Mimetic Theory and Cooperation:
Why Bitcoin could be the most peaceful and fair tool for humans to get along without losing human rights:
Humans have natural tendencies. An anthropologist named Rene Girard is known for mimetic theory. (All conflict, competition and rivalry therefore originate in mimetic desire (mimetic rivalry), which eventually reaches destructive stages of conflict both between individuals and social groups that requires them to blame someone or something in order to defuse conflict through the scapegoat mechanism. -Wikipedia)
As centralized control of information and currencies tend to use this theory against the population in order to gain or maintain control, humans may need to find a way to decentralize the control, in a fair way. Bitcoin would be a way to do this because of its design. It is a decentralized currency that would allow cooperation and fill in the gap of a “fair scapegoat” to believe in. Bitcoin is based on science with rules that cannot be changed, without a large consensus. Bitcoin is designed is a way to provide rules that create a secular belief in science and trust, which provides everyone to work together to reduce global mistrust in information. Instead of projecting violence between nations, humans would project energy into reducing false information. This is what science aims to do and therefore, bitcoin is the belief in science. Science has always been the backbone of truth that everyone is forced to believe anyways. If people don’t believe in science, they often won’t succeed or they will die.
Bitcoin is just an incentive system to confirm everyone’s underlying beliefs in a way to work together. Bitcoin is programmed to be finite as a measurement of value. This forces people to search out true value of everything else by comparing it to bitcoin (true value is a form of truth and measurement). It also provides instant feedback to everyone else that uses bitcoin, as this is reflected by bitcoin’s purchasing power for those valuable goods/services. If I trade fiat currency for bitcoin, the value or purchasing power increases for someone else holding bitcoin in a third world country like Venezuela almost instantly, because it is a global internet based currency. This is not the same as fiat currency because is it always being manipulated by governments or regulations and exchange rates. If everyone used bitcoin, all the bitcoin in circulation would represent the value of everything else. This means that when new goods and services are created, everyone would experience the effects, shown in the value of their new bitcoin purchasing power. This creates incentive for people to save instead of spend, except on what really matters to them. This also creates an economy that doesn’t rely on government bailouts during every disaster. Each person isn’t as prone to consumer advertisements and instead thinks more about the future (lowered time preference).
If mimetic theory is accurate, then manipulated values in the economy cause massive problems for humans as they are only able to compare their desires by experiencing distorted values perceived by others. Many people have been killed over perceptions of what is considered valuable. When you consider that people are killed over fiat money that can be printed by the trillions, without backing from anything scarce. That is equivalent to the government printing murders.
If you believe in science, human rights, and freedom, you might want to consider learning about bitcoin. If we cannot make our minds up on what to believe as everyone becomes more polarized, the ones in control will make it for us.
If you’re interested in bitcoin:
If you’re interested in Rene Girard’s Vision of Mimetic Desire and Economic Dynamics here is a longer video:
