This s(t)eems to be an exciting community. What I like about it from the get go is it looks very civilised and supportive with people who want to build each other up rather than knock each other down. This can only be a positive thing. Momentum, it's all about momentum, if a community creates a positive momentum, then that is the direction it will tend to go likewise with the negative. So, that is why I have joined steemit.
If I was to find a purpose in my life's experience, I would say that it has been to see things from as many points of view as possible. By constantly changing up my situation I have, somewhat painfully, learned to see the 'other point of view'. I think this is the only way to work towards enlightenment, I know, I know, everybody already is enlightened in their own way, but you understand what I mean. With the development of the crypto currencies I think that this is a form of global enlightenment in the sense that the crypto-currencies are more light-weight, and hence an enlightenment, than the heavy weight financial institutions we have grown up with. This is why the crypto currencies are so important, they are part of humanities' en-light-enment process. The major barriers are blocking stratgies and also, inertia and systemic addiction. The fact that people get institutionally addicted is not a new idea. We like things to stay the way they have been because it seems somehow safer and we are used to it. So, when you only see from your own point of view, clearly you are going to be 'stuck in a rut' so to speak. It's shocking, but the guy you are in disagreement with is as adamant that his point of view is correct as you are that your's is and learning that is something that brought me humility.
What I plan to do on steemit, then, is to create some posts/blogs about what I have learned through all this experience. It's not easy to see the other point of view, so convinced are we that we are right and the other guy is wrong, but, if you experience it as the other guy experiences it, we can more easily see why he/she thought and acts the way they did. I think it is quite interesting to ask the question 'how much of this global bickering is real and how much of it is people playing mind games with each other'. There are a lot of mind games going on and 'game' is the operative word. When we take the 'mind games' seriously, it can get us a bit perturbed, but, if we again, 'lighten up' as part of our enlightenment, then what was once so serious isn't quite as intense any more.
So, as you might have guessed, I learned through experience that there are lots of ways to achieve enlightenment. Let's think for a minute. There's cognitive enlightenment (which means understanding more with your mind or fewer heavy or negative thoughts). There's emotional enlightenment which means having lighter (not depressive) emotions, people would say, being 'happy' is an enlightenment, an emotional enlightenment. You could even say there is physcial enlightenment which means losing weight and shedding a few pounds from your body. The thing I learned is that these different forms of enlightenment automagically play off against each other. This is why, for example, cogntively enlightened (read intelligent) people often suffer from emotional depression (darkness), for example. It is the automagic enlightenment system regulating things. So, a simple thing to realise is that as we lighten up in one way, we darken down in another. So, the question you have to ask in this game of black and white, light and dark, is what are you prepared to give from the light you have to others to have others in turn chase out the dark that plagues you. So, for example, in my case, if I give cognitive enlightement on here, what I get back, automagically, is some lighter emotions or a good feeling. In the game of light and dark, then, we can see that all that our world is is an exchange of light and dark, that is it. Our world is a matrix of light and dark. So, again, when we move in towards cryptos, we are lightening up the global darkness of the financial dominator culture. So, I am quite sure, I can bring a good dose of cognitive enlightenment to steemit, if people want it, that is. The problems with light is that just as we can't see in the dark, sometimes we can't see in the light. If we are adjusted to a darkness and a bright light is suddenly shone, it can make us squint and 'blinds us with light'. It is not my intention to do that, but it's quite possible as you enlighten your mind that your psychological sight will squint a bit, I know because it happened to me. It is a natural part of cognitive enlightenment, then, to go through some confusion. Your mind has to adjust to the bright light of new understandings and information just as your eyes which were adjusted to the dark take time to adjust to the new light if a bright light is suddenly switched on. So a bit of confusion is normal. I hope not to confuse anyone too much and I know there are cockroaches out there that run from the light, but, really, there's no need. The light will always outshine the dark in the end and so, all that we really have to do is 'autocorrect' to the 'new day's' light and that is why I am offering to write some blogs here.
In terms of mainstream culture, my profession is computing and computer science. I have this somewhat unique mix of computer science and psychology in my mind, but in some weird way, I think these are two essentials to actually being able to make more sense of the world. Pscyhology and computing are, to me, ideal bedfellows. One of the things I noticed about life I can explain through a metaphor. When you start to investigate life properly and start to understand more, mechanistically, how it works, this is like looking under the bonnet of a car and seeing and understanding how the engine works. It's interesting and necessary. Mind mechanics are needed as much as car mechanics, but here's the point. You could be the best driver (of a car) in the world and have no clue at all about how the mechanics of the car actually work. You don't need to know anything about the mechanics of the car to be a great driver. So it is with life. Some people have all this understanding about life and how it works, but that doesn't make them a better driver (of their life). This is one of the illnesses which afflicts the scientific mind. To the scientist they have a tendency to think, which comes across to many as an arrogance, that because they know a little bit about life - we are all always more ignorant than we are informed, however much we learn - that they are somehow a better or more qualified to drive society. But this is a delusion. The thing I learned is that a person with a very low IQ has as much right to a say in things as a person with a high IQ. It's worth reading that again because a lot of these science guys think they are better qualified to be able to say, they are not. There's two things EQ and IQ. A person with an enlightened EQ is just as well placed to contribute to the decision making process as a person with an enlightened IQ. They make their decisions based on a different heuristic. They make their decisions based on how they feel about it, where as scientists in particular, including me, make their decisions based on what they think about it. Each regards the other as somewhat stupid and uninformed and their interactions put their righteous noses out of joint on both sides.
So, lets be clear. What I want to put on here is heavily biased towards cognition rather than emotion. I know it can be a 'bright light' to a darkened mind, but knowing that it takes your mind time to adjust to the brighter light of new information can save you a lot of the anguish that I went through not realising that confusion is a mainstay of the enlightenment process. Knowledge is like a present wrapped in multiple layers of wrapping paper. Sometimes, when it is heavily wrapped, you can't see what it is, but, as the layers come off, it might become clearer and you have more of an idea of what you are unwrapping. So, it's important to understand that cognitive enlightenment is a process. It doesn't all make sense right from the get go, but, in time, the sense starts to outweight the nonsense until you get to the point where you think you understand enough. So, I am not sure who is interested in this, but ultimately, I would say that a site like steemit is about sharing our minds and that is what I am here for.