Rule IV: Notice That Bitcoin Lurks Where Monetary Responsibility Has Been Abdicated
A reimagination of “Beyond Order” by Jordan Peterson through the lens of Bitcoin.
Preface
This writing mirrors the exact chronological structure of Beyond Order; offering perspective through a Bitcoin lens. This is part four of a 12-part series, and reading the book adds a second dimension. All quotes credited to Jordan Peterson. All reflections inspired by Satoshi Nakamoto.
Make Yourself Invaluable
“What is left undone is often risky, difficult, and necessary. But that also means — does it not? — that it is worthwhile and significant.”
Bitcoin is risky for nocoiners who have not done their research,difficult for newcomers trying to learn and necessary for those who understand. Polarizing controversy is by definition significant, and Bitcoin is polarizing. The deep divide over the existence of Bitcoin validates its legitimacy as something worthy of exploration.
“It appears that the meaning that most effectively sustains life is to be found in the adoption of responsibility.”
Owning bitcoin is the act of adopting full ownership and accountability. Bitcoin rewards patience, teaches responsibility and nourishes curiosity. Einstein described compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world,and bitcoin to date compounds at 200% annually. This single asset offers normal people a path to retirement – just what saving the dollar had once represented. An asset you could bank on. Today’s dollar is a short-term holding bin that must be invested in order to reach retirement.
Responsibility And Meaning
“You must risk something that matters.”
Talk is cheap. The only way to have skin in the game is to actually own Bitcoin. Everything else is academic. To quote Nassim Taleb, “Don’t tell me what you think, tell me what you have in your portfolio.”
“[Peter] Pan says, ‘To die will be an awfully big adventure.’ But the psychologically insightful unseen narrator objects: ‘To live would be an awfully big adventure…’”
Peter Pan’s Lost Boys celebrate never growing up. After all, who wants to grow up in an increasingly dysfunctional world? Younger generations believe older generations kicked a grenade down the road straight into their laps. Spending a lifetime buried by the debt our elders created seems like an awful adventure. Nocoiners clearly see problems (and claim there are no good solutions) yet so many are quick to call Bitcoin a scam. It would be an awful end to the adventure to drown because you ignored the liferaft. Bitcoiners tend to choose to live life as an awfully big adventure.
Rescue Your Father: Osiris And Horus
“Osiris… a young, vibrant god [who] produced one of the first great and enduring civilizations. But he aged, as all things do, and became willfully blind.”
Gold has been used as base money for thousands of years and still succeeds in its purpose. In contrast, since 1450, we’ve had six world reserve currencies with an average shelf life of 90 years. Lyn Alden explains why the U.S. dollar never had a chance at maintaining parity with gold: It has an unsustainable design forcing it to continuously expand in order to satisfy ever-increasing global exports and oil consumption demands. We all age — but willful blindness is optional.
“We are well advised to take on challenges at precisely the rate that engages and compels alertness, and forces the development of courage, skill, and talent, and to avoid foolhardy confrontation with that which lies beyond current comprehension.”
Do not go all-in on a whim,but buy an amount of Bitcoin that matches your current level of understanding. Minimize your fear of a Bitcoin price dip by dollar-cost-averaging (DCA) to maintain your sanity and avoid getting REKT. Swan Bitcoin and River Financial offer Bitcoin-only DCA tools with educational resources to help you move from custodial to self-custody. Increase your daily purchases as your knowledge increases and, when you feel confident, make the leap into a flavor of custody that offers you the right balance between security and convenience. Grow your Bitcoin stack in proportion to your understanding. Start with a small investment, take the plunge, and “get off zero”.
And Who Might That Be?
“Because the future is coming, as certainly, for all intents and purposes, as the sun rises in the morning. And you are best advised to be ready for it.”
Bitcoin is coming. It’s a parallel universe. An immutable chain of time and trust tethered to our physical world through entropy. What is the price of time? What is the value of trust? Priceless. The bond amongst Bitcoin, time, and trust is as predictable as the sun rising in the morning. My best advice: be ready for it.
“We discovered the future, some long time ago — and now the future is where we each live, in potential. We treat that as reality.”
Imagine life before the discovery of the future. We take it for granted and our descendants will pose a similar statement: Imagine life before the discovery of digital scarcity. That future will be our reality. Fiat currencies pose a very different reality: Imagine financial ruin by robbing yourself tomorrow to pay for today.
“If you treat the person you are committed to in a manner that does not work when it is repeated across time, then you are playing a denigrating game, and you are both going to suffer terribly for it.”
Our relationship to fiat money is a repeated story of disintegration across time. The comprehensive suffering across large swaths of society must be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that money touches everything and our money has become toxic. Money is the common thread across all governments, industries, and households. When we serve money instead of money serving us, we all suffer terribly for it.
Happiness And Responsibility
“… like pleasure, attainment is unreliable… people experience positive emotion in relationship to the pursuit of a valuable goal… That is what produces the most reliable positive emotion.”
We tell the story of our lives as actors in a story, not numbers on a conveyor belt. In order to formulate the story of ourselves that we are proud to tell, we must pursue goals we deem valuable. Tech is obsessed with placing numbers before narratives. This means humans are being forced through algorithmic pinholes which results in empty, unspontaneous and predetermined stories that we are often too embarrassed to tell in their entirety.However, we are human beings who cannot help but tell our story. So in order to salvage our dignity among our peers, we use social media to showcase highly curated splices of our life while suppressing the ugly parts. Studies show chasing “likes” on social media produces negative emotions.
Technology is a black hole we are all being sucked into. We all see that our lives are increasingly dictated by computers. Computers have become the permanent middlemen connecting humans broadly by separating us intimately. Computers draw the metaphorical dividing line: Either you tell computers what to do or they tell you what to do. Fair or not, living above or below the computer line largely determines your fate. But not all computer programs are designed for evil. As Muneeb put it, “Google has a famous motto ‘Don’t be evil.’ But maybe it should be ‘Can’t be evil.’”
“There is no escaping the future… the right attitude is to turn around voluntarily and confront it. That works.”
Inertia leaves us drifting through life on autopilot. Breaking that inertia and turning around voluntarily to go toe-to-toe with discomfort is the inspirational story of David Goggins. You may not like it but his results don’t lie and what he does simply works. “Can’t Hurt Me” speaks to something timeless yet forgotten. We are waking up to the reality that the right attitude is to choose to be the hero of our own story.
Freedom exists in many forms. Financial freedom is embedded in the American Dream. Today the math stacks up against you. Simply saving money no longer suffices. To attain financial freedom you must learn to invest your savings. Bitcoin is in a goldilocks period: It is designed to store your money in the long run but is currently in an adolescent growth stage giving it tremendous asymmetrical upside. If you can ride out $50,000 bitcoin during these teenage years, then imagine its future value at maturity.
Pick Up The Extra Weight
“If you attend to your conscience, you will begin to determine that some of the things you are doing are wrong…”
One by one, fiat maximalists awaken to the realization that the green grass on which they’re sitting in the sun itself sits at the center of a prison yard. And they aren’t the ones wearing badges.
“You are all aimed in one direction. You are no longer a house divided against itself. You are standing solidly on a firm foundation. You are no longer so easy to dissuade or discourage. Your resolution trumps your nihilism and despair.”
Bitcoin Maximalism.
“You think, ‘The world is not set right. It is deeply troubling to me.’ That very disenchantment, however, can serve as the indicator of destiny. It speaks of abdicated responsibility — of things left undone, of things that still need to be done.”
Notice that Bitcoin lurks where monetary responsibility has been abdicated.
This is a guest post by Nelson Chen. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC, Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.