Cultural Build: A Framework for Self-Actualizing Economies - Livia Deschermayer

[Applause] hi everybody nice to see this room full thanks for coming all right so [Music] yeah cultural build this is a concept we've been working in the common stack for a while and this is what we're going to talk about today so first the definition of culture and love defining because it's important for us to have common ground for communication for us to have a shared language for concepts that are very important for how we interact with each other and what is a healthy culture what is an unhealthy culture how can we set up a healthy environment and what is the connection of all this with token economics and then i'll lead to the conclusion so the etymology of the word culture means attend to the earth and grow culture is the collection of factors that set up an environment so a healthy culture is one that enables a thriving and symbiotic ecosystem to emerge and grow it's cultivation in love according to scott pack and endorsed by bow hooks is um where is the where's the quote love is uh the will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own growth and another spiritual growth so we see little in the indication that love informs decisions strengthens our understanding of community or it keeps us together so what is a healthy culture maybe it's a combination of both if we think um if we think that nurture culture is the combination of love and the definition of culture by the etymology of the word we would have an environment that set up conditions for our development with love so nurture culture is not one type of culture but it's rather culture in its healthy state and this is just like nature does in a state of balance and if it yeah so the soil is providing a state of growth for seeds to emerge when is in balance so i would actually like to propose an exercise and if you feel comfortable please close your eyes for three seconds and see how does this phrase resonates with you our mothers were the first system we inhabited the womb had the perfect conditions for us to develop in a state of surrender with no fear of growth you can open your eyes now and maybe just reflect on that as thinking of our mothers as the first systems we inhabit brings us this awareness of how nurturing is important for our development and how nurturing systems should have this conditions for us to develop as the base of um as as the base so i'm sorry that it's really hard to see these lights here so i'm feeling a little lost all right but moving forward we understand what is an unhealthy culture that is the burn the burnout culture so an unhealthy culture is one that fails on doing that fails on doing what the healthy culture provides us to that is creating these healthy environments so we've been growing on a soil that patriarchal capitalism prepared for us it's stiff quite dry resources are scarce and we are always reaching our limits in burnout culture we are um we are far from achieving our needs from maslow's hierarchy of needs that said that for self-actualization we actually need physiological safety love belonging steam and that would make us achieve self-actualization that means being all you can be but for having physiological needs met how many of you have spent five hours in a call and forgot to eat and had little time to go to the bathroom and how yeah yeah unfortunately some of us and how do we feel when we are stressed how does our self-esteem feel how can we move our bodies in the middle of all of this amazing things that are happening and that we want to participate we want to make things happen we want to work we want to connect with people because it's so exciting everything that is going on but what are some things we can do to have all that but in a in a health space without feeling like we're constantly in the verge of a breakdown so these are some aspects of a burnout culture that are one's value is on how much they produce the production of goods only benefit a few psychological and physiological needs are often compromised there is competition even if it's hard to admit especially endowed spaces there is always a sudden subtle feeling of competition and there is little or no room for spontaneity so how can we deal with all this if we are trying to have a nurturing culture so setting up a healthy environment and understanding the missing piece how can we restore cultures health and for that i'll bring up ostrom she like tamara mentioned she won the nobel prize in economics for proving wrong the tragedy of the commons and she gifted us with eight principles for governing the commons for building communities that can successfully manage public goods so in the token engineering commons we've been applying ostrom's principles in our cultural build for the first time in a cyber commons as far as i know and this talks a lot with the empirical plus theory that vitalik was mentioning in his talk like we have we have the background of ostrom in her theory and we've been trying to implement that in practice and seeing how that works and learning with its with its applications so explaining a little bit about how what are these eight principles um clearly to find boundaries i think this one is quite obvious we need to understand what are our limits congruence between between appropriation and provision talks about how to have a sustainable system so how to not spend more than it's being provided collective choice arrangements is making sure that the people that participate in those communities have decision making power over what is being decided for them and being decided by them monitoring she talks about mutual monitoring that it's not having someone that it's outside of your space to check what you're doing but to have the people who are part of this community to check on each other and that creates a an information loop by doing that you're learning and information is a resource and graduated sanctions that are uh forgiving rules for if something happens you have a framework for addressing infractions and conflict resolution mechanisms that is having conflict resolution available at a low cost for everyone in the organization and how important this is for the health of individuals and minimal recognition of rights to organize is just making sure that no one will shut us down that there is not a legal entity that has more power than the minimum rights that we have that could stop what we're doing naster enterprises is uh being within in ecosystems within ecosystems and within an organization having also sub organizations so we've been having a great run on implementing all of these principles and we've been learning so much with them and they create many feedback loops but there's still something that is missing and i think it's really enhancing the importance of feedback loops why that's where token economics comes in token engineering is the design verification and optimization of token economic systems so these three steps are also valid for culture and culture and economics are inseparable i always say this but economics is a social science it talks about the interactions that individuals have so if these principles they are valid for token economics and also for people and for communities how can we make sure that this this feedback that this loop is actually happening the burnout cultures keeps most of the time the verification and optimization steps because of its output-oriented nature and we need both it's great to have outputs but how can we balance that with a state of reflection so this is very important to have a process where spontaneous action comes in and there is a moment for reflection how many of you have moments of reflection and still in your culture at work just the tc crew yeah it's not so easy to open the space because we're constantly overwhelmed by everything that's happening but this is so important because this updates the action just the state of reflection provides an updated action and creates this feedback loop on culture that is essential for all of the other a principles to be working in a good way because even even having all of these processes in place burnout culture keeps creeping in and i think what we need to do is to bring more negative spaces so in in sculpture negative space is um negative space and a composition can help identify the focal point and this is what is missing in the whole crypto space we're all overwhelmed with the amount of images that we have everywhere that we are missing on printing the shapes what are the shapes of the things we are creating how can we identify things in a way that they have their own form without mix and matching with everything that is around so this image is from the sculptor called giacometti and you can see how he has this phrase that is taking the fat off the space so he sculpts by taking the fat off and when he takes the fat off he creates a picture that has a focal point so the name of this sculpture can anyone guess okay it's very obvious is the walking man it's a man that is walking and it's obvious because he created an emphasis of the emptiness within the legs that give a focal point for the action that is happening and then this other man that is walking around him is interacting with this image point and then someone else that is taking the picture is um seeing how these things talk to each other in this types of relationships we can only have if we have negative spaces and they are so important for the crypto space for us to be able to have a nurturing culture in a way that we can see each other we can see what's missing we can have this feedback loops and this fortifies the economy because we can see where value is we can bring the invisible to visible and i've been thinking a lot about this word development if you think about a film and you're gonna develop this film you're revealing an image that already exists so what do you what you're bringing to existence is already there and that's pretty much emergence when we open empty spaces things can emerge in the spaces and the tools we have that are the development tools being a developer is basically bringing those images those pieces of emergence those values that were in the invisible to the visible with the tooling with all of the softwares that we're building with the processes so um i'll conclude to define a little bit nurturing culture in a way that he has love ethics within understanding that love is essential for decision making that love is essential for our growth in a way that we can open spaces for each other to be who we want to be to become self-actualizing that is this concept of being all you can be and then considering implementing ostrom's principles with an emphasis on feedback loops that is a major learning from token engineering the ability to module systems and create images where you can see how things are connecting one with the other create open spaces for self optimization so i think by doing that by by having love ethics by communicating with each other in a state of growth by understanding culture as something that creates an environment for us to thrive we can build uh open spaces that let us be who we are and create economic models that actually enable our development as human beings and not and don't keep us on the on the verge of breaking down so i think we can intentionally create environments that contain what is needed for our growth thank you olivia um we've got about four minutes for questions