I appreciate the recent outpouring of support and the opportunity to reconnect with so many of you. I can’t be sure when or if I’ll ever be “back,” but I’m heartened to know that I am not forgotten. Some of you are probably wondering what happens next, so I’m going to start to address that here.

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce identity architecture and why it is important to carry it forward. If you’ve read the story behind the work,

http://self.drym.com/nirvana.html

… then you already have an idea of some of the inevitable “spiritual” aspects entailed in addressing consciousness directly — the solution to any challenging problem is bound to yield surprising consequences. Identity architecture is what we are, it is what “this” is. But, aside from that more intimate aspect, there are very tangible concerns that are addressed in the work, compelling factors which must move us into action.

Our world today labors under the tyranny of capitalism and the illusion of communism; we desperately seek answers that are not to be found there. Wars are fought because economic interests are not always aligned. People are dying from strife and from starvation — because we don’t know how to economically facilitate improving their condition, and are forced to rely upon the sacrifice and efforts of good samaritans (who always seem to come through) to do this work for us, for recognition they only find in themselves though it is evidently enough for them. In the system we have, nations would rather fund an interminable arms race than fund social programs around the world “for their enemies,” because when wars have winners and losers, we can’t take any chances. These false dichotomies are an artifact of the ad hoc economic systems within which we live — we do not need to abide by them! There is an alternative, and the work on identity architecture,

http://self.drym.com/IALS.pdf

… is a promising start of it.

If it could be comprehensively explained in a paragraph or two we wouldn’t have needed the lengthy and evolving work above, but I’ll give it a shot in the form of a metaphor. Some time ago I read in a book that the reason snowflakes (all snowflakes) have hexagonal symmetry is that at the molecular level — at the very smallest scales which the eye can’t see — water molecules crystallize in a hexagonal shape. When this happens, the crystallization propagates outward and the shape is preserved at ever larger scales resulting in the macroscopic shapes at the level of our daily experience which our eyes can see. It is a fractal of repeating hexagonal patterns at every scale. The economic system proposed in the paper is like that. It guarantees economic alignment of interests between actors “at the same level” and also between actors “at different levels,” resulting in a society that looks the same at every level in terms of interest alignment — a “snowflake” system with positive economic feedback loops at every scale. Whether or not this solution has truly been accomplished, this is the fundamental problem of economics, the one that we’ve unconsciously been trying to solve ever since Adam Smith got started thinking about this as a problem in itself back in the 18th century.

But, it only works if people actually know about it. Molecules must crystallize before the world can! Although the present work represents a start of this process, the great majority of the work remains to be done by you. Here’s what you can do:

1) Most important of all is to get the word out. Therefore I ask — share this work, get it out there, let people find it, help people understand it. This work belongs to no one, it is part of the world now, and all of ours to take forward.

2) Whenever you create something or do anything that produces some outcome that you’d like to share with the world, or which you feel others would benefit from, put it out publicly “in the world context” without patent or copyright protection or licensing of any kind.

Now, you’re going to say, you mean to tell me that I should put my hard work out there publicly to only receive recognition for it at some indeterminate point in the future, facilitated by a system that doesn’t exist yet? It is true that you may not receive the recognition due to you in the near future, or even in a timeframe that may make a difference to you at all. We are in uncharted waters here, and I cannot say when the system is likely to “crystallize.” But I would say to you, putting your work out into the world is its own reward — you would be making the world better, infusing it with the creative energies of your unique point of view, and laying the foundation for this new system by your faith in it. It is a charity that does charity, an unfairness that yields fairness, a hope that breeds hope. It cannot happen mechanically, methodically, automatically — it needs individuals to be brave and to take a giant leap of faith into a fuzzy unknown, into a promise of a better world for all of us.

But how, you may ask, can I jump into this void like you’re asking me to, when I have no idea how this is going to work, and when I am deeply skeptical that it even could work? When you were a kid you probably learned how to ride a bike. If you were to attempt to explain to someone else all of the mechanics and the techniques you employed that enabled you to ride the bike, what would you say? Riding a bike is one of those things you just have to do, you can’t really explain it to someone, and if understanding how to ride it were prerequisite I wonder if any of us would even be able to do it at all. You must let go of your supports, cast off from the ground that has cradled you, the very ground that now shackles you, take a leap of faith that enables you to transcend the boundaries of what you knew, into a magical world where you can now ride a bike even without knowing how it all works. I imagine a bird makes a similar (and literal!) leap of faith when it learns to fly, casting off into certain death in order to soar into the skies in an entirely new world, as an entirely new thing.

We need to do something just like that here. The ground that cradles us is the economic systems we live in which recognize our works and facilitate commerce. They have brought us this far but we are bound by them now, they impede us, condemn us to our feet when we would ride; to the ground when we would fly! Let go of those supports, friends. We have a path forward and we must not hesitate.