I think one of the things in distributed systems communities and also the infosec and crypto communities which is starting to come up more and more is that the theme is to counter an adversary via technical and technological means. The word adversary is familiar to anyone in the latter two communities, but is a little less well defined in communities like Steemit, but represents the threat of centralised control.
An important thing to remember is that these communities all have technical solutions or at least approaches to this problem, but they often forget to fill in the gaps when it comes to social problems. And to be clear, social problems are health problems... If somebody has sociopathic tendancies, that is a symptom of mental and social unhealthiness. If we don't recognise these people or address pathological behaviours like misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia or just social manipulation (to name a few) then culturally we are blind and culturally our immune system is failing.
One of the causes of these blindnesses is hero worship and allowing people to accrue majority shares in social capital by bestowing trust on them because you want to believe in them. We've seen this lately in the Tor community.
That is to say, it is everybody's duty to call out behaviour which is patently damaging, and especially the duty of the outspoken and charismatic to be aware of the way they speak to others - that they don't browbeat and aren't dismissive of ideas that they disagree with... With great power comes great responsibility, but as we're proving with Steemit, with ANY power comes responsibilty. In the early days of Steemit, we have whales, but at least their social capital is quantified for all to see, and I think that's something we should reflect on.
@stellabelle's contribution is so great because she's mixed her opinions and facts with experience and context, which allow each individual to form an opinion with all the facts and to be able to take the parts which they see as relevant or they agree with without taking the whole lot, and we're able to draw parallels where appropriate. Whilst I don't necessarily agree with all her conclusions, I feel that it's really helped to solidify my thoughts on a bunch of things!
But that's just like, my opinion, man. ;)
Hey, thanks for the comment. I especially liked, "One of the causes of these blindnesses is hero worship and allowing people to accrue majority shares in social capital by bestowing trust on them because you want to believe in them. We've seen this lately in the Tor community." Hero worship and the cult of personality are huge problems in the entrepreneur community too. I guess that's where I'd put myself, if I had to choose a group to define my identity. Everyone I know deifies Elon Musk, including myself. However, there's a real danger in doing this. By deifying others, one never truly comes to understand what hidden strengths, talents and powers lie within each of us. Not everyone is going to want to work as hard as Elon Musk does, cramming down a dinner in 5 minutes, and sending email off while playing with your kids, but we can learn from him, take what's useful and dump the rest. The media knows that we deify Musk and they prey on our vulnerabilities. It's very subtle and most people can't see it. I'm a journalist and a paid writer, so I notice stuff like that. What I hope to change is the way that media runs. I want to give people information that helps them, not manipulates their overly hard-wired lizard brain that is consumed by: status, money, power, greed, sex, etc. I feel that my ultimate contribution could be something like this:
Packaging highly dense and helpful information inside little packets of digital media that from the outside look like click-bait. It's like the reverse of click-bait, because my intention is based in altruistic desire to help humans learn to be more authentic, happy, creative and free. It's what the media should be but currently is not. It's also a post-advertising model. Advertising is dead in my opinion. We're moving towards pure times, and I'd also like to help Nikola Tesla's predictions come true........Thanks again for your comments. I love the global feel of this site......and I think that as i get socially healthier, my tone and topics will change. Here's to the future.
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