"Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead." -Morehei Ueshiba
Sweet Basil flowering in my garden
Recently I wrote a post recommending one of my favorite tools for organic growth on Steem, @dustsweeper (and offering to sponsor five new dustsweeper accounts!)
It got me thinking about organic growth in general. What it is, why it's important, what it takes to grow organically.
I have been interested in organic gardening since I was a child. This was the way my mother grew our vegetables since before I knew there was another way. Moreover, I have always had an affinity for living things: animals and plants vs structures and landscapes, natural materials like wood and stone over factory made objects. Weirdly, I have been interested in computers for an equally long time. Commands in DOS and BASIC programming made sense to me in 1st grade, as I understood this to be simply the way computers "think."
Culturally, we have made an error separating the natural world from the world built by humans. The separation is an illusion. The structures and tools we build are not alive, but they are accessories to our lives that we carry with us, like the shell of a hermit crab or the dung ball of a dung beetle. Would we consider these structures anything other than organic?
If a coral reef is considered a natural structure because it is constructed by the living coral, what then is a server stack?
...a blockchain?
...a full node?
Real Growth Is Organic
Looks like Bitcoin is seeing some growth again, and it's about time. I'm sure we'll get another hype cycle and eventually another crash. Alts like STEEM don't feel it yet, but we will get our day too. I guess boom and bust is also part of the natural cycle, but that's not really the point.
The point is, "attract investors" is not a strategy for growth, any more than "HODL" is. Both can support growth, but there must be an engine - an organic driver of growth that takes in whatever it has at hand and uses it to BUILD.
That's how organic growth works. The living thing takes whatever inputs it has and puts them to work - to create and maintain the best conditions for growth, and more life. When this process is successful, even more life and growth is enabled. When it falters, there is decay.
Organic Things Also Decay
Like most of my writing, this is a bit of a pep talk for me - an acknowledgement of an insight about what I need to do in my life and my work, and a rhetorical kick in the pants to get doing it.
I find it hard to keep ahead of entropy. As an individual, I guess I inevitably won't. Decay happens, and one day I too will turn into compost. But not this day! Today I am part of an unbroken chain that has managed to stand defiantly in the face of entropy for, I suppose, about 2 billion years. Life finds a way.
The way? Build. Take what you have, and use it in the most productive way possible. Make something you can use, make something you can share. Use something someone else made, and show them your appreciation.
Speaking of, I am long overdue for a follow up to my Dustsweeper nominations post. I am sorry for the delay, and I will explain in my follow up.........
🗝️ 🐇 🕳️