It seems like everything is being transformed these days in such a way that it develops a digital screen reality equivalent. Humans, for instance, are transformed into avatars. And money is magically transformed into digital currency of which bitcoin is the most famous kind. Now digital currency has not grown yet in popularity to such an extent that it threatens to replace paper money. However, among certain groups of investors, it has become an important part of their portfolios. They like it because it makes it cheaper, easier and faster to carry out financial transactions. One does not have to worry about banks charging transaction fees, for instance. Of course, without the backing of a central bank, it means that the currency can be much more volatile in terms of its value. And it can be much more open to fraudulent activity. But libertarian types can feel very comfortable with the freedom from government oversight that it allows them.
Using my model, digital currency is for people who feel somehow more comfortable living their lives in an experiential vacuum. For them the idea of the grounding of government regulation is something that is going to swallow them up, something that will cause them to lose their individual senses of self. This is an extension of the type of person who hates taxes and loves guns.
The truth is that these people are not naturally fitting into an experiential vacuum living environment without creating some distortions to their human nature. The most significant distortion is that, having been immersed in the sensory distortion of their modern technological living environment for their whole lives, their particular reaction to this situation has been to pull out of their numbness not by returning to a more traditional natural living environment with its sustained flow of organic stimuli, which, by the way, is very hard to find in today’s world anyway, but rather to try and stay as functional as possible while living in the experiential vacuum by using shots of abrasive stimuli intermittently to pull them out of their numbness. For people who have lost their capacity to absorb large quantities of organic stimulation, which would help them to feel alive in the way mammals normally feel alive, intermittent shots of abrasive stimulation are really the only alternative to help them feel alive while living in an experiential vacuum.
It was inevitable that people in modern technological society would start to tinker with the financial structure as a new pathway to help pull them out of their numbness. Digital currencies take people on a roller coaster ride as their monetary values go up and down, up and down. Over and above the fact that investors can make a lot of money if they know what they’re doing, there is the thrill of the journey.
How wonderful for people to be able to pull out of the numbness that they experience in a way that is both thrilling and lucrative. But the question is does the use of digital currencies create significant ongoing problems, not only for the users, but for society in general? I think the answer is that it could wipe out much or all the material wealth of a society as postulated by its underlying currency structure. Particularly because mainstream currencies today are no longer backed up by gold. Gold represented real solid natural grounding for a currency. Before gold acted as a back-up for currency, it actually was used as currency. One of the main reasons that people started using paper currency anyway was that it was so much lighter to carry around. It was as if one could float in their dreams in the air using paper currency.
Anyway, the reasons that nations went off the gold standard were very complicated, and yet one reason continues to stand out. The amount of gold fell behind the supply of goods and services. In other words, with improved technological methods of production and improved opportunities for newly created services, it was very difficult to continue matching up new items and services being produced with corresponding amounts of gold. Unless gold was constantly arbitrarily revalued which would have ultimately ended up making gold valueless, gold could no longer be used as grounding. There were just too many product and service figures floating in the vacuum of modern technological society, for gold to be able to effectively ground them all.
As governments went off the gold standard, governments declared by fiat that they would back up the value of their currencies. And although this approach allowed for greater flexibility in the valuation of goods and services, many people did not and do not trust governments as the guarantors of financial value. For these people, governments are not an effective form of grounding. Through taxation, they are competitors for the acquisition of goods rather than the protector of the possession of goods.
So, we are left with the increasingly popular notion of currency as kicks to intermittently pull us out of our numbness and to protect us from being swallowed up by the perceived voracious grounding of government, that we are increasingly losing our capacity to absorb, as modern technological living environments make us more and more numb. We are playing a very dangerous game here with one of the most fundamental forms of human interaction: financial engagement, a foundation for bonding with other people and creating trust. This game could lead to the crumbling of human society.
© 2024 Laurence Mesirow
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