Understanding Your Environment

I think it is worth the time to evaluate how people may perceive the world today, without a viable source of truth and knowledge, a religious foundation, a strong sense of awareness and intuition, or disciplined principles. How technology, distractions, modern academia, and untruthful media can effectively misguide and indoctrinate individuals to the narrative being driven.

Providing the context of my story and personal experiences may help people grasp why there is dedicated time and energy focused on bitcoin infrastructure, and how learning about the revolving topics around bitcoin can transcend individual character and become a map for life ahead.

The first part of this series provided an in-depth personal narrative of the challenges one can face at the beginning of their life in modern-day society. It is the sole responsibility of the individual to learn from challenges, and improve from painful experiences through reflection and action moving forward.

I hope that the personal walkthrough of what I experienced can provide a shared feeling of connectedness that encourages personal responsibility regardless of the cards you are dealt.

2020 brought a lot of volatility into our lives. Society was focused on the harm Covid could bring to our physiological health, and how political leaders should react to diminish the rate of that unknown potential health hazard.

Throwing more chaos into the mix, George Floyd's death significantly escalated social disruption and polarization. This stoked the fire in an already heated ideological divide and greatly influenced our lives even in the privacy of our own homes.

From my personal perspective, the social restrictions enacted and information being delivered to society by corporate media and our so-called "leaders” were disastrous. The restrictions bankrupted communities mentally, emotionally, socially, economically, and spiritually. And the media's financial incentive to sell fear continued to hammer the divisive wedge.

US political ideologies have grown to become increasingly hostile over the past few decades. I believe Covid was an opportunity for the media and government to transition opposing political ideologies into lifestyle ideologies. An opportunity for basic life choices to be monitored and scrutinized by members of local communities and governed by the federal and provincial governments.

In the beginning months of lockdowns, I lived in a liberal-leaning area of the United States. I was scrutinized for wanting to get more data on the vaccine before taking it, and I had friends who would've lost their jobs (even working fully remote) if they didn't take it.

For years I tuned out of politics, primarily because of the emotional outrage it typically ignites. I also did not know the political spectrum and public policies well. But at this point, it seemed to me that it was important to get an improved, rational understanding of the psychology and moral foundations behind each political party. Why opposing views, judgments, and intuitions clashed so hysterically, and how this could accelerate/evolve as we become more technologically advanced.

Prior to Covid, I read a book called The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, which provides the reader with a tour of human nature and history. He explains how the six pillars of the human moral foundations, and the functioning of the cognitive process, can lean people towards one or the other political party.

Haidt does a phenomenal job intertwining evolutionary history, the moral foundations, religion, and the cognitive process with how they all have evolved to bring us to the state of modern-day political hostility. Human beings are designed for groupish righteousness. We are all geared towards finding a meaningful purpose.

My theory after reading the book is that a large portion of modern-day society has dwelled on short-term, low-value, materialistic distractions that have become addictions, and this has distorted peoples' perceptions and personalized callings. The evolution of 20th-century worldly desires and attainments have evolved into an even more difficult hedonic treadmill to hop off of, with the advent of smartphones, junk food, etc..

This has rewired our brains to the extent that it has made it difficult to emerge from these short-term patterns and intimately understand our own true nature. The advancement of smartphone technology has also led society to become less unified and more individualistic, especially during Covid lockdowns. On the other hand, smartphone technology can bring more unification if we use it strategically and wisely.

The Righteous Mind provided context for me to have broad discussions with others that I may not have agreed with, and also led me to question why I, and others, lean to one side or the other. By evaluating which moral foundations I leaned heavier into due to my own nature and the experiences I faced growing up, I understood why I might lean more to the left or the right side of the political spectrum. It empowered me to overcome the adrenaline and emotional turmoil that may arise during conversations with people of contrary beliefs.

Some people in my life were incapable of having the type of healthy discourse that elevates our perspectives and tests our previous understandings/biases. It typically led to emotional tension and forestalled the development of deep connections.

This inability to practice effective discourse, especially with the people you care about the most, was the next subject that piqued my natural curiosity. Why is it that healthy discourse is becoming more difficult for us? Enter Haidt’s more recent book, The Coddling of the American Mind.

Haidt and co-author Greg Lukianoff lay out in this book multiple topics that outline why younger generations in the US are currently experiencing more cases of poor mental health. There is a combination of societal causations that are forming weaker generations. A few that they mention are:

• Cognitive distortions, the more common one being emotional reasoning which has been defined by David D. Burns: “that your negative emotions necessarily reflect the way things really are: ‘I feel it, therefore it must be true.’ ”

• A high use of smartphone devices that greatly affects the wiring process of neural development during pertinent stages of growth.

• Paranoid, or “helicopter”, parenting which leads to the cult of safteyism that eliminates children’s ability to become exposed to challenges within limits.

• “The human mind evolved for living in tribes that engaged in frequent (and often violent) conflict; our modern-day minds readily divide the world into ‘us’ and ‘them,’ even on trivial or arbitrary criteria.”

• Common-enemy identity politics and microagression theory leading to callout culture within US academic institutions, and the bureaucracy of safteyism that is developing within academic institutions. This has led to more administrators than teachers of life.

All of the various damaging societal causations referenced in the book are coinciding with the tumultuous social events of today.

Combine the continuous incentive towards a comfort-crisis mission to coddle younger generations' emotional wellbeing with divided politics, covid sanctions, and centralized internet entities manipulating mind capture via controlled algorithms, and you get a lot of close-minded, confused, and enraged members of society.

The effects of synthetic ingredients and less nutrient-dense foods also disrupt peoples’ overall health. This mixed concoction leads to less independent individuals incapable of critical thinking, and more indoctrinated ideologues.

Reading these books discouraged my outlook on the future for some time. But it did inspire me towards a call to action. I received a much better understanding of what was occurring within American society. Still, I had no idea how to effectively communicate this understanding on a scalable level, tempering the societal outrage thermometer down a notch.

During Covid and the social hostility attached to it, I experienced the addictive pull of social media outrage myself. I had experienced the unhealthy standard American diet and low self-esteem due to not aligning with my higher self and a mission more significant than my own being. I was experiencing poor mental health due to some factors listed within the Coddling of the American Mind. And as I had slowly begun to turn an optimistic new leaf through my own personal journey, I faced turmoil within relationships due to political and covid mandate disagreements.

As the lockdowns continued for longer than most expected, I grew disappointed observing some of my family members and friends. The way in which the people closest to me were so enthused to allow government to sweep in restrictive controls within daily American life startled me. They were barely questioning the overreach of the mandates, as well as the efficacy of the vaccine, while vehemently scolding people within their closest circles who were hesitant towards it.

As much as the virus was a physiological threat to a portion of society, from my perspective, it was more of a threat to our freedoms. Federal vaccine mandates introduced digital passports, that had the potential implications of evolving into a social credit system and digital identifier, limiting privacy and the freedom to act.

A lot of people with a more technical base of knowledge knew precisely where this could lead. But others that couldn't see through the potential second-order effects of this digital passport proposition thought it could lead to the light at the end of the Covid tunnel. This is understandable, since the media was driving constant fear.

As mentioned within the Coddling of the American Mind, the growing number of fragile minds began to show their true colors. Instead of contributing to healthy discourse on the topic of the virus and vaccines, there was fearful and aggressive rhetoric towards the unvaccinated, coming from well-known media networks.

I turned my unhealthy habits around prior to 2020, but they were slightly disrupted once Covid ensued. The healthy habits were not yet ingrained into my lifestyle. I observed others around me practicing an unhealthier lifestyle once the pandemic limited our daily activities. I felt like I had to get moving in a direction that would provide long-term stability.

When looking at the state of the economy and observing the success of my family stemming from traditional financial advising, I began to study for my financial licenses in order to immerse myself into a traditional finance career. At the same time, I had crossed paths with The Bitcoin Standard.

Action with Clear Intention

I had only worked for a financial firm for nine months, spanning between the end of 2020 to mid-2021. Half of that was working remotely and studying for my licenses. Once I began to grasp bitcoin and how the current monetary system was failing society, it became somewhat painful to work in the traditional financial system. I noticed the complexities of TradFi and how various financial products were introduced, forcing savers to become professional investors and taking on more risk.
I realized that expanding our credit system and manipulating market interest rates via monetary interventionism created an “over-financialized” economy. This intervention creates financial products that would not exist in an economy with sound money.

A monetary system that becomes consistently devalued, in the hands of a small group of people, forces attention toward financial products that transform the simple act of saving money into a constant investment analysis towards more risky investment classes. An economy that utilizes resources and attention towards a more complex financial sector depletes concentration on other valuable sectors of the economy.

TLDR: The simple act of saving income earned in a bank account is out the door, and investing, which was once considered a risky endeavor, is the only option to maintain wealth earned.

As soon as I had acquired my financial licenses, I began interviewing with a couple bitcoin companies. I eventually landed a job offer with a bitcoin native financial services startup, Unchained Capital. Helping build out the operations and actively learn about the bitcoin network while maintaining a living wage brought feelings of immense gratitude. The team members, that I now consider my dear friends, present a humbling energy of dedication and creativity which encourages me to keep improving my own knowledge-base and character.

Just before my last two weeks at the traditional fiat firm, I decided to attend the 2021 Miami Bitcoin Conference. The experience was overwhelmingly positive. I encountered dozens of highly creative and intelligent people that demonstrated an embodiment of true dedication towards the success of bitcoin adoption.

Attending this conference was important. Observing the culture and ethos around bitcoin made me realize that this wasn't a fairytale expressed on the internet. Being able to meet bitcoin enthusiasts in person helped me grasp that this movement was happening whether the world wanted it to or not.

Understanding the fundamentals of bitcoin and the network’s objective technical properties will clarify how you can have more influence with your voice and actions. Storing your wealth earned through time into a finite, censorship-resistant, and decentralized asset gives you access to freely express yourself via transacting or coordinating decisions in the future. This is remarkably superior to storing your wealth in fiat, which can be considered a melting ice cube. Your savings account is (melting away) devalued ever more as time goes on.

I began the long drive from New England to Texas a few months after the conference. Leaving my neck of the woods to immerse myself into a culture that was focused on bitcoin infrastructure seemed adventurous, no doubt. Choosing to surround myself with a diehard, headstrong, self-sovereign, and independent-minded community put me to the test of self-evaluation. It felt a bit risky and intimidating.

In September of 2021, I officially became a resident of Texas. I began meeting and conversing with bitcoin pioneers that worked at Unchained Capital, and others within the bitcoin space. It was refreshing to discuss aligned beliefs and views with sovereign individuals. Attending Austin Bitdevs, Austin Bitcoin Club, Austin Litdevs, and other bitcoin events in person have enabled me to listen to technical pioneers and thought leaders. These people are driven to provide society with the tools to utilize bitcoin more intuitively — working day and night to move the bitcoin adoption needle one normie at a time.

Alongside the building movement of bitcoin infrastructure, I stumbled upon a grassroots movement here in Texas that implements bitcoin into their business model, The Beef Initiative. Through this initiative, I was reminded of how centralized our food system is.

The Beef Initiative is doing God’s work. Texas Slim is on a mission to help our current generation and future generations to come. Attending a conference in the Hill Country of Texas provided hope in a world where the degradation of our soil and food ingredients have been decimating the health and lives of the people we love. Degrading the work-lifestyles of the productive members of our society: Ranchers and Farmers.

Forming an enterprise that connects passionate bitcoiners and ranchers together will create a network of sovereign communities to tap into sound money and sound food, that won’t be halted by the powers above.

The movement aims to move away from factory farms, inhumane animal treatment, synthetic pesticides, hormone therapy, and GMO’s. Instead, moving towards regenerative farming, a direct system linking consumer with producer, and enabling ranchers/farmers to preserve their hard earned time, energy, and marginal profits by utilizing a censorship resistant, scarce asset.

Here in Austin, communities are waking up to the importance of shaking their rancher’s hand and investing in their businesses while simultaneously improving their lives by consuming clean, nutrient-dense food at low cost. They are opting out of the industrial sludge products that a large portion of America is mindlessly putting into their bodies. It’s time for consumers to become intentional contributors to the lives of younger generations.

Bitcoiners are here to guide other individuals to open their minds, by way of action and setting an example. To fight against the distorted markets and sectors of the economy. With more critically thinking individuals, the various forms of media, which has drastic influence during modern times, can be pressured to pursue truth within their institutions. This can reverberate outwards. But as it stands now, it is a challenge for individuals to find the needle in the haystack. That needle being the channel of truth and clarity.

As I near my first anniversary as a resident of Texas, I have reflected on how individuals can optimally contribute value towards bitcoin, which I deem to be the most critical technology in modern times. Daily learning, providing education, working for a bitcoin company, partaking in community events, writing on platforms like substack, improving your character daily, etc.

We can all make a small impact on building a better society via the encouragement of returning to a sound form of money. The bitcoin community is growing here in Austin and around the country.

I look forward to watching the continued growth of bitcoin infrastructure.