What would happen to me? Would I be freaking out broken on the floor defeated, thinking about all the times I have failed myself. Would that be it? Would I not even try to make it right somehow? - I mean, I know that Steemit Inc could help, but I'm proposing a hypothetical, What if they could not? What if the Money was stolen? What if a Hacker would power this down and I had to watch the whole thing dry up, week after week?
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What is this meno, you OK?
Yes of course, I'm fine, I got the account look - I just made a stupid link to a banana cat, I know you clicked, its weird I know. I just showed you the banana cat so you know its me, its me, its OK. But, lets get back to the point, Why this post? What is going on?
Well today I was in the peruses of the trendingses and saw this post by @kevinwong. Why would I visit the trending page when we know that most of it is literary assaults to the eye balls, you say? Well, because of reasons regarding curiosity and other human flaws that reside within me still. Humanity won't wash off, no sense in trying it.
But... Back to my point, I was thinking about how much the ethical people on the platform have to advocate, or promote if you will the necessity to be ethical. That sounds so twistedly obvious when I say it, doesn't it? - Let's see if this works in the none virtual world. Lets try some silly examples:
Common sense Advice for the Common Sense Absent
- It's probably a good idea to be social, its integral to our mental health.
- It's probably a good idea to think long term, living just for now can kill your future.
- It's probably a good idea not to steal, people don't like it and society rejects you.
- It's probably a good idea not to be greedy, people don't like it and society rejects you.
- It's probably a good idea to be civil, words have repercussions beyond the now.
- It's probably a good idea to be respectful, it feels good when you are respected back.
Question - Who's mind did I just blow?
Chances are no one, chances are you are considering clicking away and you would be forgiven, but my point just began to show the dorsal fin, so its a bad time to do so. In truth these things are pretty much common knowledge, if you made it to the point where you have a debit card in your pocket, chances are you understand them, you aim to master them, and if you don't, you at least simulate competency.
So why is it hard to understand here?
Or is that even the case? - I mean, How many times is a whale or a dolphin of prestige (never thought I would use that word, had to verify, its cool) have to make a post telling other whales, dolphins and influential Steemians. "Hey guys, I have an idea, lets not be assholes, What do you think?"- and then as if they were summoned by Zeus himself, everyone start showing up.
Comment after comment about how the code promotes Assholery, and as such the guilt falls on the code. I mean people, I'm having to rape the English language to communicate here, because I'm lacking the words, I don't have enough of them, this is my shortcoming, but I hope you get my point.
I know we want to make money, I do too
But at what expense? What am I willing to sacrifice for it? - Mind you, I'm not one to subscribe to anything paranormal, so I wont go there, but I will try to address this in a manner that makes sense to most, if not all of you, most of you. Suppose a "bad whale" or a "bad dolphin" loses his account. Entertain me for a second, and he or she is locked out, can't access it, can't do anything about it.
How many of us, How many Steemians will come to their "rescue"? - Do you think, I would be super excited about helping out a guy or gal that showed me all he/she ever did was to game the system? Would I be like "OMG, yes let me send you this delegation, let me promote your crap, so that you can get back to your reward pool rapings that I loved so much" - Of course not.
So, this bad actor, this selfish actor has no social insurance, no social currency, nothing. Does that feel good? It can't, the mere thought of having that Steemian existence hurts me . Maybe I'm to idealistic, maybe that's it. Maybe I can learn a thing or two from these selfish actors and learn to fatten my pockets a little more. Would I be happy? Would I feel filled with purpose, having all those conversations with myself?
That sounds miserable to me, miserable. But, that just me, maybe I'm the weird one, Who knows? After all, I'm a collection of events and fermented biases.
The conversation gets old, it really does. If they want to act like that, if they want to be socially poor, its up to them. They just value different things more than others, and the idea of drinking cocktails in hotel in Bahamas by themselves sounds great to them, but not to me... not to me...
Other posts by yours truly
• This is how money works, kinda - A story told to me by a Ghost
• An Ode to Spam
• grandpa, grandma and their kids
• The Burnpost Comments are the best!
• Behold Professor Word-Salad
There's this aboriginal tribe in Australia... I forget their name, maybe Nathan knows, but they are nomads, travel on foot, measure distance by songs and none of them, not even the oldest and wisest of them can count. They don't know numbers. In a BBC documentary someone asked one of the old men about his sons, he asked "how many sons do you have?" The old mans answer: "Many." The translator repeated the question for the BBC: "Yes, but how many sons do you have?" and the old man repeated the answer from before, "many".
This tribe has a word for "one", which is the same word as for "all", and a word for "many". So after a couple of tries from the BBC and the translator the old man got fed up and, while making a stripe in the sand with his finger for every name he spoke, he said "Peter, Jared, Hanso, Jacob... Many!" (the names aren't accurate, of course) That's how we know he has 4 sons, but the old man himself couldn't care less.
If you fail to see the wisdom contained in this tribe without numbers, if you fail to see how incredibly free these people are, you are a modern man indeed.
I keep laughing and crying at all these posts about a fair world, which the universe doesn't care for in the slightest as Nathan said, that keep using the words "gain" "lose" "risk"... You know them by heart, we all use them every day... @omitaylor uses a very good example by trying to discern when "taking" is "stealing" and when not; the insuline one is so good... But they only all apply in a world, a population with a mindset that thinks there's not enough. No one cares if you take insuline when it's everywhere and free. When "it'just there", like grass or sand, nobody thinks about taking nor stealing, just about being and needing.
The tragedy, the reason why I laugh and cry at the same time with these discussions sometimes is that we all seem to forget, willingly almost, that there is no scarcity of anything. Only the time we have with each other is scarce, and we fuck that up by making everything else scarce. We should all go visit Nathan in Australia and find this tribe. Live with them for a stretch. Unlearn from them.
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@zyx066 of course, time is our most precious resource. Although I am sure, there is an AI or blockchain idea somewhere that even now is working on how to stretch time so there is more of it - or an illusion of more. We can idealise tribes in the desert, as we idealise times past, a concept explored in Woody Allen's film, Midnight in Paris, but we can never really know if that was how it was, or, more likely, how we imagined it to be. Currently, I'm living in a remote Aboriginal community in the desert in Australia. I can tell you right now that it's nothing like you suggest that Nathan imagines it to be, LOL! And I doubt it ever was.
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You're absolutely right: this 5 or 10 minute talk on a years old documentary is the only thing I know / remeber about this tribe. And it is all I'm repeating here. I would likely not even survive a week there :-)
It's just their mindset, how I imagine that to be based on ten minutes of listening, what I try to communicate here and that I compare to the rat-race we have turned our lives into, again as I see it, and grossly generalizing to make a point. We equate "more" and "faster" with "better" and "higher" and all the while we measure our position on a made-up social ladder by counting what we have. If that's not a prison, I don't know what is.
Meno of course gives a beginning of an answer; if you leave out the measuring, the things he says that sound so obvious, but apparently aren't, suddenly become obvious. At least, in my mind's eye. ;-)
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@zyx066 I feel that we have it within our grasp to create a heaven here on earth, but we choose not to do so. If every person took it upon themselves to create a heaven surrounding themselves - as in, inner peace etc. - then we create it collectively. One could imagine that this is the Buddhist philosophy. I personally enjoy a strong sense of inner peace AND happiness. I try to project this in my day-to-day dealings. Sometimes I run out of energy because of the small stuff. We all have a drive to achieve - whatever our nominated goal is - and after that, in life, we are free to enjoy the spoils of that effort. If we didn't strive towards anything, what would our life consist of? What would it be about? Make achievable goals. Get there. Congratulate yourself, move on to the next goal. We can also help others to achieve their goal. Life is a journey. We are writing the story of us...
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I like your example and I was with you the whole way because it seems logical, but I don’t think it’s a complete example and the reason for that is that for people like you and I, we assume that they have no friends. But the world is run by rich arseholes with other rich arsehole friends who are subsequently surrounded by sycophants that will pander to all of their needs and come to the rescue whenever they falter.
The rich always safeguard each other. Our whole capitalistic economic system is an example of the rich supporting the rich. That’s why the bankers were bailed out by over $3.5 trillion when their bets went wrong and that’s why the poor man (or more poignantly, millions of poor & middle class people) loses his home when tough times happen.
But we are the answer to creating a radical positive shift where everyone is taken care of.
Another thought provoking post brought to you by Meno!
Love it!
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You might be right my friend, you might be right... but... maybe that applies outside of steem, that last element, maybe...
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I’d rather not be right.
But hey, your main point is that we behave with respect and ethical integrity whilst connecting and supporting each other and that, my friend, will create inner happiness and peace.
So the question isn’t whether people would rescue or aid someone greedy like that, nor whether they have a support network or not, it’s whether they find peace and happiness inside of themselves.
That is highly unlikely.
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Assholery... Assholery everywhere.
I just want to tell you that I like your writing style :)
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I'm sure an English professor would slap me across the face with a white glove, but its fun.
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There is no real justice in the world - only karma :) I always feel that if I do the wrong thing, justice is swift - because I have a conscience and I eke out the justice that my actions require. So, never fear, people who do the wrong thing ultimately punish themselves because they spoil the world they inhabit and sooner or later it bites them in the bum :)
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I think so too Katy... I think that is how it works out in the end.
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Karma exists, but not as some form of justice or punishment. That is an anthropocentric reduction of a far grander system or understanding.
There is no such thing as good or bad in the universe. These are purely human-made constructs to navigate our social communication and connection.
Did good or bad exist before humans existed?
Will good and bad exist after we are long gone?
So the universe couldn’t give a stuff about our concepts of justice, comeuppance and punishment.
Karma is merely an energy balancing protocol.
Actions cause reactions and ripples within the underlying energy foundation of existence.
Karma balances the ripples out from the source from whence they derived.
That is all.
How it balances it out may not fit the way we think it hope it does.
In fact, we might not have the capacity to perceive or understand how the ‘action’ and the ‘rebalancing’ are connected and resolved.
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@nathankaye Well said. And once understood in this way every interception isn't a bad thing, just like every opportunity isn't a good thing. Everything (quantum) is in essence decentralized. That doesn't mean no way. It just means that each entity at it's scale has its way, and each compound entity so, and so on. All things experience entropy of form. All things experience constant transformation of form. All things experience reformation into form.
Lets take a movie from sun up to sun up. Then break it down into frames. Where does the sun live in the sky? It doesn't. ;)
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@nathankaye, my concept of "karma" was a self-administered justice meted out by a guilty conscience, because of my intrinsic, ingrained sense of humanity
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The concept of Karma often gets embroiled in this way. Probably a cultural hangover from fear-based catholicised dualism.
And we often just hope the 'bad guys' just their just deserts.
Nothing wrong with having an ingrained sense of humanity @katyclark.
In truth, an ingrained sense of humanity has no bounds and will afford us to seek and have compassion for people that are normally deemed 'bad guys' too. I mean, we are so conditioned to seek revenge, right? Almost every movie we watch is crafted this way.
When my friend was brutally stabbed to death 37 times by a man who broke into her house to apparently steal a computer and her phone (and subsequently only got 15 years in prison), I had to find a way to come to terms with what happened and forgive him.
I imagined him as a little baby and then the possible abhorrent things he must have endured as a child to shape his behaviour which would lead to him taking such an intensely nefarious action against someone else, like he did.
By seeing him as a baby, I found compassion for him and that allowed me to mourn my friend's death and celebrate her life properly.
THAT IS HOW AN INGRAINED SENSE OF HUMANITY UNFOLDS IN ACTION.
I've discussed this method with @clayboyn who shares similar views.
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I'm sorry to hear about your friend. In an earlier career, I was a court typist, an occupation that desensitises one to the horrors of the depths that we humans can plumb. However, the kaleidoscope of crime revealed in that job never undermined or weakened my sense of humanity or compassion for others.
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Thank you so much.
Nice chatting with you.
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Thank you, @nathankaye :) nice chatting with you, too
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of cause I care because I have a feeling for all following and you are member of them
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@hero7 I agree :)
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