Bitcoin and its underlying blockchain architecture is often hailed as a disruptive player in the financial scene. The fact that distributed ledger technology enables us everyday plebs to realize decentralized and democratized networks and come to force contention against centralized entities that have been running the game for far too long is definitely something that needs to be discussed. So its not surprising that the political implications of Bitcoin and its subsequent followers is often expounded as anti establishment, anti centralization and anti government. Back when the United States government was still being formed in the 1700s we talked about the separation of Church and State. Now we dare talk about the separation between money and state.
Whether these claims have any validity remains to be seen in the long run, and it does seem very forward to claim that everyone affiliated to the blockchain revolution approves of the same political ideologies. Do we all want to destroy centralized government because of certain inadequacies and imperfections? Probably not... Still there is definitely a trend, a movement per se, that is being formed in relation to this cryptocurrency stuff and that deserves to be examined. So my point here isn’t to make any political statements nor implications in regards to the potential of blockchain but rather to highlight a more general cultural shift that distributed ledger technology is enabling and helping us achieve as members of modern civilization. And my claim here is quite simple; cryptocurrencies are the child prodigy of the post modern thought and the best implementation of this philosophy we have ever seen. It is said that you can philosophize just about anything so why not do cryptocurrencies?!
Before I can explain my very bold claim, we need to go back and understand what Post Modern thought is and how it is historically linked to modernity. Full disclaimer, the word post modernism (and modernism as well for that matter) is a heavy one that is often used in many different ways and has a lot of historical baggage which I won’t be addressing here. This is a very broad and generalized undertaking of historical events that might not be fully accurate, so as always do your own research!
Modernity:
In some ways, Modernity came hand in hand with the Age of the Enlightenment (l’Age des Lumieres) which overtook European thought during the 17th and 18th Century.
Modernity happened as a direct consequence of scientific prowess which was becoming more and more prevalent in every day society. One of theses consequences was the proliferation of knowledge and the birth of mass culture directly tied to specific inventions, such as that of the printing press. With these technologies in hand, the average person was gifted with a much larger access to general knowledge and was exposed to much more prolific networks of information. For instance; the bible became a mass produced commodity and could be read by any one individual who so chose to without having to depend on the clergy reading it out to them on Sunday Mass. You could read it from the comfort of your own home but most importantly you could examine it closely and you could question its inconsistencies without having a religious authority guide your opinions for you. So with this direct distribution of knowledge and with the advent of modern technology to push it out came the opportunity for individual thought.
This was the age of humanism. The rise of science, the rise of technological advancement and the rise of globalization was coupled with an entrenched want for rationality and individualism in a world that seemed to be in urgent need for it. Materialist and reductionist discourse became very popular and human reason was hailed as the catalyst for a utopian world. With our reason, our rationality and with this push for scientific discoveries, we would create a modern world, that would solve the tribalistic problems of the past.
Post-Modernity:
And then the Great Depression happened, quickly followed by World War I; the birth of modern warfare which gave us more than 10 million dead. And after that World War 2, more than 60 million dead. The very first use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The cold war. All of these things which pushed us towards the society we live in today which is often referred to as the era of “late stage capitalism.”
These atrocities created some sort of schism in the ideologies pushed forward by modernist thought. Something was fundamentally wrong and the violence and irrationality of the olden times had never gone away, it was still here all along but with new more dangerous toys to play with.
So if the age of modernity was highlighted as an age humanism where truths and anthropocentric ideologies were hailed, the age of of Post Modernity was a direct reaction to that. It was a complete disillusionment with these so called modern values and a birthplace for huge movements of skepticism, mistrust and downright hatred towards any form of authority, be it a government or a philosophy. During modernity we declared the truth, during post modernity we questioned any insinuation to a truth. This is the broad mentality of what we currently refer as late stage capitalism
Post Modernism and Cryptocurrency:
The problem with this “post modern thought” that is supposedly in full occurrence today is that it never amounted to anything besides a hefty criticism of the world hidden within the confines of literary and artistic works. It never translated to any real societal change and remains a whiny afterthought while the enthrallment for the modern world and its uncontrollable growth remains as unhinged and as dangerous as ever.
We are today blessed with the existence of big government, big pharma, big tech, big banks, big corporations, mass surveillance, mass corruption, too big to fail institutions, not to mention proxy wars between abstract entities fighting for land and resources all the while the purchasing power of the average joe steadily declines and a dystopic landscape slowly molds into the new normal.
*Takes a deep breath*
Basically a lot of words to say society isn't perfect and we don't seem to have a lot of recourse when it comes to changing it. All we can do is hope that the big boys on top do the right thing.
So although technology has evidently brought about countless positive changes to society, it seems that these occurrences have always been guided by the hand of new age oligarchies in order to further asset consolidation in the hands of the few. All of this thanks to, of course, modern day financial institutions. In other words, money makes the world go round and the powerful control the flow.
So what am I saying here? Am I saying we should all put on our Chinese-made Karl Marx shirts and go eat the rich? No, not at all. I am simply observing that there seems to be a pretty big disparity between the culture of post modernist thought with its cynical temperament and the contrast with reality where it seems that any one normal individual is being granted less and less power to have any form of meaningful change on the world. It doesn’t matter how much we criticize if we can’t act on that criticism.
This is where I truly believe cryptocurrency can reverse the trend. Why is that? Because if these decentralized networks prove to be successful at what they are trying to achieve, they will change the way we view monetary policy and general economics in a way that we have never seen before. They could change the world. The point of crypto isn’t just to help you transfer money across the globe without the help of a big institution. It is also about providing the security and freedom FROM that authority when it comes to your own money and your own digital assets without the need to rely on ANY financial institutions. Better yet, it gives you the choice to reposition and redefine these assets in a way that conforms to your particular perception of monetary value.
Simply by existing and offering their services, cryptocurrencies are making us witness a new battle of the fittest, a new evolutionary contention. At the heart of that battle? The economic propositions regarding how money operates on a global scale. Some coins will want to be inflationary, some will want to be deflationary, some will want to be both, and some will want to be something entirely different. Heck, I’m sure somewhere along the line we will have some cryptocurrencies where the governance protocol isn’t even invented by humans but by some sort of AI. The point being, this is the very first opportunity in human history that technology has given us a chance to redefine economic theory without depending on the petrodollar or any other state controlled currency and literally anyone can participate in the conversation. If post modern though wants to criticize and move away from all of these big corporations, this is literally the best opportunity that we have.
This is why cryptocurrency is important and this is why it has the potential to be the highlight of post modernity. Will this actually happen? I don’t know, but I sure do like to dream.
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