BUILDBRIEF: February Week 1
Bitcoin Maxxing - Elon Earthbound - Moon Brah to Zero - Spiritual Frontiersmen
Hello, hardy readers, and a belated Happy New Year. On January 3, I was received into the Orthodox Church in America. The time was right for a slight inhale before diving into a fresh year of poasting. An admonition from Bishop Gerasim of Fort Worth (whom I might see at Divine Liturgy in Dallas this Sunday) is making the online rounds, and it reflects and animates all I hope is to follow here at THE BUILD:
The message of the Kingdom has nothing to do with ideology… The culture wars distract and consume the neophyte who is only beginning to learn how to walk the royal path. And what happens is, this young soul abandons the prayer book for a laptop. He pursues blogging in place of prayer, thereby placing himself in great peril. And there is no substitute for what Father Seraphim [Rose] called ‘quiet and humble labors’.
The laptop has been my weapon of choice, and not always choice, lo these many years of our running war of words. Of course, more than a mere culture war, it is a spiritual war being waged today, as in all days. With painful awareness of the foolishness I share with all men, I pray what I do here offer you a taste of the holy wisdom of others you might not come across elsewhere, and a glimpse at how that wisdom shines forth today in all the strangeness and temptation of our online and offline world.
It isn’t easy to “keep being right” about what’s happening around us at its accelerating pace, not for an off-the-shelf pundit or one focused particularly on technology. That’s especially so because the value of continuing to be right in the sense of the word-warring world continues to trend downward. What has “destroying someone with facts and logic” done for you lately?
What is most valuable today is to cling to what has always been correct, spiritually correct, and I hope it is at least some benefit to help track for you the most significant developments in the realm of tech and public life in a way that assists in maintaining or even sharpening that spiritual focus. These powerful tools are built to dominate our lives and to reassert a dominion over them healthy for our souls and bodies. At least some of us might help show a path to recovering and wielding the spiritual authority and discipline needed to do so—beginning within our own hearts.
To that end, I’ll provide a brief commentary every week of each month on notable developments “in the space”. On with the first.
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BITCOIN MAXXING
Perhaps you’ve heard that “Bitcoin ETFs” have (at last) broken out across the financial industry. The normie-media reaction is predictably iffy:
The launch of U.S. exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking bitcoin deepens ties between the volatile world of cryptocurrencies and the traditional financial system, potentially creating unforeseen new risks, some experts say.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this month approved 11 spot bitcoin ETFs from issuers including BlackRock (BLK.N), opens new tab and Invesco/Galaxy Digital, in a watershed moment for a crypto industry dogged by bankruptcies and crime.
Some say! Almost a motto of the United States of America. Those who see Wall Street as a criminal enterprise may laugh at the fearmongering invocation of bankruptcy and law-breaking. The real point, which is no laughing matter, is that Bitcoin is not going away, because its technological fundamentals, workability, and scalability make it the leading nascent world computer.
Every major digital player, foreign and domestic, wants to master, or at least get a pie slice of, this “one feed to rule them all.” Sam Bankman-Fried tried to do it with FTX; Elon Musk wants to do it with X; Wall Street, Washington, the Russians, Chinese, Israelis, the list goes on and on. Someone will “get there first,” and the urgent question facing us today is where that will leave the American people if they are denied their implicit constitutional rights to “keep and bear” foundational computational technology like Bitcoin.
Isn’t it insane, some say, to trust the American people with such power? Politically, the alternative is to destroy what’s left of our founding constitutional regime and replace it with an anti-America, one where America stops at tech’s edge the better for tech’s worshippers to eat the world. But spiritually, yes, it would be insane (or worse) to trust any people with such technological power outside proper and orderly spiritual care. I have suggested before in a few places that the “swarm” body of our incorporeal digital entities can only be ruled in spiritual authority by a “governing” body that incorporates the visible and invisible worlds, the human and the divine. The Body of Christ, as the Church is called, faces a rendezvous with destiny.
But don’t think it’s as easy as “legislating morality”. Trying to do an end run around the slow and painstaking purification of the heart by speedrunning some ostensible purification of the law of the state will only end in tears. We can expect that the tech worshippers, the money worshippers, and the “woke” idolaters of justice will all ratchet up their plans to attempt exactly that. Now is the time to be ready for that—to protect one another and offer the true alternative.
ELON EARTHBOUND
Speaking of Elon:
A court in Delaware has ruled to rescind Elon Musk’s $55 BILLION pay package that was approved by shareholders in 2018. As of 2024, Elon Musk has reached the necessary goals to be awarded the amount by hitting numerous targets laid out by the plan. As of this date, a very large majority of the package has yet to be paid out…
The man himself has ruefully suggested no one incorporate in Delaware. One might think the reaction on X would center around the impact of this ruling on Musk’s ambitions to create one app for all things on Earth. But at least so far, it seems to center on that other, off-planet ambition of his:
If there were any singular event that could start a cascade of events that keeps humanity locked on planet Earth, it’d probably be something like this with the potential to cause a slow death.
Locked? We’re sold Mars as a new absolute in amaaaaazing destinies, but beneath the showmanship is a fearful hatred of having to reckon fully with our lot on Earth. When every distraction and strategem of hiding from God has proven barren and fruitless, Mars looms in the passions and dreams as a “saving” escape—into a new world, a new paradise, a new “project”, busy work at the scale of the pagan gods. If anyone has made Earth a prison, it is ourselves. Our time in the flesh on Earth is short; our time thereafter immeasurably long, beginning at a moment always sooner than we think. Mars is no escape for we creatures decidedly not locked on Earth.
MOON BRAH TO ZERO
The sad man who hopes to resolve his midlife crisis by becoming undead has (inevitably) tried to “spiritualize” his biohacking efforts at eternal youth—which, as it so often does in America, means marketing, and lots of it:
Bryan Johnson proposes Gen Zero: a post-human, blank-state belief and value system [video]
One can’t substitute “to the moon!” for “to Mars!” and expect a different result. So far, the reactions on X have been broadly negative. But you can be assured it will take more than dismissive remarks to stop Johnson’s delusional quest from finding more, and still more deadly, recruits. I can’t help but think of ancient Egypt, with its state death cult of pseudoscientific priests worshipping false gods. For a few years, I’ve aired the question of whether that Egypt counts, too, as “the West”…
SPIRITUAL FRONTIERSMEN
I’ll have more, much more, on this theme this year. As Texas and its border heat up, let’s flag the question of where to find our spiritual frontiersmen with two X posts. First from Mr. “Bitcoin Monasteries” himself:
Governance is the administration of Power. Power is not derived from the seat of the philosopher but from the crucible of the frontier. Government is always adjudicated by competition on the frontier.
Second, your humble correspondent:
Don’t allow yourself to be deceived. Is your frontier just a simulation?
Stay watchful, friends!