As a woman who works with visionaries I am fascinated by this new rumbling on Steemit which is a call for leadership. My spiritual research has shown that such stirrings have their roots in discontent streaked with fear-based emotions. It is also the reaction to desire spinning free in a vortex of insecurities about one's life purpose.
> me, myself, and i
The issue relevant to the age of individualisation, gaining momentum in the 20th century, is that people want things instead of knowing what they need, and this is a human factor which will continue to develop into a surging tsunami of demand until individuals come together in the knowledge that leadership can only come from within.
a lion in Zimbabwe by Christine Donaldson
Mind what you ask for
There is already, of course, plenty of leadership on Steemit; we are lead by the ring in our nose the minute we sign up. It doesn’t take a dictatorship in power for us to recognise such structures that we , actually (but this will be hard to follow) asked for ourselves. Some have said, leadership fine, but elections not. How we then would lean towards one authority or another I would not know. All leadership is election: you choose to follow a voice. Right leadership is another subject entirely.
For an adult to ask for leadership is to reveal the immature soul. It is one thing for a child to gravitate towards protection and stability but for adults this always leads to empowering dictatorship. Even adults need calm, regular and predictable routines; but this is to be self-disciplined and have clear vision, not to need leadership from another being.
Tribal man swore by his calendar of the stars. Business men are better off in corporations. Even day traders lounging by the pool don’t operate alone. Self-regulating bodies that we are, we need a leading voice, the dominant key of our life. If it is not Real Self speaking, then we will listen out for second best. This is what motivates us to "follow our dreams". But these dreams tend to be built on the same clouds as the ambitions we call our own, but were actually instilled by the money-makers: their life-goal mantras sponsored by the world economy begin in play school.
We are seldom in a position to be free willed. We are ruled by the calendar. We invent calendars that might encorporate our intentions to do 110% with 25 hours in 8 day weeks. We are spinning ourselves neurotic in a never-ending loop. Where is the person who honors their cyclical nature which spirals both in and out of itself to reach for the next level?
To ask for leadership from without is to agree to let the dog who once was a wolf drive us into the pen which we hope is in accord with our true nature.
Annie Spratt made this photo of Unsplash HQ, Crew collective & Cafe, Montreal
Desire to need
I don’t want to post in a hostile and infantile enviroment. I don’t like it one little bit. It is worse than infantile really, in the sense that nobody really speaks with their own voice. Children stop echoing usually once they learn "I".
Most of us utter random thoughts on repeat as they surface in the moment, often again, determined by the clock: in a free moment, a little break away from what really matters, a set appointment, none of which is in accord with Free Will, all of which is dominated by things the brain picked up like litter in the wind by a hedgehog speared on the rotatinig wheel of your day.
André Breton might have found it liberating and consciousness expanding to go da-da but you have to be a consciously elevated artist to pull that one off.
It is hostile ever since they put up that little red, down-ward pointing arrow allowing you to imitate the like/dislike culture you had all so gotten used to. You see! We have had the leadership we asked for from day one. There is no business that exists without your demand.
Smart marketing is 1% innovation on top of 99% familiarity. Sometimes NEW! in a starburst box will suffice. Call it something snazzy and stick the label in a prominent place and the content rarely even matters. Thus we head and tag for attention, like little children waving their crayon work up at the thighs of an adult. Who has the time to bend down to sit on their haunches to study patiently our scratchy scribblings?
Alternating Current
(A great collection of extremely intelligent and free-will stimulating essays, by the way)
My nearest and dearest crypto and Steemit advisor was like myself onto the format that is Steemit from day one. He has followed the inner wheelings and dealings in as far as they duped him personally and he could not find a viable financial model. This caused him to conclude that someone handed a bunch of monkeys a virtual-wad of hocus-pocus crypto currency to see what would happen next. Quite possibly, I feel, they came up with little more than the good old shibboleth: "Nothing Lost, Nothing Gained".
It feels to me more of a technological experiment rather than either a financial one or a social one. It cannot have escaped the Brains of the operation that it won't ever work to collect onto one forum a spectrum of literacy that covers the barely educated to the academically trained. They must have banked on the majority settling down without a fuss to the fun to be had here, and the negligible earnings would have fallen away as a motivation to stay. We would never notice how we had become a natural source of energy for their battery. It probably all boils down to bringing slave-labour onto the web in an imperceptibly organised fashion, no different to how we are organised like that in the real world.
It doesn’t mean to say that we did not suspend our prevision of an impossible project and didn’t join in with high hopes. We were curious who might be buying into a pipe dream; and distressed at finding real lives in the balance.
We invested loads of our time and my delegator, in addition, converted sizeable amounts of his own fiat currency into Steem to help set Steemit up and running, expecting all of us (with a few dollars to spare on entertainment or career pursuits) to follow suit with some sense of how this could only work on a kind of contribution/membership basis - no different to any other reputable internet site you want to run with as much freedom for design as you like and be boss over without restrictions from the one you rent your space from.
Furthermore, by caring about the real faces behind the blogs, my delegator was readily prepared to get involved with victims of inflation in those that live in countries around our actual globe. Gently probing the possibilities he ended up donating to one or two individuals the Steem he had earned from his own labour intensive blogging. We did what the utopian side of Steemit hoped might happen: extended Steemit into the real world, just like the current Bangkok conference is doing, and many other smaller meet-ups aim to do likewise. We abided by the prevailing social codes as best we could, upvoting and engaging with people we would otherwise never have met or sadly, all too frequently, people we would never have wanted to meet. There are quite a few rogue traders around here.
All of my delegator's financial contributions and most painfully his genuine efforts to bring people together in a community vibe were maliciously countered by a flag-war waged upon him for reasons he still cannot fathom.
Sai Pye Phyo Aung Kaundinya Communications
A Hard Day’s Work.
Whoever you are, from whichever angle you approach Steemit, to open up the platform is to step into another day at the office. Some of us are at reception, or in administration, others on the 70th exectutive floor, while most of us are in our own little cubicles processing data, vigilant: who is coming for us first, Mr. Smith or Morpheus?
In sum, to my mind, we have here a very small group of souls (worldwide) for a very brief time (Steemit is but a trend) who are writing a very important update of the state of our spirit. Mottled as it is, we may find a broad range of souls gathered here. Most of them not very well informed, others not very well intended, but all karmically linked by being here, whether we like it or not. It is like when the Titanic sank: those on board at that time will be known forever after as one of the 2,224 aboard (either drowned or as a survior). It is part of your biography now.
Nicole Adams I am left amazed by the lives we have forced upon us.
The true bane of Steemit is that we are never free to like what we like.
We measure our moves against a conversion table and record them in a ledger. Steemit is our little black book and business rolodex in one, not our neighbourhood. Management considers us in terms of equity. Even the most sociable ones have to have the voting valuta in the back of our heads. When we run out of voting power we are rendered impotent (unable to power-up on a cup of tea or even when boosted by a good story still powerless): it forces us to close-up shop for the day.
Pick your reading carefully: but isn’t that also a good brake? Why does a library set a limit to how many books you can take out on loan at a time? You can always stay on till closing time and read as many books as you like on site.... are they worried you might become over-saturated on literature or non-fiction? But this metaphor actually falls flat at that point: for even when one reads more than one is allowed to take out (the equivalent of a reward) one is instantly rewarded with every browsing and study experience: enjoying or learning from the book as per need. Judging from the chatter in my central library, I don't kid myself everybody is there to read (absorb writing and pictures), but you get my general gist: libraries preselect works to create an environment that caters to many but guaranteeing some level of value (per varying level) and they understand the majority of members do not need to take out more than 6, 12 or 18 items at a time (depending on your membership card). Is this leadership or just wise management of their resources?
Might it not be that we are lacking wise management of Steem rather than leadership over our members on Steemit?
The Catch 22 is that you are supposed to keep on looking around for good and true, new or old and buried Steemians – which comes at the cost of having no votes left for your own cookie crew. It’s a bit comparable to how you will become fixed in your own thought flow and habits by a Search Engine, recycling back to you your general preferences.
As externally so internally, commensurately to a lack of new investment of fiat money there is a lack of interest/motivation (diminished curiosity) in pulling in newbies. How often do we ever still come across a Rep(25) in our general feed? How often do we as independent users go in search of them? On what grounds do we trust our curators? (I can think of a few who are playing some game or other clearly with financial gain as the objective.)
There are no free lunches
It is perfectly fair in business to expect the investment to be returned in full by claiming a percentage of the profits. But then, often, once the investment has been returned, the high stake initially demanded in return for the risk taken wil be lowered, as well, so that your business is comfortably working for you with a marginal reward to you benefactor and supporter. So I think I would understand if Steemit was into looking for ways to extract that gifted steem they set you up when you opened an account here. Is this the purpose of downvoting by organised flag-teams? But when they touch your own investment (hard currency), I am lost on the policy of their tax system.
Of course, it cannot come as a surprise that it, as always, IS all about the money here, afterall. This is the same anywhere you go until you take meticulous control over your every move and preference and act that is your life. You will still be paying them, but your free will shrugs that off as the name of the game, while it tunnels on to liberate the rest.
I am still left with the very first question I had when I boarded this train: what is the aim of this experiment? With what intention has it been set up and is it run?
We cannot figure out who precisely is running the operation. We strand at the level of management that probably works for chicken-feed and has been hired most likely for their bird-brains. They can be annoying to us (to say more would be to over-egg the point) but they pose no threat to higher hand. (But thinking of "higher-hand" ... we all know who that is. And are we all comfortable about being associated with this hand? Or are we giving him autocratic status to which we have no choice but to submit at least some of our own free-will to, as is the case in any totalitarian state?)
Personal Profit Scheme
I don’t really care to figure it out, either, to be honest. My concerns run much deeper.
I wish to paint one living image, and I will do so repeatedly in any style on any subject I can manage. I aim to mirror back to us why we are here. Some of are miserable or unjustly used here, but we cannot call it abuse until we recognise how our supermarket, dentist and gynacologist abuse us. We have to see how we voluntarily bought into it (either with money or social expectations or presumed talents). We are a glutton for punishment, which delights me to no end! May we wake up sure and fast to see how our reality is ruled by concepts of ignorance. In punishing ourselves we abuse our true Potential, devalue our capacity for love and caring; and cripple our Self.
¡Let's Go! ¡Wake Up!
You cannot flourish under the leadership of another will, not even your own. Free Will is more than that. It is a dire need of your Real Self. We must tap into a Higher Will, a Divine Voice, if we are interested in a better communion amongst our selves. Are we though? That interested? That keen to meet and embrace eachother despite our shortcomings and imperfections? To recognise and endorse the stumblings in the dark; to allow the room they give us to turn around and move back toards the slow flow of self-examination. To be thankful to the blows and scars that marr us, and to share the progress of our healing?
I leave each to one’s own with this contemplation.
I urge everyone to find leadership within.
It is urgent.
scarred lioness in Kapama Private Game Reserve, South Africa by Chris Rhoads
What a beautifully, truthfully written piece. Thank you. Thank you too for reading and looking so closely at my childish chicken scratches and being the most influential person I've encountered here in this experiment of Steemit. I have loved turning over rocks with you!
A flag from @ likredu, an account with zero posts, zero comments, zero Steem, delegated SP and zero SBD.
I have such flags on my posts almost every day. Don't bother about them.
For now that is true, but wait until these accounts get some SP and flag your rep to zero so you can't even post anymore. Will you be bothered then? I am! With most of my Steem purchased I don't want my rewards flagged down to zero by some anonymous bots. Don't think it can happen? Think again; it has happened numerous times.
I think you solved one of my paradoxes, I always thought I'm looking for anarchism, but I'm just tired of being owned and ruled by others. But one can't live alone and there will be a leader, whether we want it or not... So what shall we do about it?
[Looks like you didn't solve it after all, you just took it to the next level, which is progress]
What if I am Neo, Morpheus and Mr. Smith at the same time? And it's just about which one "I" let lead me? And who that "I" is that is not Neo, Morpheus or Mr. Smith?
Living together (in society or in a relationship), ideally, does not automatically imply an elected leader as such and they certainly should not be inclined to oppose your free will: but true enough, one could be determined/appointed to take the lead in the moment or regards set specialisations perhaps.
Good cooperation agrees when one shall take the lead in a very practical manner (do the shopping, determine the meal, cook the dinner) and in equal relationships this leadership alternates - even if it seems one is more powerful, this is often deceptive and rather a "malady of soul" which has lost sense of right proportion and harmony (child wants to play - parent plays; parent wants to put child to bed - child bathes and puts on jammies; or child is terrorist or parent dictator). Give and take seems to be the clue here. We must learn to dance with eachother, but perhaps much depends on the music we choose to follow..... Trigonometry seems to help us regain the right sense of balance and adjustment: it is a measure by which to know much and act simply: it leads us down a path of harmonious proportion. We can follow the lead of wisdom. What is wise.... ah yes, now we seem to have landed in a Catch 22 but let's not ask a Wise Man to sort it our for us. Once you are exhausted of running after your own tail (spinning like a Sufi) you may see for yourself exactly what you need to do or be (and hey preso: you are your own leader).
We certainly tend to have multiple personas (even if not quite a multiple personaliy disorder), and this comes from not really knowing oneself or trusting one's own meaning to life (mission/impulses). I am a woman, a lover, a daughter, an artist, a patient, an academic... but are they personas? I hope not! They are aspects of Self taking control over different situations in my life. A good human being is like a Swiss Army knife...
Life is largely about learning to discover the voice of your soul, as coached by your divine Self, and often interrupted by your little ego (stimulated by other fearful pipsqueaks for its capacity for commercial success). Whichever role this actor-soul takes on on the stage of life will be legitimate. A man's gotta do what man's gotta do. It will always be taking the lead of it's own role/destiny. Flexibility and reacting in the moment is key. You can only do this when sure of who you are, in trust (which is clarity of vision).
Hello Sukhasanasister,
Wow you raise many interesting points ... you remind me that most of the coolest, amazing and advanced societies on earth were/are matriarchies ... i think we need to seriously balance our ying and and yang in most "western culture" influenced countries!
Have a wonderful day =D