My Best Post Ever

Yesterday I was hit with a barrage of pessimism and futility from a bunch of friends and strangers alike. Some of it just came up in conversation, some came up because of my insistence on working together as equals and discussing my views of leadership vs. collaboration, a lot of it was just about observations made at steemit. Many assumptions about human nature were expressed.

llamas making assumptions about human nature

In the same way, hearing 100 people say that human beings are selfish or even hopeless will influence me and may cause me to doubt my own decisions or make me trust less and want to give up some of my idealism, 100 insistence’s that human beings are capable of anything, including building systems of mutual benefit, acting outside of purely selfish interests and collaborating on equal footing to accomplish great things may cause some people to doubt their pessimistic views.

The fact is, we influence each other, and our beliefs and insistence’s usually create some degree of a self fulfilling prophecy. This is not some pie in the sky shit. Every time you doubt humanity, you make it a little worse.

It’s important to be realistic and smart, you don’t put your private keys in your bio or leave yourself vulnerable in a place known for crime. You recognize that people are also capable of cruelty and selfishness and it’s not rare either. But once you recognize it and take a few precautions, any other focus on it will only encourage behavior based in fear and distrust, in others AND in yourself.

Rather than always complaining about human nature, or about the corrupt people in control (yeah, sure, they are awful), take some responsibility for your own actions, your own worldview, and your own framing which are also shaping the world around you.

Man the fuck up (or Woman the fuck up) and realize that with your pessimism, you only make things worse.

I get it, I do. It’s hard. Sometimes we need to take a critical view and I’m all for that, but this is useful when it is merely for assessing our current situation, not a smart way to build an entire foundation of beliefs. I’ve heard it said that steemit is just an investment and money making platform, or even gambling platform and that any community that exists here is really just following the upvotes and wouldn’t exist without the monetary incentives.

Guess what? If I had enough money from other sources to do what I wanted all day, I’d still be here making friends with people from around the world. I’d still take this chance to understand new friends from places and cultures which I had known nothing about and find likeminded people in unlikely places. If the community aspect of steemit is fake and just based on selfish interests, let’s fucking make it real and turn it into what we want it to be. We may not be able to control where all the upvotes go, but we do have the power to mold our own personal culture and the form our relationships take.

If I can inspire 100 people who go on to inspire 100 more, isn’t that something? If I inspire 10 who influence 10 more isn’t that still something? If I only inspire 1 isn’t it still worth it?

Stop complaining about the state of humanity and start taking some responsibility for it. Let’s make the best of what we have.