Software for the Soul

By Bitcoin Graffiti | vol.17 - Originally published on citadel21.com

“In the land of stories there are 5 kinds of birds. There are those birds that sore on the wing and see things from great distance as if they were just an eye and a wing. There are birds that have wings but never sore, that patrol the ground, pecking things there. There are birds that fly quickly through the branches of the trees, never touching a branch and seem to fly as if they see everything at once and those are said to give music to the air, and the music they give is called aires. And there are birds that patrol the place where the water meets the land, the shore birds, and those birds were said to bring poetry to people.

And the fifth kind of bird… is the bird that waits in the fire that burns in the soul of a man who seeks his destiny.”

— Michael Meade — The Water King & Vasilissa the Wise

What is myth?

Myth, like money, has jumped host many times and seeks the medium most effective. It used to live only in the spoken word, where people would transfer mythological knowledge by telling each other stories. The Grimm brothers put a lot of work into preserving this spoken folklore in written form during the 19th century in Germany, as they saw it was slowly fading away from society. Mythology proliferated for a long time in books, but just recently jumped to the medium of film, where it has found its new home.

Make no mistake, most popular movies of our time are fairy tales in their latest form. They should therefore not be considered as literal, but they want to convey in the space where the fifth bird lives. This is a place orthogonal to common reality, but is superimposed on it like a map of meaning.

We exit the normal world and enter a different time, a time before time was captured by clock towers, watches and computers. In this space-time, things appear strange to the eye, but true to the heart. In a sense it is hyper real, as Jordan Peterson would say, as these stories contain the real valuable information on what to value and how to behave in the world.

Unfortunately, myth and fairy tales in our culture are associated with untrues. Today, the word myth means false and fairytale has become synonym for a lie. Whereas the original meaning of the word mythos comes from understanding and telling of the story. Myth points to the world behind the world of reality. It is a necessary falsehood in order to tell the truth. Also, the word story comes from storehouse, a place to keep things. Important things.

“Inside stories, are stored those important things people keep forgetting.”

— Michael Meade

Today we encounter a world where people have fallen out of story and have lost meaning. Desperately they are clinging onto whatever crumbling narrative remains. This might very well be the result of our fiat value protocol being corrupt at its core, exponentially degrading. By using modern day fairy tales, we can bring back meaning to this world and use it as a map for navigation during the collapse of the fiat world and the rebirth of sound money principles in a hyperbitcoinized future.

The Prophecy is True

Signs and portents for the coming crisis, the fourth turning, were already present in the preceding third part of the saeculum when things still seemed fine. The late 90s was perhaps peak culture, still able to deliver high quality storytelling with movies like the Matrix and the Titanic. Both were very popular, and my guess is part of that has got to do with their mythological and prophetic qualities. Their respective writers seemed to have a great sense of the unraveling of the current system and the darkness that was yet to come. Both stories offer a foresight and a manual on how to navigate the hard times.

The Matrix

“You may have spent the past few years looking for me, but I have spent my entire life looking for you.”

The hero’s journey starts out with a call to adventure as described by (Jungian) Joseph Campbell. You might have felt a splinter in your mind for a few years, but Morpheus has been searching for you his entire life. The phone was always ringing, but you have to be ready to pick it up and listen to the message.

“One cannot be told what the Matrix is, you have to see it for yourself.”

What is the message? That you are a slave caught in the fiat matrix and that it is harvesting your time and energy. But you are the one that has to take the red pill, see it for yourself and walk through the door. The first thing you’ll do when you know what the Matrix is, is to pull out all the plugs that still connect you to this parasitic system.

The journey after unplugging is one of discovering who you are and what this world really is. A process towards self sovereignty, as now there’s no system that tells you who you are and what you have to do and what the world is all about. This is now suddenly all up to you. The Matrix was never interested in you and therefore couldn’t tell you who you are. Not even an Oracle can. The individual is the sovereign, you make up the rules and determine who you are. If this was dependent on others, then we are back to being slaves under a system of control.

When you’ve found out that you are the One, then from that point on no bullets can kill you anymore. You have gained independence, the force and creativity to shape this world any way you see fit. In light of Bitcoin, adopting this technology may eventually give you the freedom and abundance of time to do these things. Not that it is a prerequisite, but it will make it easier to realize it.

The Bitcoin Standard will eventually show a world without rules and controls, without borders and boundaries. A world in which anything is possible. And it will be up to the sovereign individuals where we go from there. Frankly, this is already the case, but the fiat system is a huge drain on creativity and entrepreneurship and is keeping most of humanity stuck on the hamster wheel.

The Titanic

Let’s dig up some more treasures from the deep. The Titanic is a remake of the mythos of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun and crashed into the Earth. It’s human hubris that will be put back in its place by nature itself. The Titanic was too big, too fast and moreover its architect and captain were too full of themselves. Weak leaders, lacking moral and principle. There was only one way for them: down.

As is the fiat system, which is going down like a large inert ship, taking in water, people drowning. And leaders that are more focussed on letting musicians play comforting music and locking down their citizens on the lower decks, than to come up with real solutions or an honest rescue plan. Those politicians seem to do everything they can not to mention the ship is sinking and that we hit an iceberg back in 2008. But the stern of the ship is coming up, like a stock market delaminating from its fundamentals.

The true value of things is another thread running through the story. The salvager realizing that he was fishing for something more than just a diamond necklace. Or Rose herself trapped in material riches, but finding no value nor meaning in her life.

In a way a crisis is necessary for life to put the necessary pressure on, to make things liquid enough so they start moving again for where they have been long stuck. Courage is required to reach the next level. And this is much broader than just jumping into the life raft called Bitcoin. It is maybe also a jump into a life of more meaning, more truth and more value. Using your remaining time to really do the things you want to do.

Software for the Soul

The fairy tale or myth can be used as a tool, a way to give guidance. They are infinite storehouses of timeless knowledge. Consider it software for the soul, a way for us to adapt and anticipate to the new age, set our value hierarchy and find our rightful place. It might even be your map on how to wake up the fifth bird waiting inside of you, dig up parts of yourself that have been long lost, or in Titanic’s terms unify this part through a form of inner marriage.

Bitcoin is the path that will set many of us free. But the question still remains. What will you do with your precious time here on Earth? Working for the church of Satoshi is a noble cause, and nothing else might matter to you anymore. But after hyperbitcoinization, what next? Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

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