This week only the online human group discussion happened due to one person turning up for the in-person session. This is the first time I have had to cancel a human group discussion in two years of doing it. However with one discussion we managed to explore the infinite field of value. From personal values connecting to more qualitative aspects of being to value systems and the tension that is created between the two. Halfway through the discussion I introduced the crossroad we are at in terms of new technology and our failing monetary system.
What are your values?
Relationship, nature, health, truth, trust, love, being present, integrity, authenticity, expression, creativity and more.
Do your values align with what you spend most of your time doing?
Work was the most common time consuming activity and most humans participating in the group had jobs aligned with their values or if they found themselves within a job that wasn’t aligned they would either ask for the changes they needed or move to a project that was better suited.
One human mentioned a fellow commuter who hated their job and endlessly complained about it. This seems to be quite common, many people have poor relationships with their work, treating it as a chore they are enslaved to.
This is a huge problem from the perspective in which I stand, as many people are compromising their values in order to make money, fit in or hold some kind of status within society. This incongruence and inauthenticity has impacts far beyond an individual hating their job. It impacts the environment, society, relationship and more. How does this affect the next generation who watch their parents spend their whole lives hating their jobs? Maybe it inspires a change in the way they choose to live their own lives.
So why is it that many people will sacrifice their values for money? Is it fear that they cannot do what they want because they may not make any money from it? Perhaps they are submerged in an expensive lifestyle that they are already struggling to maintain?
In this modern time we are seeing new technologies bring rise to innovative monetary value systems; cryptocurrency; Bitcoin, Ethereum and hundreds of others.
This technology is decentralising value, much like the internet decentralising the monopoly over information. What kind of changes will this bring to society and our lives? Will we be able to align our personal values more fluidly with the economic system?
An example of how this may look is a decentralised Facebook that runs as an immutable smart contract facilitating the publishing of content in which every individual using the utility of the platform receives the value of their content, rather than a centralised institution. Imagine buying your coffee with ‘likes’. Or even paying rent from a poem you have published on this decentralised platform.
The beauty and inevitability of blockchain/cryptocurrency is that it is now the most secure technology to hold data, trumping centralised institutions who are vulnerable to hacking due to holding all of their assets and content in a limited amount of spaces.
Coming from an attitude in which static systems stemming from old clunky centralised technology, this technology with its accessibility and open source enables the systems of value to rise and fall with the dynamic changes of reality, culture, society and individuals themselves.
Will institutions be able to tempt us with money and seperate us from our values when we can be our dynamic selves and utilise different tools of value on the internet to facilitate a monetary output?
For example I work as a banker but for years I have been trying to work out how I can create time for my art and also spend more time on exploring who I am and how I can be more regenerative with my day to day practices. When suddenly there’s a platform I can publish my art, a platform that pays me a token of value to ride my bike to work instead of drive, a token for when I shop locally or even grow a small amount of vegetables in my garden, and collecting and distributing energy via the solar panels on my roof. Now I have multiple flows of income through living a generalised relevant and regenerative life. How does an old damaging centralised bank hold me as an employer when their monetary power has little to no power over me?
We are at an amazing time in the history of society. One in which an old cancerous system devouring our lives and the environment itself has reached the end of its life and it is not a devastation or apocalypse but a perfect synchronicity as we have been delivered a lifeboat through technology to simply step from this old sinking decrepit boat onto a dynamic ever changing multidimensional spaceship, that is organic, alive and breathing.
The universe is speaking through us, through our technology and is waiting for us to align ourselves and consequentially aligning ourselves with our nature and nature itself.
We have an inherent value that is ignored through our current narrow value systems. We are moving into a time in which we will discover our true value as unique guardians of the universe who each have a specific and integral role in this ecosystem.
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