Are we dead yet?

Is it safe to come out or were we killed? Is this purgatory? Sometimes it feels like it might be.

This has been one of my most inactive days on Steem for over two years as I only managed one post in 24 hours. I have been trying to get to the comments though as some of them are quite interesting. Some not so much, but that is part of the balance.

While I am pretty sure MEOS killed us today and we just don't know it yet, I haven't had a chance to wake up dead because I have spent the day taking photos at my wife's nephew's graduation for 5 hours and then, spent the last 6 hours editing them.

While I only did a "fast" edit, there were over 500 pics and I needed to edit 370 of them. They wanted shots of all people who visited and as people interacted etc and that means, taking many shots and with about 50 guests throughout the afternoon, a lot of movement. I have a love hate relationship with photo editing as while I enjoy it, doing it at the batch level is not really my thing but this was the only way to get through so many in a short period of time.

The bit of a rant I got out while putting my daughter to sleep prepared me for the day. It was kind of nice to be away from Steem for a few hours even though I was still keeping a half eye on it from time to time. While I read from my phone and even post from it, I try not to comment too often from it as I find I don't put as much depth into the replies. I find that those who commonly use their phone rarely engage well through comments as they try to save time and energy. That might just be my opinion though.

I have lots of opinions and I don't mind much if people think I am correct or not as they don't have my experience, nor do they have to live my life for me. Sure, I might be wrong but then, is there a problem with that? Not so much in my experience as the times I have been wrong I have come out stronger for it.

Many people think it is best to learn from other's mistakes but, rarely will anyone actually do that and even if they attempt it, what have they learned? For example, someone could have tried to start a business and failed at it and then someone else could learn from their mistakes and not start a similar business. However, this doesn't take into account differing skills and of course, time.

Timing is of monumental importance when it comes to building a business as not only is there the luck of right time, right place, there is also the necessary requirements to be able to support an idea. I see that Steem has a bit of a community alignment problem (and likely always will) as there are so many motives and incentive positions that even if some are satisfied, others are not. People want the moon without thinking about the benefits of low prices, they want mass marketing while most people in this world are scared of crypto or, do not know anything about it at all.

The time will come for these things of course, I just don't think this is the time for them now. In my opinion, the platform needs to operate well and scale and I don't just mean for more users, I mean the economic considerations also. If it isn't able to hold a million or 10 million people who all want to earn something, it is doomed. As a few have probably realized, that isn't going to happen with Steem alone and definitely not with the current economic model in play.

While many might disagree on what it should actually be, I prefer the trial and error approach more than the argue and do nothing approach. But then, I am not overly afraid of dying either - I just hope it isn't painful.

Maybe that is what holds many people back, a fear of death. On Steem it isn't probably the physical death but the fear of the death of the ego, the pain of being wrong, murder by failure. A lot of people fear failure so much that they don't try to leave the comfort zone and I think on Steem it manifests similarly where what the status quo currently is holds less risk than what the future might be.

But, this is the problem as to get to where people want (I am assuming few people are happy to stay here forever) takes movement away from where we currently are. As said, people can disagree on what that movement should be, but movement has to happen. Otherwise, why wait?

Time tracks motion and if nothing is moving, what is the point in waiting as essentially, time is standing still. I don't feel that we are standing still on Steem at all but, I also don't feel that we are moving as fast as we could move. The problem is that we don't move very fast because we can't move together.

You know that saying, If you want to move fast, move alone, if you want to go far, go together or something like that? A decentralized community struggles to do much of anything at times because no one can agree to move together yet, no one can really move alone either. Stagnation can take place easily and then, people get comfortable.

Centralized organization effectively are moving alone but what slows them down is the group they need to perform tasks. The larger the organization, the slower it moves. Steem is a large organization except, doesn't have a great deal of organization inherent in the system. What does organize the people of steem are the protocols of the blockchain that get processed every 3 seconds and this is why it is so vital to find a model that can support the behaviors that support the blockchain.

Not the community.

Yes, the community is vital of course but there is not much of a Steem community if there is no blockchain, right? Well, there is a blockchain and it isn't home to a Steem community at all. It is home to many Steem communities, and each o them have their own motivations and incentive points to achieve them.

This is why SMTs are vital the larger the group gets because they can be used to tokenize and distribute wealth on models that are altogether different to the Steem model. Sure, they are still bound by some pf the protocols, but, not that many - much like web designers are bound by the protocols of the internet and browsers but have a free hand in the design.

I could be wrong, but the new internet is going to be one where blockchains are the protocols that people utilize for their everyday use case needs, no matter what they are. The difference from now is that there will be a greater degree of ownership and distribution to a much wider range of people at a global level. There are 7 billion people who benefit from the internet now, even if they are not on it themselves and all of these people are going to benefit from blockchains and tokenization in various ways too.

People are fighting over scraps when the future is filled with so much potential. That s okay, it is a scarcity mindset and most of us have it because, most of us have been raised wanting more without the means to have it. This is not just an economic statement but that is how most people on Steem look at life on Steem, through the eyes of price, economy, distribution. This in itself is a pretty good reason to make sure the economic model keeps improving.

Well, I might be going to bed and who knows, maybe I will wake up crypto-dead after all. I might also keep writing until death takes me eyes open.

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]