I'm feeling pretty fortunate, a couple years back I would have never guessed that I would be in this situation. Through hard work and determination, and a little bit of white privilege, and privilege from being born into an industrialized country. I have just as much chance as anyone else does in the World on steemit (well those on the internet that have access). I read this quote on the "Busy" site yesterday.
Ending the remittance ripoff
The largest flow of funds into the developing world is not foreign aid but remittance money repatriated to poor countries from their families living abroad. Using Western Union, Moneygram and other centralized services, the process takes time, patience and cost from 5 to 25% commission. Selling goods or services using eBay, Paypal, takes 1 to 10% commission. Busy goal is to end the remittance ripoff providing a digital wallet that allows everyone to send/receive digital money with no transaction fee.
When countries set the price of their currency over others, disproportion of wealth, war, privilege and gluttony have become the Pinnacles of success in society. While the vast majority rarely do anything, if anything at all, to contribute to society as a whole. If the above quote tells us anything it is that the balance of power can shift with a few clicks of the mouse. The technology is here, it just amounts to how we are going to use it. Can Humanity finally own the printing press, can we write history not from who owns the history books or the victors in war, but as data on blockchain. Once and for all having accurate recording of the times of our life and a fair interpretation of History.
Would freedom be to set up 7 billion accounts, and everyone started at 100 on a new Block Chain that encompassed all. I may be a dreamer but there's no Utopia. But I would sooner see a whale war thought with flags over bombs any day and I don't want to trade this tyranny for a new tyranny. But I feel as if we're one step closer. The next quote is from the steemit Road Map released yesterday.
Goals
Our long-term goal remains the same: to provide the best platform for censorship-resistant
publishing and store of value to the widest user base possible, in an effort to increase human
freedom and accelerate the spread of access to basic rights for all people on Earth.
I do like a lot of what I found in the road map, I want to thank @ned, @dan and the ever growing steemit team for all there hard work. At times I feel I wish I could help more with technical sides of this social experiment. I know I must support the people that are making this technology possible, I will do it with a Up-vote which is likely the closest thing to a actual vote Society has ever given me. I will use this privilege..............
Many in the western world live in privilege have found themselves in a place where they can't contribute to making Society better, it's a hopeless feeling, I have felt it. When life is full of drudgery and not creativity. When your job forces you to hinder and not help. When many are too far consumed, and too far gone. When will we have this reminder of self moment. How do we change from this current world destruction map? Will people in the first world be forced to contribute something productive?
Conclusion
If the world's wealth was distributed to those who contributed vs the 1%. I have to ask myself what would my contribution be? I often wonder about the people around me in the country that I live in, what would their contribution be? I have hoped for too long that people would wake up and would want to contribute in the western world. Like living in some type of dream world where in life you never get to see the best of people's Talents. Instead they would tell you about their job. And I would be thinking about the senseless drudgery of it all. The whole time knowing the technology exists.
People always say you're an artist, you're so lucky that you have something that you can do. I always ask myself is what I do contributing anything. I've been thinking of late about my "Reminder of Self" sculpture and wanted to share with you something that I've never shared before. It's a time-lapse video of the construction of the "reminder of self" sculpture. I built this piece back in 2009, but I just pieced this video of the construction phase. (21 Seconds)
Here is a video I made of these images 7 years ago and just uploaded today.
steemit has been giving me a lot of reminders of self moments, moving forward I have to decide how I can best contribute to society and get those around me on that path too.
I have a number of projects I want to do in the first half of this year. And on that list are a large steemit sculpture as well as a large sculpture of the dollar sign. Going to be a lot of work but with your help I think I can do it.
Stop by for a follow-up to see my progression.
@dylanhobalart
18/01/2017 10:45 Mountain Time
This posts is 100% power up for my open source renewable energy machine.
Thanks for stopping by, I likely won't be posting about this Sculpture again anytime soon. I think I am starting to remember! Might post what I have left to share of the sculpture in the comments, if this post is well received.
Steemit continues to take me out of my element, and I am enjoying the journey, but it's better together.