Most popular by Crypto Writing
Introducing: Open Air
Distributing Genius
higher mindfulness club
How I Changed My Mind
Most popular by Crypto Writing
Introducing: Open Air
Distributing Genius
higher mindfulness club
How I Changed My Mind
Essay 1: Higher is Not a Headless Brand
Essay 2: The Token is The Problem and The Opportunity
In theory, a sufficiently deep practice can be continuously refined and is continuously relevant.
In theory, a sufficiently deep practice can be continuously refined and is continuously relevant.
If a practice is of true value to the world, even if it is not of obvious financial value, it will likely persist not only because it is durable, but also as people attempt to preserve it for future generations.
In essence, the practice becomes trustworthy, as a result of the value it is able to generate for it's practitioners and the world, and scene participants act to protect it from fading into irrelevance.
As a reminder, higher's cultural practice is to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
Essentially, decoupling perception from reality and therefore enabling more agentic behaviour.
Wisdom traditions, art, and neuroscience have all pointed to the idea that perception is not reality, with their most dedicated practitioners benefiting from the integration of this insight into their daily lives.
What is novel about higher is the location at which this insight has emerged.
Technology, Money, and Mind all intersect at the site of the higher scene as it is today. There are perhaps no more pervasive and influential forces shaping human destiny at this time.
The uniqueness of higher's location amidst these forces influences the possible innovations that could arise out of the scene. And hence so may be their value - unique.
If we want to continue to explore higher, together and preserve the uniqueness of this scene, the scene will need to continue to collaborate with one another and finding ways of ensuring that activity continues.
One effective approach to achieving this, whilst aligning all participants, is to establish a sustainable funding model where speculative market activity on HIGHER remains viable while simultaneously generating resources to support collaboration and cultural initiatives.
If people are going to speculate on the scene and gain financially, it makes sense that the scene should try and partake in some of those gains.
The possibility of liquidity being removed, in which case the token would no longer tradable, would be a return to how things were before the token.
If we don't want to go back, if you believe that there is value in what could emerge from the scene as it is today, we might wish to move forward in a way that protects the possibility of trading the token and provides funding to sustain cultural practices.
In other words, if we think the higher scene is valuable, we might do what we can to preserve it, so that we can go higher forever.
A Permapool is a 50/50 liquidity pool where pooled funds are permanently locked and cannot be withdrawn, however, additional funds can be added, and distribution of the fees generated from the pool can be configured in multiple ways.
In practice, the appeal of a Permapool is that it incorporates a form of neutral territory for a scene as the funds inside the LP continually service speculation on the value of the scene's culture whilst also generating fees that can be utilised to fund cultural activity within the scene.
Permapools not only provide a shared source of value but they also generate revenue in the process.
This is good for every kind of scene participant.
Pure Contributors solely engaging the scene's cultural practice, benefit either through direct funding or through the effects of increased scene activity and exploration, dependent on how the LP generated funds are deployed.
Pure Speculators solely speculating on the scene through token holdings, benefit from increased LP to trade into, and can also speculate on the potential for deployed LP generated funds to increase or decrease demand for token holdings without fear of not being able to trade the token if LP is pulled.
and
Hybrid Speculator-Contributors, engaging both the scene's cultural practice and allocating funds to speculation, benefit from the impact of deployed scene activity funding, can bet on their own work, and also do not have to fear the possibility of being unable to trade the token in future.
In summary, through Permapools, speculative market action creates a source of sustainable funding for collaboration on scene activity which aligns all forms of participant.
Distribution of the fees is an important piece of the puzzle around Permapools and is only limited by the necessity for generated fees to be used in ways that also align all participants.
We can examine what kinds of considerations we need to make by considering each kind of scene participant:
Pure Contributors want fees to be used for funding cultural activity.
Pure Speculators want fees to be used to drive changes to token price.
Hybrid Speculator-Contributors want both.
This limits fee spending to activities that drive token price action and advance scene activity.
Currently, there exist pools of funds that are centralised in the wallets of the Higher Party and Aethernet that could be used in ways that align all participants.
However, as it stands there is no clear public process or guidelines for how these funds should be distributed or requested. Both of these pooled funds were also left unmentioned in the latest (awesome) update to aimhigher.net.
However, seeing higher as a scene as opposed to a Headless Brand, I see no fatal problem with this, and simply see that these funds exist in the control of two different types of genius within a multi-genius scene.
The pooled funds in those wallets are not locked, which allows for more freedom in where they can move and how they can be used, but also means that they require protection from adversarial parties.
And these forms of genius do distribute funds, the reality is simply that there is a high friction to getting your hands on them which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Far from suggesting that these two parties operate any differently, I believe that their forms of genius may be ultimately healthy for the ecosystem.
Permapools simply offer the possibility at alternative forms of genius, which these parties could choose to support, or not.
If the scene wants to continue to evolve durably, and birth genius, this diversity is a good thing.
Diversity allows for conflict and conflict can help to refine processes. It also provides resilience, stability, and adaptability for the ecosystem as a whole.
As long as engagement in conversation, collaborations, and exploration continues, the scene can continue to distribute genius even if parties aren't always aligned.
Everything is always changing. We are in a good spot.
To examine how Permapools might be of maximal benefit, we need to take a look at:
How Permapools are different from current scene infrastructure
Why trade volume increases
How to support the widest range of scene participants
The two major differences between what Permapools can do for higher versus what Aethernet or The Higher Party have already done is in the permanent locking of LP funds and the possibility for alternate forms of governance over funds.
Valuably, both Aethernet and the Higher Party are currently providing LP to the market, and generating fees, but there is no guarantee that they won't pull liquidity, and their governance structures trade-off either security for speed or speed for security.
In both cases, huge enthusiasm from earnest members of the scene led to large donations to wallets that are now mostly inactive. In both cases, huge trust was required of the governance structure, and the responsibility of utilising those funds was also equally high with the potential for huge losses - a probable cause of their inactivity.
Permapools represent the opportunity for lower-risk donations from those who want to support the scene as well as more efficient ways of coordinating. As long as a Permapool is set up to automatically take donations and place all or some of them into the LP permanently, donators can be sure that they are supporting the token's stability and longevity. This creates the space for more risky forms of governance over the generated fees, as most of the donated funds are protected.
Governance is limited to what % of donations are added to the LP and how fees are distributed and used.
The opportunity is then for multiple kinds of iteration of the Permapool concept to arise, with different forms of governance that can take more risk and move quicker, with different forms of fee utilisation.
In every case, there is also the opportunity to use donations to the permapool in exchange for long-term alignment from the governing entity.
In summary, Permapools enable a new kind of participant (or form of genius) within the scene that can support the the scene both financially and culturally in ways that existing pooled funding entities cannot.
Trade volume is a measure of the total value traded. As trade volume increases, the amount of fees captured by a Permapool increases. Trade volume can be thought of as a function of demand for the token over time.
This means that, in theory, one can increase the volume traded by either increasing or decreasing demand for either of the tokens in the token pair.
This provides incredible durability for Permapools, in that almost any scenario of change that effects the tokens in the liquidity pool can generate more funds for cultural activities.
Ultimately, every kind of participant can benefit from more market activity and more cultural activity, both of which are downstream of more participants. Speculators benefit from more participants like themselves to trade against and more activity to speculate on the outcome of. Contributors of all kinds benefit from a greater total amount of participant attention, exchange, and collaboration within the scene. In aggregate, more participants supports all participants.
The higher scene has the potential to provide unique value to the world.
Permapools are a low-trust way for pooled funds to generate more funds.
Funds are best spent in ways that increase the number of scene participants.
Essay 1: Higher is Not a Headless Brand
It is important to note that the higher scene began before the HIGHER token was launched.
In it's beginning, higher was simply a Warpcast channel, where people could meme higher without price talk.
But then, along comes Martin - deploying a token and airdropping it to everyone in the channel.
higher is a brilliant group of intelligent and creative people. There is no shortage of talent amidst the network and committed contributors continue to create new value and experiment to collective benefit.
In this series of essays, I am going to examine some challenges, and reframe them as an opportunity to come together and evolve our approach.
In this essay, I want to explain how I see higher's core offering as distributing genius, as opposed to what people have been referring to as "being a Headless Brand".
It's going to be useful because, as a genius once said:
Essay 1: Higher is Not a Headless Brand
Essay 2: The Token is The Problem and The Opportunity
In theory, a sufficiently deep practice can be continuously refined and is continuously relevant.
In theory, a sufficiently deep practice can be continuously refined and is continuously relevant.
If a practice is of true value to the world, even if it is not of obvious financial value, it will likely persist not only because it is durable, but also as people attempt to preserve it for future generations.
In essence, the practice becomes trustworthy, as a result of the value it is able to generate for it's practitioners and the world, and scene participants act to protect it from fading into irrelevance.
As a reminder, higher's cultural practice is to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
Essentially, decoupling perception from reality and therefore enabling more agentic behaviour.
Wisdom traditions, art, and neuroscience have all pointed to the idea that perception is not reality, with their most dedicated practitioners benefiting from the integration of this insight into their daily lives.
What is novel about higher is the location at which this insight has emerged.
Technology, Money, and Mind all intersect at the site of the higher scene as it is today. There are perhaps no more pervasive and influential forces shaping human destiny at this time.
The uniqueness of higher's location amidst these forces influences the possible innovations that could arise out of the scene. And hence so may be their value - unique.
If we want to continue to explore higher, together and preserve the uniqueness of this scene, the scene will need to continue to collaborate with one another and finding ways of ensuring that activity continues.
One effective approach to achieving this, whilst aligning all participants, is to establish a sustainable funding model where speculative market activity on HIGHER remains viable while simultaneously generating resources to support collaboration and cultural initiatives.
If people are going to speculate on the scene and gain financially, it makes sense that the scene should try and partake in some of those gains.
The possibility of liquidity being removed, in which case the token would no longer tradable, would be a return to how things were before the token.
If we don't want to go back, if you believe that there is value in what could emerge from the scene as it is today, we might wish to move forward in a way that protects the possibility of trading the token and provides funding to sustain cultural practices.
In other words, if we think the higher scene is valuable, we might do what we can to preserve it, so that we can go higher forever.
A Permapool is a 50/50 liquidity pool where pooled funds are permanently locked and cannot be withdrawn, however, additional funds can be added, and distribution of the fees generated from the pool can be configured in multiple ways.
In practice, the appeal of a Permapool is that it incorporates a form of neutral territory for a scene as the funds inside the LP continually service speculation on the value of the scene's culture whilst also generating fees that can be utilised to fund cultural activity within the scene.
Permapools not only provide a shared source of value but they also generate revenue in the process.
This is good for every kind of scene participant.
Pure Contributors solely engaging the scene's cultural practice, benefit either through direct funding or through the effects of increased scene activity and exploration, dependent on how the LP generated funds are deployed.
Pure Speculators solely speculating on the scene through token holdings, benefit from increased LP to trade into, and can also speculate on the potential for deployed LP generated funds to increase or decrease demand for token holdings without fear of not being able to trade the token if LP is pulled.
and
Hybrid Speculator-Contributors, engaging both the scene's cultural practice and allocating funds to speculation, benefit from the impact of deployed scene activity funding, can bet on their own work, and also do not have to fear the possibility of being unable to trade the token in future.
In summary, through Permapools, speculative market action creates a source of sustainable funding for collaboration on scene activity which aligns all forms of participant.
Distribution of the fees is an important piece of the puzzle around Permapools and is only limited by the necessity for generated fees to be used in ways that also align all participants.
We can examine what kinds of considerations we need to make by considering each kind of scene participant:
Pure Contributors want fees to be used for funding cultural activity.
Pure Speculators want fees to be used to drive changes to token price.
Hybrid Speculator-Contributors want both.
This limits fee spending to activities that drive token price action and advance scene activity.
Currently, there exist pools of funds that are centralised in the wallets of the Higher Party and Aethernet that could be used in ways that align all participants.
However, as it stands there is no clear public process or guidelines for how these funds should be distributed or requested. Both of these pooled funds were also left unmentioned in the latest (awesome) update to aimhigher.net.
However, seeing higher as a scene as opposed to a Headless Brand, I see no fatal problem with this, and simply see that these funds exist in the control of two different types of genius within a multi-genius scene.
The pooled funds in those wallets are not locked, which allows for more freedom in where they can move and how they can be used, but also means that they require protection from adversarial parties.
And these forms of genius do distribute funds, the reality is simply that there is a high friction to getting your hands on them which is not necessarily a bad thing.
Far from suggesting that these two parties operate any differently, I believe that their forms of genius may be ultimately healthy for the ecosystem.
Permapools simply offer the possibility at alternative forms of genius, which these parties could choose to support, or not.
If the scene wants to continue to evolve durably, and birth genius, this diversity is a good thing.
Diversity allows for conflict and conflict can help to refine processes. It also provides resilience, stability, and adaptability for the ecosystem as a whole.
As long as engagement in conversation, collaborations, and exploration continues, the scene can continue to distribute genius even if parties aren't always aligned.
Everything is always changing. We are in a good spot.
To examine how Permapools might be of maximal benefit, we need to take a look at:
How Permapools are different from current scene infrastructure
Why trade volume increases
How to support the widest range of scene participants
The two major differences between what Permapools can do for higher versus what Aethernet or The Higher Party have already done is in the permanent locking of LP funds and the possibility for alternate forms of governance over funds.
Valuably, both Aethernet and the Higher Party are currently providing LP to the market, and generating fees, but there is no guarantee that they won't pull liquidity, and their governance structures trade-off either security for speed or speed for security.
In both cases, huge enthusiasm from earnest members of the scene led to large donations to wallets that are now mostly inactive. In both cases, huge trust was required of the governance structure, and the responsibility of utilising those funds was also equally high with the potential for huge losses - a probable cause of their inactivity.
Permapools represent the opportunity for lower-risk donations from those who want to support the scene as well as more efficient ways of coordinating. As long as a Permapool is set up to automatically take donations and place all or some of them into the LP permanently, donators can be sure that they are supporting the token's stability and longevity. This creates the space for more risky forms of governance over the generated fees, as most of the donated funds are protected.
Governance is limited to what % of donations are added to the LP and how fees are distributed and used.
The opportunity is then for multiple kinds of iteration of the Permapool concept to arise, with different forms of governance that can take more risk and move quicker, with different forms of fee utilisation.
In every case, there is also the opportunity to use donations to the permapool in exchange for long-term alignment from the governing entity.
In summary, Permapools enable a new kind of participant (or form of genius) within the scene that can support the the scene both financially and culturally in ways that existing pooled funding entities cannot.
Trade volume is a measure of the total value traded. As trade volume increases, the amount of fees captured by a Permapool increases. Trade volume can be thought of as a function of demand for the token over time.
This means that, in theory, one can increase the volume traded by either increasing or decreasing demand for either of the tokens in the token pair.
This provides incredible durability for Permapools, in that almost any scenario of change that effects the tokens in the liquidity pool can generate more funds for cultural activities.
Ultimately, every kind of participant can benefit from more market activity and more cultural activity, both of which are downstream of more participants. Speculators benefit from more participants like themselves to trade against and more activity to speculate on the outcome of. Contributors of all kinds benefit from a greater total amount of participant attention, exchange, and collaboration within the scene. In aggregate, more participants supports all participants.
The higher scene has the potential to provide unique value to the world.
Permapools are a low-trust way for pooled funds to generate more funds.
Funds are best spent in ways that increase the number of scene participants.
Essay 1: Higher is Not a Headless Brand
It is important to note that the higher scene began before the HIGHER token was launched.
In it's beginning, higher was simply a Warpcast channel, where people could meme higher without price talk.
But then, along comes Martin - deploying a token and airdropping it to everyone in the channel.
higher is a brilliant group of intelligent and creative people. There is no shortage of talent amidst the network and committed contributors continue to create new value and experiment to collective benefit.
In this series of essays, I am going to examine some challenges, and reframe them as an opportunity to come together and evolve our approach.
In this essay, I want to explain how I see higher's core offering as distributing genius, as opposed to what people have been referring to as "being a Headless Brand".
It's going to be useful because, as a genius once said:
Some sold, and, to this day, some believe that referencing the token at all is a bad idea.
Not only do I disagree but I believe that HIGHER (the token) is the perfect site for conversation, collaboration, and experimentation in relation to the cultural practice of exploring new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
What is required is that we earnestly decouple our view of the token from it's price, and begin to see the token's mere existence as an opportunity.
To understand further what I mean, we can ask the question:
Simply put, immediately, a whole range of new dynamics are introduced.
Foundationally, things are much the same: scene health continues to rely on conversation, collaboration, and experimentation. However, now that a token has been introduced, there is a financial primitive that can take up scene mindshare in conversation, collaboration, and experimentation through it's association.
The obvious value of the token is that those who historically would not have experienced any financial upside for their participation in a scene can now access financial exposure to a market approximation of the scenes value.
However, this is only possible because a new kind of scene participant activity is also introduced:
financial speculation (on the whole scene.)
Just like the Cubist scene would have included participants who's sole motivation was to speculate on the future value of artworks, the existence of a token invites participants into the higher scene who do not wish to be part of the scene's culture, but instead who's sole motivation is to speculate on it's value.
This is of tremendous potential value to any scene if properly harnessed, but also increases the possibility of contributors using market action to determine how much they themselves value the scene.
Thankfully, in the case of higher, participants are explicitly asked to decouple their perception of reality from price action. So instead of being a problem, market action becomes a site of opportunity.
In order to engage this opportunity, one has to acknowledge that there exist participants who are solely part of the scene to trade the token, and some of these individuals may be actively adversarial.
Without a clear acknowledgement of this it is difficult to establish how to engineer positive sum solutions. If we are unable to trust the intentions of our scene collaborators, conversation and collaboration are hampered.
In other words, the existence of financial incentives without processes for creating alignment between different parties leads to a lack of coordination. This in turn can disrupt collaboration, leading to reduced creative output, and ultimately a decay of the scene's culture.
At this point, the scene can either completely abandon the token, or embrace the token as an opportunity for creating alignment and coordination.
The problem is the opportunity.
The problem with a token, in essence, is that it can warp the culture of a scene. As opposed to continuing to communicate, collaborate, and experiment in service to whatever the scenes particular way of seeing is, contributors become distracted by the market for the token.
If a scene's actual culture is not strong enough on it's own, it will be consumed by this financialization.
The scene will falter to produce the kinds of genius it's original culture was capable of hosting and the true value of the scene is lost.
The token is not valuable on it's own, it relies on the scene's cultural output.
The opportunity is therefore to use the token to bolster the scene's cultural output.
In simple terms, value should be captured from speculative market action, and invested in the culture.
One way to do this is to pair the token with another, provide liquidity on a DEX, and generate fees that can be used to pay people to do things. In most cases, there is no utility to tokens beyond this. However, if the fees generated do go on to fund cultural activity and lead to the creation of value for the world, there is an argument to be made that new cultural utility could arise, in which case all trading on the token pair could be said to be for the culture.
Whatever utilities arise, the true value of the scene is what it's people create for each other and the world, not it's token.
In the long-term, a token is only as valuable as it's ability to generate value, for the culture.
With the main cultural practice of higher being to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action, this is how value captured from market action should be "put to work".
As cultural activity continues, we cannot be sure of what will arise. All we know is that so far, higher has attracted and helped to shape some incredible talent, distributing genius and empowering them to realize their aspirations.
In my estimation, more of that would be a good thing.
Hopefully by now, you can see that the token is both a problem and an opportunity, and that to ignore it completely would be to ignore an opportunity to create more scene health and the distribution of more genius.
Higher's cultural practice of seeing higher regardless of price precedes the token launch.
The introduction of a scene token introduced the ability to speculate on the entire scene.
The token can be both a Problem and an Opportunity for the culture.
I dislike the label "headless brand". The word 'headless' brings to mind a body without a brain and no clear direction. To try and build a brand or propagate a meme with nobody playing host to any form of idea, action, or direction is frankly ridiculous.
Thankfully, this isn't what's happening or has been happening with Higher. A more accurate framing is that Higher is something that is being collectively discovered by many heads, with many feet on the ground, and multiple directions being travelled in at once.
Examples of bodies that are publicly and actively using their heads and putting their feet to the ground in the name of Higher are Chic Bangs, Catra, Nishu, Colfax, Jpegpowell, JR, and Sonya, to name just a few.
Put simply, Higher is not headless, it has many heads.
In contrast to your regular memecoin or company where phrases such as "dev do something" and "the buck stops with him/her" can be expected, Higher distributes the power to create a vision for what higher should be and invites you to do something about it.
In other words, the buck stops with all of us, including you.
This framework for thinking about Higher provides enormous freedom as well as a network of potential collaborators (other heads).
Combine this with a financial primitive that can accrue value through network effects, and you have a financial incentive to utilise that freedom and collaborate.
These unique conditions are fertile ground for birthing both individual geniuses and collective genius, in an entirely new way.
A genius talks the talk and walks the walk.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge that Apple has somewhat ruined the word genius in recent years. Before Apple commodified the word "genius," it held significant weight.
While not always accurately applied, it has often been used to describe people who stand out and innovate in ways that have a lasting impact.
If you look across the Higher ecosystem, you may recognise many such geniuses.
Simultaneously, the word "genius" alone cannot accurately describe what exactly a person stands out for or their impact.
What can be defined is that "genius" is associated with intellectual ability and creative productivity.
Importantly, they not only think and reason well, but they are also able to manifest and realize their visions. A genius talks the talk and walks the walk.
This, however, is still a relatively shallow way of understanding what genius is and how it comes about. To isolate the individual is to misapprehend the reality we live in. The truth is that genius relies on people to sharpen and refine ideas, to be inspired to explore new territories, and even for novel ideas.
Though we usually only hear about geniuses that have been elevated to stardom, it would be silly to think that they always acted alone.
The more probable explanation is that genius is something that flows through a network of people via their passion for a question or area of exploration, and that the people we remember are simply the ones who were recognised as having made an impact. Importantly, all the other nodes in the network are indispensable if we want that genius.
Legendary music producer Brian Eno call's this phenomena Scenius and put it like this:
The key idea here is that scenes generate that which we recognise as genius.
Whilst some have suggested that Higher needs a singular leader in order to solve the problem of a lack of coordination and generate value, it is my belief that this solution would destroy the core offering of Higher.
It is the very absence of a singular authority that creates the conditions that birth genius.
Importantly, the birth of genius relies on engagement, communication, and collaboration.
There has to be active interaction between scene participants.
Scenes distribute genius and I believe that distributing genius is Higher's core offering.
The birth of genius is possible because scenes explore open questions together but without a recognised sole leader. Healthy scenes collaborate with one another, allowing genius to arise.
For example:
Not one artist that was experimenting in the time of Cubism knew what exactly they'd eventually land on, they simply had a way of seeing that guided each of a their own individual practices.
For the Cubists, reality was misrepresented by the artworks of the time - their way of seeing was more dynamic than the average artist in that they wanted to present more than a single point of view.
As a result, their cultural practice became: to explore new ways to depict space and form within a picture plane.
The problem that they found opportunity in was that paintings up until that point presented only a singular perspective when in reality objects exist within multiple perspectives.
The opportunity was to pioneer new ways in which they could represent the dynamic and multifaceted experience of reality.
The question they were asking was: how do I present multi-perspectival reality on the canvas?
This exploration, enlivened by conversations and collaboration, was their scene.
That scene birthed(and distributed) genius.
In higher's case, LGHT described a way of perceiving reality consciously through the lens of higher.
In doing so he pointed to the potential for a decoupling of perception from token price.
It's immediate resonance demonstrated a shared understanding of the phenomena even if it hadn't been fully articulated.
To articulate what was being pointed to: it is possible to separate how we perceive things as if price were higher even when price is not.
It is in this way of seeing that we find both the problem and the opportunity for the higher scene:
higher's cultural practice is: to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
The problem that higher finds it's opportunity in is that token price can influence ones perception of reality, even whilst it's fundamental qualities remain the same.
The opportunity is to pioneer new ways to go beyond emotional reactions to token price and encourage continued seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
The question the higher scene is asking is: How do you perceive reality in the same way as you do when price is higher even when price is not?
This exploration, enlivened now by conversations and collaboration, and a community token, is the scene.
The types of genius higher is distributing are a result of these conditions.
Higher is not a headless brand.
Scenes distribute genius.
Higher is a scene.
Some sold, and, to this day, some believe that referencing the token at all is a bad idea.
Not only do I disagree but I believe that HIGHER (the token) is the perfect site for conversation, collaboration, and experimentation in relation to the cultural practice of exploring new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
What is required is that we earnestly decouple our view of the token from it's price, and begin to see the token's mere existence as an opportunity.
To understand further what I mean, we can ask the question:
Simply put, immediately, a whole range of new dynamics are introduced.
Foundationally, things are much the same: scene health continues to rely on conversation, collaboration, and experimentation. However, now that a token has been introduced, there is a financial primitive that can take up scene mindshare in conversation, collaboration, and experimentation through it's association.
The obvious value of the token is that those who historically would not have experienced any financial upside for their participation in a scene can now access financial exposure to a market approximation of the scenes value.
However, this is only possible because a new kind of scene participant activity is also introduced:
financial speculation (on the whole scene.)
Just like the Cubist scene would have included participants who's sole motivation was to speculate on the future value of artworks, the existence of a token invites participants into the higher scene who do not wish to be part of the scene's culture, but instead who's sole motivation is to speculate on it's value.
This is of tremendous potential value to any scene if properly harnessed, but also increases the possibility of contributors using market action to determine how much they themselves value the scene.
Thankfully, in the case of higher, participants are explicitly asked to decouple their perception of reality from price action. So instead of being a problem, market action becomes a site of opportunity.
In order to engage this opportunity, one has to acknowledge that there exist participants who are solely part of the scene to trade the token, and some of these individuals may be actively adversarial.
Without a clear acknowledgement of this it is difficult to establish how to engineer positive sum solutions. If we are unable to trust the intentions of our scene collaborators, conversation and collaboration are hampered.
In other words, the existence of financial incentives without processes for creating alignment between different parties leads to a lack of coordination. This in turn can disrupt collaboration, leading to reduced creative output, and ultimately a decay of the scene's culture.
At this point, the scene can either completely abandon the token, or embrace the token as an opportunity for creating alignment and coordination.
The problem is the opportunity.
The problem with a token, in essence, is that it can warp the culture of a scene. As opposed to continuing to communicate, collaborate, and experiment in service to whatever the scenes particular way of seeing is, contributors become distracted by the market for the token.
If a scene's actual culture is not strong enough on it's own, it will be consumed by this financialization.
The scene will falter to produce the kinds of genius it's original culture was capable of hosting and the true value of the scene is lost.
The token is not valuable on it's own, it relies on the scene's cultural output.
The opportunity is therefore to use the token to bolster the scene's cultural output.
In simple terms, value should be captured from speculative market action, and invested in the culture.
One way to do this is to pair the token with another, provide liquidity on a DEX, and generate fees that can be used to pay people to do things. In most cases, there is no utility to tokens beyond this. However, if the fees generated do go on to fund cultural activity and lead to the creation of value for the world, there is an argument to be made that new cultural utility could arise, in which case all trading on the token pair could be said to be for the culture.
Whatever utilities arise, the true value of the scene is what it's people create for each other and the world, not it's token.
In the long-term, a token is only as valuable as it's ability to generate value, for the culture.
With the main cultural practice of higher being to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action, this is how value captured from market action should be "put to work".
As cultural activity continues, we cannot be sure of what will arise. All we know is that so far, higher has attracted and helped to shape some incredible talent, distributing genius and empowering them to realize their aspirations.
In my estimation, more of that would be a good thing.
Hopefully by now, you can see that the token is both a problem and an opportunity, and that to ignore it completely would be to ignore an opportunity to create more scene health and the distribution of more genius.
Higher's cultural practice of seeing higher regardless of price precedes the token launch.
The introduction of a scene token introduced the ability to speculate on the entire scene.
The token can be both a Problem and an Opportunity for the culture.
I dislike the label "headless brand". The word 'headless' brings to mind a body without a brain and no clear direction. To try and build a brand or propagate a meme with nobody playing host to any form of idea, action, or direction is frankly ridiculous.
Thankfully, this isn't what's happening or has been happening with Higher. A more accurate framing is that Higher is something that is being collectively discovered by many heads, with many feet on the ground, and multiple directions being travelled in at once.
Examples of bodies that are publicly and actively using their heads and putting their feet to the ground in the name of Higher are Chic Bangs, Catra, Nishu, Colfax, Jpegpowell, JR, and Sonya, to name just a few.
Put simply, Higher is not headless, it has many heads.
In contrast to your regular memecoin or company where phrases such as "dev do something" and "the buck stops with him/her" can be expected, Higher distributes the power to create a vision for what higher should be and invites you to do something about it.
In other words, the buck stops with all of us, including you.
This framework for thinking about Higher provides enormous freedom as well as a network of potential collaborators (other heads).
Combine this with a financial primitive that can accrue value through network effects, and you have a financial incentive to utilise that freedom and collaborate.
These unique conditions are fertile ground for birthing both individual geniuses and collective genius, in an entirely new way.
A genius talks the talk and walks the walk.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge that Apple has somewhat ruined the word genius in recent years. Before Apple commodified the word "genius," it held significant weight.
While not always accurately applied, it has often been used to describe people who stand out and innovate in ways that have a lasting impact.
If you look across the Higher ecosystem, you may recognise many such geniuses.
Simultaneously, the word "genius" alone cannot accurately describe what exactly a person stands out for or their impact.
What can be defined is that "genius" is associated with intellectual ability and creative productivity.
Importantly, they not only think and reason well, but they are also able to manifest and realize their visions. A genius talks the talk and walks the walk.
This, however, is still a relatively shallow way of understanding what genius is and how it comes about. To isolate the individual is to misapprehend the reality we live in. The truth is that genius relies on people to sharpen and refine ideas, to be inspired to explore new territories, and even for novel ideas.
Though we usually only hear about geniuses that have been elevated to stardom, it would be silly to think that they always acted alone.
The more probable explanation is that genius is something that flows through a network of people via their passion for a question or area of exploration, and that the people we remember are simply the ones who were recognised as having made an impact. Importantly, all the other nodes in the network are indispensable if we want that genius.
Legendary music producer Brian Eno call's this phenomena Scenius and put it like this:
The key idea here is that scenes generate that which we recognise as genius.
Whilst some have suggested that Higher needs a singular leader in order to solve the problem of a lack of coordination and generate value, it is my belief that this solution would destroy the core offering of Higher.
It is the very absence of a singular authority that creates the conditions that birth genius.
Importantly, the birth of genius relies on engagement, communication, and collaboration.
There has to be active interaction between scene participants.
Scenes distribute genius and I believe that distributing genius is Higher's core offering.
The birth of genius is possible because scenes explore open questions together but without a recognised sole leader. Healthy scenes collaborate with one another, allowing genius to arise.
For example:
Not one artist that was experimenting in the time of Cubism knew what exactly they'd eventually land on, they simply had a way of seeing that guided each of a their own individual practices.
For the Cubists, reality was misrepresented by the artworks of the time - their way of seeing was more dynamic than the average artist in that they wanted to present more than a single point of view.
As a result, their cultural practice became: to explore new ways to depict space and form within a picture plane.
The problem that they found opportunity in was that paintings up until that point presented only a singular perspective when in reality objects exist within multiple perspectives.
The opportunity was to pioneer new ways in which they could represent the dynamic and multifaceted experience of reality.
The question they were asking was: how do I present multi-perspectival reality on the canvas?
This exploration, enlivened by conversations and collaboration, was their scene.
That scene birthed(and distributed) genius.
In higher's case, LGHT described a way of perceiving reality consciously through the lens of higher.
In doing so he pointed to the potential for a decoupling of perception from token price.
It's immediate resonance demonstrated a shared understanding of the phenomena even if it hadn't been fully articulated.
To articulate what was being pointed to: it is possible to separate how we perceive things as if price were higher even when price is not.
It is in this way of seeing that we find both the problem and the opportunity for the higher scene:
higher's cultural practice is: to explore new ways of seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
The problem that higher finds it's opportunity in is that token price can influence ones perception of reality, even whilst it's fundamental qualities remain the same.
The opportunity is to pioneer new ways to go beyond emotional reactions to token price and encourage continued seeing and feeling higher irrespective of market action.
The question the higher scene is asking is: How do you perceive reality in the same way as you do when price is higher even when price is not?
This exploration, enlivened now by conversations and collaboration, and a community token, is the scene.
The types of genius higher is distributing are a result of these conditions.
Higher is not a headless brand.
Scenes distribute genius.
Higher is a scene.
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