Bitcoin, Bitcoiners & Citadels

12 Rules for Life series. Essay #3

Bitcoin, Bitcoiners & Citadels.

Foreword

The third chapter in Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules For Life” is entitled, “Make Friends with People Who Want the Best For You.”

Friends

Pick your friends carefully, because who you spend time with is who you become
- Tony Robbins

Friends matter when times are tough.

“My particles are scattered across the ceiling”

There’s a strong analogy to the hopelessness and nihilism in much of the world today. We’re surrounded by people who’ve either given up or are brainwashed by mainstream madness. People are constantly seeking some form of distraction or escape because they cannot handle being alone long enough to face themselves. They fear the spectre of their own increasingly meaningless existence. If you ever wondered why depression is so prevalent, this is why.

Not everyone who fails is a victim and not everyone at the bottom wishes to rise. Delinquency spreads far more than stability does. Down is a lot easier than up.

Community

Jordan reminds us to find friends, a peer group & a community who not only want the best for you, but are aiming up.

Iron sharpens iron.

I’ve not come into contact with another group of individuals so diverse in background, experience, race, age, gender, nationality, taste or [insert variable], yet so willing to simultaneously welcome new people in who are on a common path, and call out (in earnest) those who attempt to stray from the path, whether consciously or unconsciously.

Bitcoiners are realistic optimists.

We’re pessimistic about the short term because we’re honest enough to both acknowledge the problems we’re facing, and call them out.

  1. We fix the upstream issue, ie; how human action, natural resources, time & energy are measured (the money)
  2. We build tools to ensure everyone can participate and so that the most powerful tool (money) is unable to be commandeered ever again, and
  3. We have a devotion to the pursuit of truth from first principles, across the dimensions that matter, to carry us along.
  • Nihilists and people in the legacy world who’ve given up or don’t believe things can get better.
  • Ignorant sheeple (the masses) who are willing to submit to the status quo and turn a blind eye to a constantly diminishing quality of life and simultaneous increase in centralised tyranny around the world
  • Scammers who want to use narratives such as “decentralisation” or buzzwords like “blockchain” to confuse people and swindle them out of their money.
  • Naive optimists who genuinely don’t understand what’s going on the world so they put lipstick on a pig & believe they’ve made it beautiful. Modern Silicon Valley entrepreneurs building the next pointless finance or social app represent this archetype. They’re so caught up in “innovation” that they have no idea what they’re building not just a house of cards, but is rotten to the core.
  • Deranged power brokers who understand ‘the game’ and know which levers to pull. They are intimately aware of the structural inadequacies and therefore know where the points of maximum leverage are located. Instead of doing something to make it better, they use these insights & their intellect to game the system and take advantage of others.
  • Bitter, salty, intelligent people who have been right about the state of corruption but have chosen not to participate in either the scams or ‘the game’. They’re disillusioned from having watched the madness & hysteria continue for decades despite the gaping holes they’ve often eloquently & rationally pointed out. They’ve seen prior attempts fail so they unfortunately no longer believe there is hope and should someone come along with something like Bitcoin, their only response is to ridicule it because they either resent not having come up with it themselves, or lack the humility to appreciate that this may be a zero to one moment.

The Lonely Contrarian

There are many days I feel like “maybe I’m the crazy one”.

Bitcoiners VS Shitcoiners

Bitcoiners are the community that wants the best for you, whilst primarily & fundamentally focused on becoming the best version of themselves.

  1. Any purchase a new person makes has an inconsequential direct impact on the net worth of a Bitcoiner, although the impact for the new entrant is monumental, ie; Sovereign ownership over the product of your labour, protected by a global, distributed, proof of work network.
  2. Any momentum created by a broader base of people buying & holding Bitcoin drives up it’s purchasing power resulting in a negative impact for a Bitcoiner who will NEVER go back to fiat, and who measures his or her wealth in terms of the number of “Sats” they hold. It requires more hours of work each year for me to accumulate a single Bitcoin and my bet is that by the time this decade is out, there is little I can do for the rest of my life to earn an entire Bitcoin again. Few understand this.
Pg 166 from “Out of the Ether” by Matt Leising
Raoul is a bipedal creature of absolutely NO principles.

Bitcoin Toxicity

A common term thrown around by shitcoiners is “toxicity”. It’s become a futile attempt by those who do not understand the basic premise of the golden or silver rules to slander anyone calling out their scams, mistakes or fraudulent behaviour.

The Golden Rule

The Golden Rule is “Do unto others as you’d like them to do unto you”.

The Silver Rule

I quote Taleb way too much, but oh well. I’m sure his Ghost Writer is happy.

The virtuous monster

There is nothing virtuous about suffering in silence, nor is virtue found in conforming to a lie just to be polite.

When some person or organisation demands more from us, consistently than is offered in return, it is no longer a sacrifice for that which is good, but a succumbing to victimhood.
- Jordan Peterson

This is why, as JBP would say that the capacity to be a monster, but a conscious one, is so critical.

In the absence of honest assholes, the world devolves into a mass of polite liars.

Echo Chambers

Echo chambers have been characterised as bad or at best undesirable because they are a supposed ‘barrier’ to learning something now. In some cases this is true, especially in the madness of crowds via the blind repetition of some platitude or falsehood.

Bitcoin is an Objective Truth, emergent from a network of intersubjective Truths, resulting from our own subjective discovery of Truth.

Bitcoiners are The Remnant

I recently read Isaiah’s Job, by Albert J Nock, and whilst I was going to write an entire section about it in this article, it took on a life of it’s own and is now published as it’s own piece here:

“In any given society the Remnant are always so largely an unknown quantity. You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them.

First, that they exist; second, that they will find you. Except for these two certainties, working for the Remnant means working in impenetrable darkness”

They are those who want the best for you because they are the same who demand the best from you.

Bitcoin is for the Remnant
Crypto is for the Masses.

Do not cast pearls before swine

A well known but little practiced idea, once again derived from the Bible, is to not cast pearls before swine.

The Citadels

This is a meme popularised in the Bitcoin world, but which has its roots in every great narrative where an individual or group have found sovereignty in their escape from tyranny or the collapse of the old.

  • Food
  • Energy
  • Shelter
  • Transport
  • Education

Localism & Tribalism

Tribalism is today used as a pejorative term to frame people who think and behave a certain way as bigots, close minded, group-thinkers and echo chamber maximalists.

Typical fiat academia designed to confuse you and dissolve your brain cells
The “biology” of society

Economic Consequences

The spectre of economic reality will completely transform how sovereignty functions and force it to either adapt into a customer ← → service provider relationship (away from subject<>overlord) with those whom it provides governance services , or dissolve into bankruptcy.

An entirely different structure
  • Enforced taxation
  • Monetary inflation
  • Borrowing from the future

Royalism

Royalism is a term coined by Mencius Moldbug and discussed in his series of essays about the “Patchwork” model of the world.

In Closing

It’s okay to surround yourself with people who are helping you be better and to shy away from people who are willing to drag you down.

  1. The Remnant exist
  2. They will find you

“Like you have an ethical responsibility to take care of yourself, you have an ethical responsibly to surround yourself with people who have the courage, faith & wisdom to wish you well when you’ve done something good, and to STOP you when you’re doing something destructive”

- Jordan B Peterson

That quote summarises not only what it means to be a good friend, but what it means to be a so-called “Toxic Bitcoin Maximalist”.

They call us toxic. Little do they know.

A collective protest by the individual

Bitcoin is a peaceful but functional protest against that which consciously or unconsciously chooses to oppress. And this protest is a vital one.

By Aleks Svetski

Writer, Radical, Founder of Amber, the world’s first Bitcoin Only DCA app:

Blog on Bitcoin Magazine

Twitter:

@TheAmberApp
@GhostOfSvetski
@TimelessBitcoin
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Host: Anchor.fm/WakeUpPod, Editor @ bitcointim.es and Founder @ amber.app. Bitcoin, Money, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Entrepreneurship & Thinking

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Aleksandar Svetski

Host: Anchor.fm/WakeUpPod, Editor @ bitcointim.es and Founder @ amber.app. Bitcoin, Money, Psychology, Philosophy, History, Entrepreneurship & Thinking