I am not going to give in - PHUD makes more sense than HPUD.
Regardless - On the first of the month it is encouraged to add a little HIVE to your stake and even has a badge for it on https://hivebuzz.me/, which if you haven't used yet, is worth checking out as you can see some basic numbers surrounding your account and it is a bit of fun to keep track of what is going on there.
For example, the image below shows some basics of my interaction:
With me sending out 4000+ posts, 35,000+ comments and 71,000+ votes - and receiving 55,000+ replies and 620,000+ votes on my posts. I don't reply to automated messages or spam normally, but I do try to reply to everyone I feel is worth my time - which is most people. I miss some occasionally though - but I figure people generally understand.
I did meet someone at Fest 3 in Krakow however, who told me they stopped following me because I missed commenting on them - but after I explained that I get a lot of comments and it isn't always easy to see them all (especially back then). Some people take offence to not getting replies as if it is a personal attack on them - but at least for me, this is generally not the case - however there are some people I don't bother replying to due to the way they engage or the disingenuous nature of their comments.
I got my PHUD badge.
10 HIVE is the minimum needed to get the badge, which is about $2.38 worth. Not too bad for most people around the world I would suspect.
In 2019, the price for a pack of 20 cigarettes in Finland was around 7.2 euros. Out of the total amount, tobacco tax accounted for nearly 5.09 euros. After the deduction of VAT, the net price of a cigarette pack was 0.74 euros. source
I am glad I don't smoke anymore - but at a pack a day - that is around 36 HIVE a day. We all make our decisions in life.
The same $8.60 for cigarettes will also buy 0.00073400 Bitcoin. That doesn't sound like much, does it? But, 3 days worth of cigarettes would buy about the same amount of Bitcoin if all 21 million were spread equally amongst the global population - 0.003 Bitcoin for everyone individual. Now, that isn't much, is it? Especially considering that 20% is likely lost forever and there are holders who have many thousands each. Have you got your 0.003 yet? A little more?
As I see it, we all have the opportunity to participate in changing the entire global economic system - but it does take participation. What I like about Hive is that we can not only participate at a financial level, but also affect outcomes through social change - mindset and paradigm shifts that slowly nudge the course of society. This is how all cultural change takes place, a step at a time - a little aha moment here, a change in behavior there - until many people are participating.
My personal favorite badges on hivebuzz are these:
Weekly author is the number of times I have published every day of the week, with Monthly author being how many times I have published every day of the month. There has been 187 weeks since I joined, meaning I have missed posting on a day in 9 of them. They were early 2017. There has been 43 months since I joined, so I have not posted daily in 3 of them - they were early 2017 too. Hey, , is there a badge for Yearly author ? You'd have to exclude a few hardfork cock-ups though :D
Participation is important, engagement is important, discussion is important - changing mindset takes effort. But no one is forced to participate, engage, discuss or change their mind at all, it is all opt-in - all free choice. Not one person is forced to use the Hive blockchain, to post to comment, to act well or behave badly - it is a personal choice. Responsibility and consequence of our decisions are our own, even though we can't control all outcomes or any actions of others.
I find the Hive ecosystem compelling as it gives visibility on a lot of how people act under various conditions, cross-referenced with their skills, background, personality, desires and fears. Even with so few participants, we can see how complex the system becomes and we can see how various factors influence behavior - a change in price, a comment of support, or a downvote - no one is forced to react in a particular way - no one is forced to get upset or smile, to bend or retaliate - but they do. If we can't control our own reactions, what does that make us?
Programmed.
Conditioned to behave in a certain way based on our wiring and code. Controlled. People talk about freedom, yet they do not even have the freedom of their own reactions - and instead justify their behavior as inevitable response to the conditions.
"I want to be free to react, but I have no choice in my reaction!"
Where is the line of freedom?
Do you have the choice to quit smoking - or are you that much of an addict that you think you smoke by choice? It is easy to justify our vices while in the same breath, complain about our position of health. Excuse our behavior through our conditions, without recognizing the role we play in where we stand. We bullshit ourselves saying "this is the way we are and must be" while dreaming of being something different - letting opportunity after opportunity to participate in our own evolution slide us by.
In crypto we look at FUD and FOMO in regards to investing, but dealing with these at the personal level is far more important. The fear, uncertainty and doubt of taking responsibility of making the decisions in our life and living with the consequences, the fear of missing out on the life we want, because we are unable to overcome our fears.
We are scared to participate because we fear failure, we fear trying and not getting what we aimed for, what we controlled ourselves for. It is easy to let the programming decide, to live via default.
Easy to do, hard to live.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]