Since finding STEEM and Cryptos, do you ever feel like you’re detached from the mainstream? That you can talk to lifelong friends about your new interest in Cryptos and just get blank stares or weird looks like you’ve come from another planet or are speaking a different language? If so, let me tell you that it’s perfectly normal and you are not alone.
History is full of Counterculture movements and you might hear your parents or grandparents talking fondly of those days gone by where they rebelled against the mainstream and stuck it to “The Man”. However, before I delve too deeply into comparisons you might not know what I mean by Counterculture so let’s have a quick look at dictionary.com and see what the definition is :-
Ok, so that’s the egghead definition of Counterculture but I think it describes us pretty well. Not convinced? Let’s dig a bit further and work our way backwards to some of the more recent Counterculture movements. We will start with the Punk Counterculture of the 1980s, which I still remember myself and even took part in as a youth.
This time we will take a few excerpts from Wikipedia to see if it is starting to sound familiar :-
Punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, fashion, and other forms of expression, visual art, dance, literature and film. It is largely characterised by anti-establishment views and the promotion of individual freedom, and is centred on a loud, aggressive genre of rock music called punk rock….Punk politics cover the entire political spectrum. Common punk ethos includes anti-authoritarianism, a do-it-yourself ethic, non-conformity, direct action and not "selling out".
If you take the loud music and fashion out of the equation you can see there are a lot of similarities, but I sense you’re still not convinced so let’s go back a bit further to the Hippie Counterculture of the 1960s, which is before most of us were born but there are plenty of old Baby Boomers who will remember this era fondly.
Again we will take a few snips from Wikipedia :-
The counterculture of the 1960s refers to an anti-establishment cultural phenomenon….As the 1960s progressed, widespread social tensions also developed concerning other issues, and tended to flow along generational lines regarding human sexuality, women's rights, traditional modes of authority, experimentation with psychoactive drugs, and differing interpretations of the American Dream.
Music again played a part, plus there was plenty of drugs and sex but the theme of being anti-establishment, rejecting authority and breaking away from mainstream thinking is common of all of these movements. If we go back and have a look at the definition of Counterculture you can see that I have a case.
Many people here on STEEM are Crypto newbies, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way in any sense. We all have to start somewhere and this is a great place to start. Many came here to STEEM to rebel against the centralised power that Facebook, YouTube and Twitter wield with their censorship and profiteering from OUR content and data, but STEEM is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire Old World Order is in the crosshairs for disruption at the hands of blockchain technology and it's not just Social Medias.
Those who have been here for a while and those who have delved deeper into the Crypto space will see, as I do, that there is some serious undertones of anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian culture prevalent. If you go back and look at the Bitcoin Genesis Block and Satoshis original Whitepaper that sparked all this back in 2009, it is there from the start. Bitcoin was intended to be a peer-to-peer payment system that could take on the establishment that brought us the Global Financial Crisis and all the corruption and cronyism that came with it.
Some of the most passionate Crypto enthusiasts are promoting the fact that we can disrupt the entire financial and political world with this technology. Some openly call it a Revolution that has the potential to deliver power and wealth back to the individual via decentralisation, rather than continue to feed the violence of the corrupt state and the cartel banksters. But unlike the anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian Countercultures of the past, we actually now have the tools to deliver. Those old Punks and Hippies might not understand the technology, but they should be able to relate to this new Counterculture of OUR Generation and we’re going to need their support when the time comes.
We’re just getting started.
Images and Credits
http://www.gracewayvillage.com
http://www.dictionary.com
https://hughshelleyhnd01.wordpress.com
http://www.trueparentsway.com
https://www.linkedin.com
https://www.zerohedge.com