively, under a centralised totalitarian political system that controls the information, the money, and the technology.

We can and must choose the path of decentralisation towards small, local, autonomous nodes interconnected on global networks much too large and secure to be censored or controlled by any centralised entity. One way or another we will be forced to use AI and digital money, currently we have a choice to make. Do we support and use the networks being built by the people for the people, or will we reinforce the bars of our own prison by choosing big tech and big state controlled and funded networks? Many have not yet consciously used a large language model or purchased a cryptocurrency. Others have used LLM’s through search engines without understanding that this is AI. Some will ape into meme coins and other tokens this bull run hoping to make a quick buck, not realising the financial hope they desperately need is best placed in a decentralised and secure network like Bitcoin.

This is a race, and if you are not running you are losing by default. The gap between the early adopters of information tech and everyone else is broadening, the race for freedom or control well underway. Yet for the non-participant, ignorant to the titanic shift happening, they will find themselves playing catchup into a new world they had zero conscious input in creating.

We must spread the word, utilising the gift of time we still have to choose our own path and fight for our future freedoms. We must use it, or we will lose it. #Bitcoin #AI #freedom #freedomtechnology #cryptocurrency #autonomy