Lets make Friends with blockchain

Although I believe that technology is here to serve humanity, sometimes it reveals new capabilities that were previously unthinkable. In a LinkedIn post, Oliver Rikken mentioned a great idea how to teach the essentials of blockchain to a 5 year old kid. It inspired me to make this blog and create a hashtag for it #letsmakefriendswithblockchain.

I endorse the idea of Oliver because there is a very fundamental message in it. If you can make ‘friends’ with blockchain, why wouldn’t we try to make room for a new ‘Business model’ paradigm based on this simple yet fundamental base? And while we’re at it, why not declare all less friendly or unfriendly Business models outdated, since we might have found a potentially friendly alternative?

#letsMakeFriendsWithBlockchain #friendlyBusinessModel #friendlyBusinessModelsAreHereToStay

When efficiency increases, so does inequality?!

The quest for ever more effiency (by means of increasing productivity) often leads to scale-up strategies. But a recent study has detected that scaling up in societal systems leads to increase of inequality, the same way scaling up in natural systems leads to increasing inequality. It is known that increasing inequality may benefit the few (elite) over the many, or in other words: maximization is not evenly distributed. It is also known that increasing inequality may lead to increasing social unrest.

Could we break this self-reinforcing cycle by evaluating strategies that harm the ecology or humanity, and transitioning these to smaller, more locally optimized strategies, scaling-down instead of scaling-up? Exchanging less efficiency for more stability? Optimizing what we can oversee (localization) instead of maximizing what we cannot control anymore (globalization)?

I want a Scarcity Museum

I think we need to make room for abundance! Humanity has come a long way using scarcity as one of the primary tools to progress society. Unfortunately this tool also stimulates a ‘winner-takes-all’ mentality, that, as we can now witness by the numbers, has led to World-scale inequality that can hardly be believed to be within normal, acceptable bounds any longer. Scarcity thinking leads to competition where winners want to create loosers at the cost of society at large.

But now I want a scarcity museum. So that those that see that we are transforming into an abundant society, have a place to dump the scarcity impediments they encounter on their path towards abundancy.

The museum can start virtually, and we can put all items in that we collectively belief should be placed there forever. I want to make the first donation. I donate one of the most actual items to start with: CO2 emissions. Because if we agree that CO2 is a scarce item that should belong in a museum, we must have also managed to get rid of it! It’s a good motivator to get it into the museum as fast as possible!

In can also think of other items to put in there. One of them might be fossil energy. Because there is already abundant energy available (think of the Sun as an example), so it should be our drive to store fossil energy in the museum, where it belongs.

Another item might be capitalism. The money is there now, in enormous abundancy. But if we would make it scarce again for all, not only for the majority but also for the hoarding elites, it will loose a lot of it’s power. And it will give us room to replace with a better system that is ‘greed’-proof which capitalism unfortunately is not.

Any more ideas?

Some thoughts on sustainable progress

Western World capitalism and it’s neo-liberal practices has a strong belief that progress comes based on scarcity-driven growth strategies. Even despite the fact that scarcity is in reality just an illusion. An illiusion we have invented ourselves because we thought it would ignite the fire in us and make us grow and innovate.

This scarcity thinking however stimulates a winner-takes-all mentality. And we all know winners create loosers. Why would we want to create loosers? I really don’t see the ‘Business case’ for that besides fueling one’s own egoistic nature. Looking more closely, this in fact could even be regarded a crime to humanity since those accumulating wealth at the expense of others can only do that by plain simply stealing from those others.

But it’s not only the increasing inequality that is troublesome, it is also the mere fact that by concentrating wealth into an increasingly smaller elite is an enabler for the collapse of capitalism itself. Because in the end, real wealth accumulation cannot come from concentration, it can only come from distribution! This is because a concentration-only strategy can be considered a forward-coupled control loop that has no ‘correcting’ feedback loop.

We should develop some kind of universal feedback mechanism that prevents concentration on the level that it becomes damaging to ecology or humanity or both. This could be done by combining continuous distribution of wealth with continous measurement of where potential new concentrations pop up. Keeping some kind of globally ‘acceptable’ balance. From winner-takes-all to winner-shares-all mentality.

Any experiment in towards this new collective, integrated progress should be heavily encouraged. Since we never really tried progressing humanity based on (a combination of scarcity-driven and) abundance-driven growth we cannot really say it will not work. So we should at least give it a try.

Laughing with the Buddha

Living a balanced life is allways a good thing. But it’s not allways easy. Some (most?) of us tend to get stuck in the never-ending rat-race that (especially in Western society?) seems to drive life. I am no exception to this. I also tend to get distracted by people in my environment that try to convince me to become better than I was, become more agile, handle and act faster and more efficient, go only for short-term results and ignore all the rest, produce more, consume more, travel more and so on. To me it sometimes seems we have lost contact with a pace that is more natural: the pace of nature.

So what can we do to change this? Start laughing with the Buddha. Accept that we can’t change everyting. Accept your own value. You are already beautiful and perfect the way you are here and now. Accept your self as the most important person in the World. Ignore others that want to make you feel less important. It’s their inability to view the beauty that is already inside you.

Accept that this can only start from within a personal transition, not a collective one. That will never happen. Any transition allways starts from one person. But identical transitions can happen simultaneously of become synchronized in one way or another. The beauty comes then when these people start discovering each other. They tend to form tribes or communities because they share some common vision. That is when personal transition can transcend into collective transition.

So what’s next? Sit back and enjoy here and now. Accept the World as it is. There is no need to hurry. Everything will come in it’s own time. Trust the universe to help you do the right things at the right time. Don’t try to force it or speed it up. This only exaggerates the negative energy. Don’t let others influence you to go faster than your own preferred pace. Don’t let others try to tell you you are not good enough. Don’t let others convince you to join the production/consumption rat-race. Don’t let others force you to accept their ideologies or dogma’s. Live you own life, be true to yourself. Practice patience and trust that everything will turn out just fine for you.

 

Trick or treat? About old dogs, new tricks, new dogs & old tricks

There’s a saying that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. This is used a lot by innovators, especially those that want to disrupt. It’s a polarising vision. It excludes old dogs. That is discriminating! It’s a ‘winners create loosers’ story. One wins at the cost of another. What a shame!

And then there is also another saying that you can teach a new dog old tricks. This is used many times by old dogs that are usually proud or very proud of there ‘best’ practices and don’t see any need to change those. But that is also polarising because it tries to change new dogs into doing old things. And try to stall innovation. Quite a dillema!

So we have to deal with two emotions here. The disruptors get a kick from disrupting. But it is only a temporary kick. Adrenaline when they have success. And then soon they fall back in wanting the next succes. Then the frustration kicks in as the main emotion. Negative energy. Not good.

The old boys get a kick from stability. Doing the same thing over and over again and doing it damn good. Routine. But also that is a temporary feeling. An adrenaline kick after having done the routine job. And then it sucks in again, waiting for the next kick. And also here, frustration kicks is as the main emotion if looked at the total over a larger timeframe.

The fun is in combining the two. Making them inclusive instead of exclusive. Build on those old tricks that can benefit new tricks. Build on those new tricks that help enforce some of the old tricks. Combine the best of both worlds. Let old dogs learn from new tricks. And let new dogs learn from old tricks.

Make mistakes you dogs: all of you. And learn, unlearn, relearn.

Happy unlearning!

From Tragedy of the Commons to Victory of the Uncommons

The late #Brexit has inspired a lot of criticism in the world. You can oppose to that or like it, fact is, it was definetely a kind of larger scale wake-up call for humanity. And I suspect this will not be the last call but it could be a trigger for more wake-up experiences.

It reminded me of a few blogs I wrote some time ago which adressed the ‘Commons’ theme. I refer to Wantamatics, Worldish And Abundology: Key Ingredients For The Next Era and also to If Anything Should Be Common, It Is Sense and Why You Should be Careful When Trying to Centralize Something.

The drive to go for some ‘Commons’ is a natural human drive. It is inspired by trying to reduce ‘waste’ because if two or more distinct things look almost the same, we tend to try to make them the same, thereby eliminating the sometimes subtle differences. This leads to centralization approaches.

These approaches are no more than disguised discrimination strategies because if I centralize something, I disregard the beauty of the diversity that was there before I centralized it. So be very careful in what you want to centralize. Because it might at first hand tend to be more efficient and create less ‘waste’ on the centralized topic but it indirectly always creates a new layer of ‘waste’ elsewhere. Because what was once diverse, always will want to regain it’s uniqueness in one way or another.

I am not saying I am against centralization or for decentralization, but I do think we humans still are not very good in overseeing the consequences of larger centralizations, like the EU as it currently is. So before we embark on such an immens complex journey, let’s try to do it with very small steps at a time, and take a lot of time to find out if it works before you add more discrimination to the already complicated integrated system. Autocratic approaches tend to survive not very long (max. 100 years!), so let’s be very careful with assuming we have the arrogance to let them work well now!

A rule of thumb might be: if things already work out fine on a local level, don’t disturb them, let them go. If things don’t work out fine on a local level, discuss them on a global level but implement changes again, preferably on the smallest, local level. Experiment a lot. Accept the World as perfect already in it’s current imperfection.

In this era of disruptions we don’t need more commons anymore, we need uncommons! So let’s step away from exclusive ‘divide and conquer’ style of efficiency thinking. Let’s move towards inclusive ‘diversity’ thinking. Let’s step away from exploiting the Earth in all kinds of ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ ways and find a new uncommon direction that works: Victory of the Uncommons! 

Can sharing energydata help you feel better, safer or more comfortable?

For many people on earth, especially in the developed countries, energy has become a commodity. It’s allmost allways there. Available at the moment you need it. We tend to forgot where it came from. And how it’s made. But we like the comfort it brings and the possibilities it brings to enable progress or growth. So we tend to forget that we are in fact damaging the earth a lot because still way too much of our energy sources are fossil-based. And we don´t allways know this very clearly, or even if we do, we tend to let cheap prices prevail above ´saving´ the world. Which role could sharing energy data play in this context?

For example, let’s say I share my energy consumption data to parties I can trust and have made a data-contract with them. In return, because they can learn my energy consumption profile, they are able to better procure energy on the market and by the profit they make from that, they can return part of that to give me a better comfort in my home. It could work that way!

Or let’s say, I have some energy production myself in the form of solar panels. There are points in time where I produce more energy than I need myself. I make a data contract about this production profiles with parties that sell the surplus energy on the energy market, and in return, I get free yearly solar panel and rooftop maintenance.

What about if I would share my production and consumption data via a data contract with interested parties, that in return help me protect my house with protection equipment and services. It’s could be really that simple.

But are you willing to give up part of this data privacy in the form of a data contract? Would you want full control over your data at all times, or would you trust parties? Would you trust parties that are regulated or would you trust only market parties? What’s your opinion?

THE QEG IN 2015. HopeGirl Public Statement. Why We Did What We Did.

Bron: THE QEG IN 2015. HopeGirl Public Statement. Why We Did What We Did.

The Beauty of Subtraction: becoming a Self-Certified Unlearner

Today I have certified myself als a  ‘Self-Certified Unlearner, Foundation’. For the first time in my life I decided I do not longer need external approval for my own self-worth. This feels so good! Even so good I decided to un-learn so I can become a ‘Self-Certified Unlearner,  Master’.

The biggest part of my life sofar I have spent learning things. Growing as we tend to call it. Becoming better. More intelligent. More skilled. Adding. Growing. More. More. More. Never good enough.  We get indoctrinated in our (Western?) culture to add and grow, but only seldomly are we encouraged to take away what is not needed anymore. Mathematically speaking one could say we are only skilled in using the plus sign and using the minus sign we tend to ignore like hell.  Our collective behavior one could summarize as masking our imperfections by adding external attributes that makes us look better or more grown or ‘owning’ or ‘having’ more.  This feels like nonsense.

The last 5 years I went through a (sometimes disturbing) mental, emotional and spiritual rollercoaster. But it has given me the context to unlearn a great lot of things. It’s only in retrospect that I see now how much ‘captured’ I was in mental constructs. Constructs that have become an ingrained part of our (Western?) cultures. Constructs that have become so ‘common’ that we collectively have forgotten to re-certify .

On larger humanitairian scale it seems humanity has massively unlearned to re-certify certain culture core values. This is logical, because they became core values because we didn’t want to re-certify them. By promoting that strategy, we effectively created a cultural open-loop feedback poor learning process. Instead of a closed-loop, feedback-rich unlearning loop.

I cannot change this thinking for others. But I can change the thinking for myself. And that is exactly what I am doing. Going back to my own source. Back to my own truth. I do not longer need another person’s truth to feel worthy for myself. And that feels good!

What’s your un-learning story? Want to share your thoughts?