Anyone can play higher.

You don't have to buy the token, you don't have to buy any merch, you don't have to create anything, and you certainly don't need to engage higher at all if you don't want to.

higher respects your power.

There are no guard-rails of a specific aesthetic or way of being higher.

The higher "aesthetic" is being continually discovered, has taken on many iterations, and is open to you expressing whatever higher is for you.

You are free to create what higher is for you through via your own form of play.

higher is whatever the people who enjoy it want it to be.

The only thing that truly certifies something as higher or not is whether other people also think it is higher. And that is debatable.

Ultimately, it is the people who enjoy higher that are co-creating what higher is.

In this sense, the Higher Network is incubating and shaping the development of higher.

In theory, this means that you have the power to make higher whatever you want it to be.

More accurately, however, higher is whatever the people that enjoy it want it to be.

It is literally playing out as you read this, in some form or another.

higher is better with collaborators.

In a paradigm where a truly new kind of brand emerges, it won't be as a result of a singular piece of decentralised governance infrastructure.

Instead, it will be as a result of multiple individuals saying I want to contribute to this.

Due to the consensus based nature of higher itself, it's likely that the most powerful work these individuals will do will be as part of small groups of 4-6.

This size of group allows for both strong alignment and diversity in skill and perspective.

These small groups can jam on ideas and experiment in real-time together.

Most importantly, they can create things that no single one of them could've made alone.

Just like how bands of musicians come together to create and expand genres; interplay between individuals can organically spark moments of innovation and creativity.

These higher bands can work on the things that matter to them, in accordance with their own tastes, to their own ends.

Such squads get to ask questions like:

• What do we want to work on?

• How can we help each other win?

• What becomes possible if we do it together?

In total, bands can create things that are an expression of the collaboration as opposed to any single one of them.

The things they make are all their versions of higher — together.

My recommendation?

find some people to jam with.

How?

1. start playing.

2. make sure other people know you play.

3. see who wants to jam.

[nobody? keep playing. the better you play, the more people will want to jam]

It is very in vogue for large corporations and power-hungry people on the internet to tell you how things are. The truth is however, we live in a multi-perspectival reality where people can look at the same thing and come to different conclusions.

Where most brands try to tell people what they should think and how their particular type of what you should think is made exactly for someone like you, higher doesn't.

There is no top-down structure to higher. Instead the brand proliferates and evolves through creativity expanding from it's open-use intellectual property:

The Higher Open-IP

These two "brand assets" were adopted for creative use by a collective of people on the niche social media platform Farcaster in 2024, forming the Higher Network.

the higher network is the individuals who engage higher.

The majority of groups that exist are organised by a central team, a central leader, a central form of governance, or a central worldview.

As a result, there is often a clear reason for their existence and a mission that is agreed upon as to be enacted on the world. The same cannot be said for higher.

higher is a group that chooses to engage higher as a word and symbol, with a myriad of reasonings and forms of meaning-making.

There have been a number of attempts to define higher, with many attracting applause and agreement. Ultimately, however, there is no ultimate consensus.

The only consensus has been to engage higher as a kind of art-supply in creating and expressing what higher is for you.

Over the first years of higher's existence this has meant the creation of the $HIGHER token, Higher Athletics, the higher party, the Higher Horse, Higher FM, Higher Market, hb, Higher ZIP, many images and videos, a meditation course, and multiple higher websites, all voluntarily.

This voluntary effort has led to a network of relationships, now commonly referred to as The Higher Network; connected through the choice to engage higher.

higher is a choice.

Many things in this world are now incentivised.

Metrics dominate discourse and we often find ourselves in conversations and tasks that assume there must be always be a way to value what is happening.

There are, however, things that people consistently struggle to put a price on:

Relationships

Attempts to numerically quantify the value of a friendship, the connection between parent and child, or even smiles shared with passerby's on the trail; don't add up.

There is too much complexity, change, and depth in the single human person to try and understand what a connection between two at a particular moment in time might be worth in numbers.

Extend that non-calculation to an open-ended and evolving group without a singular leadership and you begin to sense the magnitude of what higher has already achieved.

For almost two-years people have continued to act with intent, extend support, and use their energy to journey together into unchartered territory.

People enjoy higher and choose to support the network without promise of reward.

Value has been and is being created in unquantifiable ways at the level of culture.

The underlying asset is the people.

The people that make up the network and what they choose and have already chosen to do for themselves and each other.

higher is a choice and has always been a choice.

What it will go on to become is not centrally coordinated but continually unfolding.

Anything could happen. higher is yours.

You choose how you engage it, or not.

My recommendation?

do you, chad.