Language matters.

What language are we deploying, as a collective, during this time of accelerated societal collapse and the deterioration of everything we know and hold dear? Who are young people turning to as thought leaders and seeking guidance from as they step into their own adulthood and visions of power?

Us & Them. Black & White. Blue, Red & Gray. Tribes. The world is not binary. Power placed into binary language containers is dangerous.

As a Conscious Leader in this ecosystem, it is my duty to raise alarm bells and blow whistles. No matter the consequences-- of which I am living through right now. With the advent of abundant time, I’ve been able to take a long hard look at many aspects of the Ethereum ecosystem to see where and if I fit. And what I see is both beautiful and terrifying.

Builders are creating the future we all envision and are hoping will manifest. The Base community is showing us how this is done in real time. DevRels are traveling the world empowering onchain devs to use our tools to create viable solutions to a whole host of problems that will make our world better. One day. Soon. Almost nothing gives me hope beyond this right now.

But there are elements in our ecosystem who are playing with language and political theories they have no fucking business touching with the massive platforms they harness to move people toward their vision of collective action. I am utterly appalled at what happened in the 11 months I was too fucking busy to pay close attention and now I’m standing in the midst of an absolute tinder box and only a handful of people are seeing the danger that is pulsing just under the surface.

We are in a vacuum of conscious leadership right now in certain pockets of our broader crypto ecosystem. The fact that I am having to wade through extremist language with Fascist overtones from top “thought leaders” in crypto is fucking stunning to me. Leave your bubbles of “yes men,” crack a fucking history book and look long and hard at the shit you’re saying. Power is dangerous and those who idolize it and seek it without respect or regard for the collective are dancing with demagoguery– to what ends I can only imagine.

Read what people publish in public forums, read the comments and follow the threads of ignorance regurgitating complex political and societal theories into simplistic binary interpretations in isolation of context, history or theory. Those threads quickly devolve into hatred, racist tropes and violent innuendos towards marginalized populations.

These men playing with power in this way need to check themselves. The utter lack of empathy for someone they classify as “other” or understanding of the foundational elements of propaganda are stunning.

I’ve studied language in the context of media, propaganda and community for almost 2 decades now and what I’m seeing in our crypto social networks now is triggering red flags all over the place. I never thought my decades of study and documentation of post conflict communities would need to be deployed for my technical career, but here we are.

I am watching people whose theories around blockchain and financialization I once respected openly embrace the techniques of a demagogue to control the dialogue of a vulnerable population of young men desperate for leadership , visions of success to mirror and rites of passage into adulthood. Watching grievance narratives being deployed to create tribalism and separatism leads to demagoguery-- straight up facts.

Watching young men then embrace this vision of success and power, trying to emulate the behavior and create their own platforms of power to build communities is also terrifying. No matter how pure the intention, history has shown us that those who seek power for power’s sake will eventually turn toxic and those in their charge will suffer the consequences.

Leadership MATTERS. Language MATTERS. The pursuit of power MATTERS. All of this fucking MATTERS.

The blockchain is a mirror. Period. This bull run is showing just what we’ve built and reflecting our humanity back to us without filters. We can “choose rich” or “choose gray tribes” or we can fucking work as an equitable collective to solve problems and support one another with kindness and empathy.

Life is not black and white. Political science is not a play thing and it is not binary. Leave your bubbles, visit a community gathering place IRL and speak to humans who hold different opinions. Listen deeply without judgment and learn to compromise.

As someone who has documented the outcomes of the absolute worst acts humans can wage upon one another, I am telling you that this game you’re playing does not end well. There’s a human cost at the end of your demagoguery and the devastation that it wields lasts for generations.

Choose wisely.

Here’s a little AI Rabbit Hole so you can begin to further explore some of the theories I alluded to here in this essay. This AI search was done several weeks after this was written to support a aimilar essay published on my Paragraph: @cstreet

The cover image was from my coverage of the Family Separation protests in 2018 in Washington, D.C. Which, ironically, brought out a few lone Pro-Lifers.