| title | Module 7 |
|---|---|
| order | 0 |
| hideLanguageSelector | true |
| description | Week 7 of the Kernel Learn Track, which explores the idea of gift-giving and its relationship to interplanetary-scale principled games played in languages which approach the perfect. |
| featuredImage | images/shares/giving.png |
After describing Ethereum 2.0 as our generation's elder game of economic penalties, it may seem like there is nothing left to say. However, there is one bonus side-mission left; one more extension pack meant to give you a unique means of reading our new interplanetary plays.
For seven weeks, we've been discussing the play of complementary opposites, extending our awareness of the spectrum of consciousness and examining more intimately the trade-offs we make in every moment. But what, really, are these opposites? What informs their opposite-ness? What is the real nature of their relationship?
The opposition is, as it were, between container and contained, between the background and the stage, between the field and the players moving on it. The good and the evil play their opposing parts on the field which remains neutral and indifferent and "open" or "empty". It is like rain that falls on the just and the unjust. -- Daisetz Suzuki
As Hua-Ching Ni says, "these polarized energies contain and complement each other". When you notice how each complementary opposite not only illuminates the other pole, but contains it fully, you are moving beyond simplistic dualism. Each pole has many attributes and is, in itself, a complex process, but "by understanding them and how they interact with each other, one can learn the truth of any situation and determine the proper action to take."
We can, in modern cognitive science terms (inspired by ancient myth), come to realise not just complementarity, but coincidence: this here and now, which is the presence of eternity. Critically, it is not about culmination or resolution, but infinities accessible through humble opponent processing.
We wrap the origin in two
lines, in order to experience
neither self nor world
nor both, nor ne(i)ther.
This is removal,
not the negative,
which is finding emptiness
joyful, loving.
So, who is the user?
(n)one.
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.” -- Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī
Vitalik mentioned last week the importance of asymmetric defense as the basic premise required to uphold "the ideology of the cypherpunk spirit". So, let's look more carefully at those two loaded words: ideology and spirit.
To do so, we'll consider a critical and often overlooked part of hacker and cypherpunk culture: gift-giving. Once we've traversed this ancient part of both our shared history and individual psyches, we'll discuss the inertia of language which makes the above two words so difficult to deal with. Then we'll close with a consideration of what a universal language deployed on a shared, transparent, and ownerless global network means when playing increasingly principled multiplayer games.
Thank you for your kind attention. This has been an amazing exploration, and we wish you so very well as we all adventure together into new architectures of time and more numinous digital-economic spaces.
Darkness and brightness—absolute and relative—are a pair of opposites, like front and back feet when we walk. This is a very good way of explaining oneness, or the actual function of a pair of opposites. It expresses how we apply pairs of opposites, like delusion and enlightenment, reality and idea, good and bad, weak and strong, in our everyday practice. People who feel they are strong may find it difficult to be weak. People who feel they are weak may never try to be strong. That is quite usual. But sometimes we should be strong and sometimes we should be weak. If you remain weak always or if you always want to be strong, then you cannot be strong in the true sense." - Shunryu Suzuki