Creating a Cohesive World where Value is built on our Values

There is only one thing that the world has in common outside the essentials of food, water, air and heat. We do not agree on values, what is love, or music. Even our attitude towards spirituality, religion, has historically been both unifying and divisive. It is intangible values that sometimes escalate to wars and killing our fellow man.  Sadly, tangible assets including money is the only things that is used universally, accepted, and agreed whether in New York or Shanghai, in the middle of the Gobi desert or dealing with your neighbour. We all understand the value of assets, benchmark ourselves and other things with it, and have a sophisticated ways to trade on items based on financial value whether through bartering or using tokens of currency. So when remodelling our interactions and visioning the new world order, why not start with something we can all agree on, and build up from there?

We can see the rolling of eyes and shaking of heads; a new vision of the world built on the worst possible instrument of materiality and lowest common denominator of mankind? The very thing that is blamed daily for the ruin of the world. Money. Representing greed, hedonism, selfish and self-centric behaviours that are universally considered vile and demonised in the press. Hardly in line with what society needs to promote – love, happiness, kindness and transparency. The idea of money to unify the world seems ridiculous and out of step with the positive direction we are heading. But what if money, the universally accepted mediator across mankind, can be injected with values that can be exchanged just as easily as currency? A world where hard tangible financial value and soft non-financial value are interchanged seamlessly and a world build capturing all values inherent within society wherever it may lie or extreme it may be. A circular economy trading value built on our values. 

So how can money be injected with values? It already does. Would you accept $5000 for your shirt if it’s paid in KKK Coins? It may offend your values, or you simply think that since you do not associate with the Klu Klux Klan where could you spend the currency? Currency carries both a financial value and represents values attributed towards a community, a set of beliefs, or alignment of values. Perhaps you can spend it with those who share similar values, who possess Trump Coins perhaps. What it does is to create a circular economy based on total value, both financial and non-financial value, and the exchange rate or desirability will be dependent on the demand that a vibrant, transactional and cohesive community creates. Fair or not, abhorrent or not, giving voice to those whose values are repulsive to the rest, a new system of currency that encapsulated all our values is equitable and transparent. We will fight in the exchanges, not in the streets, and we give value to all mankind not artificially censor those who we prefer to supress however unpalatable this may seem. It is democracy built on a common fiscal platform following thousands of years of maturation.

The solution is at the centre of the burgeoning 4^th Industrial Revolution where Fintech meets Socialtech. The technology is called ‘Blockchain’ and touted as a panacea for all world problems, it nevertheless has some features that truly “smell of teen spirit” – decentralization, democratization, distributed governance and anti-authority. More importantly, the movement of these ‘blocks’ of digital value can carry a vote, a governance layer giving currency the power of consensus. They can integrate smart contracts that determine a transaction of value dependent on third party values. Finally, they can move any kind of value – both financial and nonfinancial – digitally, at a fraction of the cost of existing legacy systems with instantaneous efficiency. Blockchain is promising truly ground breaking evolutions in Humtech, Faithtech, Gendertech, Edutech and many transformative solutions. These articulate through cryptocurrencies which are values based – Women’s Coin, City Coin, EduCoins, Islamic Coin, Leadership Coin, Water Coins, Care Givers Coins, Fashion Coins, EnviroCoins … all contributing to a family of United Nation’s 17 SDG Coins (Sustainable Development Goals) representing us all. 

So let’s imagine a world where we all hold multiple coins representing the rainbow of our values and the degree with which we align with different communities. The importance is reflected on how ready we are to exchange our coins for products and services. Whilst the financial value within the SDG family of coins are the same, the non-financial tokens of value are different. The latter is a microshare of provenance of ourselves, products, organisations, projects and processes – which can be earned, exchanged and spent dependent on the degree to which we fulfil the values we ascribe to. In future, the exchange rate between families of coins determines the veracity, passion and demand for those beliefs benchmarked against each other. Afterall, what is the use of holding an ISIS Coin if it’s unaccepted in most retail outlets, but equally minority rights are safeguarded as they can champion their own values and spend it within their own communities irrespective of adoption by others. Evolutionary market forces determine what values survive, what grows, and which values becomes extinct over time. 

The reliance is not on fickle regulations, untrusted judiciary, size of our armies, interpretations, aggression or force, votes, politics, economic strength, or subterfuge. The dependence is entirely on our values, and the belief that positive attributes will rise naturally to the fore and less mainstreamed values will find their natural equilibrium in the grander schema. Bad people can do good, good people can do bad, nevertheless all our values need to be recognised, transacted and tested. We all know the currency of financial value, but what is the currency of non-financial value? At last, we have a means to capture that, and to articulate intangible values as robustly as we have learnt to do with hard assets, in order to build a better world but based on reliable and time served systems.

Olinga Ta'eed

GOLGOTHARISM – THE ART OF PROVENANCE

What is the alchemy of our immediate environment?

Let us begin by examining our technology, such as laptops, mobile phones, gadgets and toys, to unearth how they are so much more than they seem. What are they made of? Essentially comprising of circuit boards and fibre optics, they are made of glass which comes from sand, which comes from grounded rocks. Our laptops and mobiles made by glittering surf crashing against rocks! More than this, their plastic and rubber, amazingly comes from oil, which comes from decaying sea creatures and plant life found on the ocean bed, such as rainbow coral, zebra fish, pink jellyfish, blue whales, white sharks and purple octopus! Actually, far more meaningful than simple deconstruction or demystification, how enthralling we find life to be, when we fully acknowledge the true origins, journey and destination of every nuanced element in the physical world around us.

We strengthen ourselves by eating meat originating from animals, while our vegetables come from vitamins in soil and rain water from fluffy clouds, evaporated from the sea, and our medicine comes from herbs in gardens and jungles! We dance in clothes made of silk, which comes from silk worms, and in cotton, which is from cotton plantations! When we protect ourselves with sportswear made of synthetic polyester, we are literally wearing sea creatures! When our children play with dolls and remote control cars, or ride tricycles and skateboards, all made of plastic and rubber, they are literally playing with tropical fish, red crabs and electric eels! We watch television in social gatherings on furniture made of wood, which originates from trees in forests. We play with gadgets and toys made of metal mined from our Earth, melted by lava, and pushed to the surface by tectonic plates. 

What else in our lives might we examine? Let us, society, ask collectively, what are the origins of our Art, such as the decorations in our homes, work places and recreational places? What comprises the materials of our houses, caravans, trailers, huts, caves, wigwams, cinema, theatre, and stadiums? Who built and made these things? Let us, society, individually and collectively remember and celebrate, these people! These local cider-drinking builders who keep myths, legends and folklore alive, frequenting our pubs! These eccentric fashion designers and romantic architects that flirt and bed one another, exchanging ideas at our cocktail parties! These tragically poetic singers & musicians of bands, who interact with the exotic dancers at our strip bars and melodramatic poets & thespians at our theatres and cabaret clubs. These impoverished artists and artisans who smoke hookahs and drink coffee in our cafes. These tribes in lush jungles and sweat shop workers in hot beautiful countries, who as slaves, are forced to make the goods we consume! 

Yet beautiful Eastern & Asian they - these workers who are the very makers of these awe inspiring geometric patterns manifest in their pottery, sculpture, jewellery and fashion - are never actually associated with the alchemy of their unique craft, by the Western peoples they sell them to. A “made in Taiwan” label on a toy, or a “made in Nepal” label on a rainbow hoody is not good enough, because these simple labels still do not do justice to the hard working crafters who continue to be exploited, forgotten and left for dead, and even the transporters of these goods meet the same fate. Imagine if instead we had publicly available, easily accessible list of all the factories and farms who produced every element comprising the product, along with options to donate to the workers to say “thank you” and/or to fund a charity ensuring their wellbeing? More than this. Imagine if we - metaphorically – “danced” for these workers, making our “thank you” to them a FUN activity to participate in; a bonding exchange in social media, such as Facebook & Twitter. We need all media, such as television, magazines, and newspapers to include in their advertisements, the origin of every ingredient and aspect of their goods, with a holistic website online with an easy to use search bar, so that the public may quickly make a check on anything they consume, with an option to donate and/or support the makers of their chosen product. We need a revolutionary radical change to our current ethos and fast!

I bring you… “Golgotharism!”

Golgotharism, inspired by the Christian prophet Jesus Christ’s ‘Stations Of The Cross’ - which maps out the many stages of his crucifixion on mount Golgotha - is the acknowledgement, examination, and celebration of our internal and external reality as human beings, on the atomic and cellular level, expressing in a obviously perceivable fashion, artistically, musically, theatrically or in literary form, our past, present and future, simultaneously, giving sacred cosmic reverence to all object(s) as they evolve and moves through time-space, whether with pride or horror.

When we embrace Golgotharism, as many Psychedelic artists, such as Alex Grey, we come to place where we fully realise the “illusion of separation”. We all consist of matter moving through time-space, where our bodies are literally made up of physical ingredients attracted and accumulated in world cuisine from all corners of the Earth. Each element being literally near identical to one another in physical make up, despite their differences in geographical origins - and in doing so, recognise our Nationalism as being not from one country, but from one world. As one species we call human, allowing us then to put aside our petty differences to dissolve racism, classism and sexism, instead identifying ourselves as being pure consciousness (electro-magnetic wave form information) manifest in diverse Earthly forms, with identical brains. 

Lamb from New Zealand. Pineapples from Africa. Cheeses from Cornwall. Naans from India. Rice from Persia. Tomatoes from Spain. All of this embodied in your Saturday night Kebab and can of Lilt – something cosmic. 

Golgotharism is about giving reverence to every aspect of what makes up our world; keeping everything sacred, so that we as society knows at any one point, where’s we’ve been, where we are, and we’re going, allowing us to never repeat our mistakes to evolve positively as one peoples. 

Golgotharism teaches us to “Honours Thy Parents” because we all come from our father’s sperm and our mother’s egg, and in revering this path our Earthly being takes, we can as a society, learn to treat elderly people and young children with respect, listening to their opinions with heightened interest, instead of side lining them like we do circus and carnival freaks, such as Torso Boy, Bearded Lady, Dwarves, Disfigured Clown and Siamese Twins. Do we desire our children to look like this? Of course, however, we do not all share the same values. Once we begin to judge what atomic and cellular forms we desire the most, and attempt to protect and revere these subjectively chosen forms, to the point where we’re trying to make more of them. It starts to look very much like Stem Cell Research and Cloning, Genetically-Modified Crops and Eugenics, the latter embraced by the German dictator Hitler and his Nazi soldiers in World War 2, who created the Holocaust in the 1940’s, which was the extermination of Jews on the basis of their blood and physical appearance alone, in favour of creating a totally blond, blue-eyed Aryan race. Perhaps if we saw the true beauty of other countries races and their art forms e.g. song, dance, theatre, instead of our very narrow perspective shaped by Western media, we would desire human diversity over racism. 

Golgotharism not only instantly associates this beautiful environment with our radios, but also encourages us to protect this environment from which it came, protecting wild life. Imagine if we had a list all the factories and farms who produced every element comprising the product, along with options to donate to the workers to say “thank you” and/or to fund a charity ensuring their wellbeing?

Questions raised on Golgotharism include: How can multiple births of object(s) be identified, acknowledge and expressed, when they are seemingly infinite and eternal? Should certain trajectories of evolution thus be prioritized over others, and who or what should govern this, when our subjective tastes are so different from one another? Meta-Modernism, for example, encourages the “coaxing of excess to presence”. When all matter is bound to time, which is in a constant “flux” of evolution, then should the Art intentioned to express it, itself, too embody kinetic movement? Romance and alchemy is after all, by nature, an interactive event, which can sometimes, but not always, be freeze framed.

Tigris Ta’eed  ~ Cyberpunk, Poet & Artist

 

VA - Internet of Value - Olinga Ta'eed

VA - Internet of Value - Maryam Taghiyeva

On the Potentiality of a [Mathematical] Model for Social Value

Haley Beer & Kélig Aujogue

Quantifying and discovering mathematical models has long been part of human understanding and progression. Whether it is applied to scientific, technological or social matters a mathematical model can help us to comprehend, predict, and compare important phenomenon, and their influences, in our environment.

“By curious skill they could number the stars and the sand, and measure the starry heavens, and track the courses of the planets. For with their understanding and wit, which Thou bestowedst on them, they search out these things; and much have they found out; and foretold, many years before… But they knew not the way, Thy Word, by Whom Thou madest these things which they number, and themselves who number, and the sense whereby they perceive what they number, and the understanding, out of which they number; or that of Thy wisdom there is no number.” - Saint Augustine

Typically, the use of mathematical models follows a pattern: it is developed within the sciences to describe natural phenomenon and/or laws and then diffused towards other applied subjects.  For instance, partial differential equations utilized for centuries in physics to describe continuous medium are now applied to understand financial values; as in the Black-Scholes equation being used to predict the price of European options. Similarly, the Fourier Transform, a mathematical tool discovered nearly 200 years ago that projects a continuous timeline of events into a series of frequencies, is now used in signal processing devices (vocal, optical…) around the world.

Justly, the influence of many mathematical models has expanded away from their original applications in sciences and one could legitimately wonder: Can we model and predict social values with such tools? Probably. If we are interested in modelling a social value such as happiness and make the assumption that it reacts as a fluid, we could use the Navier-Stokes equation. The advection in time or the rate of Happiness would then be described as the sum of external forces (e.g., relationships, satisfaction with job, personal resources, opportunities for expression, etc.) and the diffusivity of happiness.  We could then write in terms of mathematical formalism that:

where VHappiness is the value of Happiness at a given position in space and in time, Fexterior corresponds to the external constraints (positive or negative) influencing the happiness and v a “viscous” coefficient of happiness. This last term could thereby be interpreted as some capacity of the happiness holder to share or influence their environment.

However, as much as this model shines a different light on the notion of Happiness and is a good starting point, it is conceivably not fully satisfactory for modelling social values. Natural science models are founded in the belief that phenomenon exist 'out there' and are independent from humans; but, arguably social value such as happiness reside 'inside', or at the very least are interpreted individually interiorly, so somehow motions to be known in a different way.

By using a model to derive a figure for social value, whichever way we choose to define it using present mathematical models, we largely overlook the interior process of coming to know such value (whether that is the process of interpretation of an external social value or the nurturing of personal social value understanding and expression).

Just because I am capable of describing Happiness in a model does not necessarily translate into the generation of more (or less) Happiness for others or myself. That is, mathematical models as they are used today encourage us to ‘know’ something as external to us, to identify things in the physical realm, but not necessarily to understand what they mean for us as individual people, or how to change such things (e.g., how am I affected by knowing the phenomenon Happiness exists and what does it mean for how I conduct myself or my organization?). We may have developed models which help us predict Earthquakes and Solar Flares, but is there anything we can actually do to stop/transform them? No. Though, do we have some sway over our levels of happiness? By all means yes.

Likely for a veracious modelling of social value we will eventually need to come up with new 'models' that stretch our current conceptions of 'coming to know' something. That is, because the point is to lend ontological (or a part of reality) credence that in the past was not considered (at least not very much in institutional and organizational settings), we arguably need new epistemologies (ways of knowing that reality). While the natural science models might bring us a first way to measure for social value, and thereby discuss its potential and usefulness at organizational, institutional, national and international levels, due to its intersubjective nature, we think the way of measuring for social value should itself evolve to enable different kinds of knowing. Why only use models to predict and compare levels of Happiness when there is a seeming opportunity to personally foster, understand, and express it more meaningfully?

Atlas Coelestis – The Copernican System - 1660

In practice also, mathematically such equations as the Happiness one needs boundary conditions to be solved. These conditions are properties at the end of the studied domain that are not well defined in the known reality of social values. What are the limits or boundaries to social values anyway? And should there even be any placed? Besides, can we really limit the movement of social values to an advection/diffusion process? Maybe for some of them but it seems that there are insufficiencies for most social values.

Taking an example such as freedom, we have to admit that even if we could find some ground to justify the advection it would be harder to explain the diffusion. Certainly, freedom is something that is owned by its holder and sometimes can be given by its holder. These points highlight only the tip of the iceberg for the complexity of human relations and modelling social values. Perhaps the measuring rate in the world of social values can be approached through a different formalism such as Network Theory or Thermodynamics. Nonetheless, humans’ capacity to experience, generate, express and share social value is arguably one of the most under appreciated resources in our present use of mathematical models.

In other words, these existing mathematical models might help us bridge the initial gap between this so far much neglected interior realm of our universe and our obsession with objectivity since the Enlightenment, but once we become more comfortable talking about and ‘modelling’ social value, then we bet we can also come up with original ways of knowing, discussing, and/or generating it. However, in the meantime, using a host of mathematical models from the natural sciences to begin exploring how to integrate social value into economic and organizational discourse is helpful as it stimulates interest in and energies towards social value- and this is ultimately a first step towards discovering its potentiality!  

“Spirale” by Michelle Gouin