Habitat and hope: From laying low to digital nomads lighting up the world

Author of the original text: Feng Guangneng, contracted author of Three Views on Crooked Neck, founder of Xiaoguang's Cultivation World

Original editor: Kaka

Original source: Three Views on Crooked Neck

Editor's Note: The current society is like the "labor-consumption" society predicted by Arendt in the 1960s. Modern people live in a fast-paced cycle of "earning money-consumption". Natural objects are transformed into artificial objects. If this accelerated development trend is maintained, modern civilization is obviously unsustainable. At the same time, the social structure is becoming more and more rigid. It is almost impossible to slow down this trend without reflection and discussion on the underlying production logic and distribution logic. In such a situation, the actions of digital nomads may give us some inspiration.

In "Blockchain Ambition: Anti-Keynesian, Public Life, and Transhumanism", Hu Yilin, a member of the crooked neck three-view advisory group and an associate professor of the Department of History of Science at Tsinghua University, described the relationship between Keynesianism, intergenerational contradictions, and nihilism. Keynesianism has triggered a worldwide "eating more than enough food" activity. While transferring the debts of the previous generation to the next generation, the specific creditors are hidden, brewing the deepening intergenerational conflicts and emptiness. doctrine.

Intergenerational conflict and debt of no master

The complexity of intergenerational conflicts lies in the asymmetric combination of gifts and debts. When the next generation receives gifts from the elders around them, they have to bear the debts left by the previous generation, or the mess. The pain of youth is that gifts come from visible sources, while debts fall from the sky. The elders provide us with the basic necessities of life, for us to study and buy a house, and to satisfy our wishes as much as possible... In every sense, we need to respond to the kindness of the elders. On the other hand, whether it is the information cocoon, financial bubble, rigid social structure and climate warming that are just around the corner, or the more distant energy crisis, species extinction, or the more hidden, imminent and deadly industrialization of academia , For young people, they all fall from the sky and belong to "debt without owner".

This unclaimed debt is so heavy that we don't want to mention it or get involved in it in our daily life. However, this debt of masterlessness has affected every aspect of our lives, and it has become the living background that each of us does not want to mention and cannot forget. As a debt that actually exists, debt of masterlessness must be borne by someone after all. .

This is the root of the pain at the bottom of society, and also the source of the anxiety of the middle class. They have to use their own sweat to bear this unclaimed debt. At the same time, their labor is alienated labor. They cannot do what Marx said In that way, seeing oneself in labor cannot realize self-realization in labor, and even produce more debts of no owner while working. The reason why the middle class is anxious is that once they fall to the bottom of society, their descendants will have to bear the debt of no owner. Once they are at the bottom of society, they will be burdened with debt of no owner, and it will be even more difficult to achieve a class transition. .

The so-called involution is rooted in the evasion of the debt of no master. In order to avoid the debt of no master, the family needs to try to consolidate its own class, it needs to try to achieve a class transition, and it needs to conform to the old class order. Competing fiercely for limited ready-made jobs, investing a lot of energy and time in the competition. In today's society, productivity has been able to meet the daily needs of human beings, and most jobs are no longer related to actual production, but are only used to maintain class order. This kind of maintenance is necessary because everyone lives in the old hierarchical order. If this hierarchical order is shaken, most people will feel worried. This kind of worry does not come from specific problems, but from uncertainty itself. In this sense, the hierarchical order is like the water in a swimming pool, which constantly provides resistance to the people living in it, but without it, everyone cannot swim. Due to the limited size of the swimming pool, "dumplings" are unavoidable.

Once the hierarchical order is severely solidified, it is difficult to create new occupations, because new occupations always bring new relationships, and new relationships mean uncertainty, even if new relationships may make the whole world a better place , and will always be resisted by the old hierarchical order. This is the so-called social rigidity: a large number of zombie jobs still follow the logic of the old era and do things in the form of the old era in order to maintain their own existence, even though these things have almost lost their meaning in the new technological environment. At the same time, it is difficult to create new jobs. Some new generations have studied hard for decades, and their ultimate goal is to squeeze their way into old zombie jobs, so as to avoid falling into the bottom of society; some new generations have clearly mastered new jobs. In the field of knowledge, society cannot provide relevant jobs. Old jobs are always limited and scarce, so competition is inevitable, and the behavior of competition itself further consolidates the rigid social structure, making the transformation of social structure more difficult. In such a process, the debt of no owner has not been repaid, but has continued to increase, so our competition has become increasingly fierce.

Therefore, the reason why the whole society is involuntary is not that no one can make cakes, nor that those who can make cakes don’t want to make cakes, but because many people are unwilling to accept new things and do everything possible to prevent those who can make cakes and want to make cakes People don't make cakes, as Douglas said:

"Everything invented before I was born is taken for granted; everything invented between 15 and 35 is destined to change the world; everything invented after 35 is against humanity."

Fortunately, we have ushered in a node of an era, and the sign of this node is: the phenomenon of "lying flat". The reason why the phenomenon of lying flat can appear is that many people have become highly conscious of involution, and realize that the time and energy spent on involution have far exceeded our time and energy in responding to debts of no master. To put it bluntly, it means refusing to involve, refusing to do zombie work. The emergence of this node means that in the next 20 years, our culture may develop in accordance with the trend of "Nine Movements from Fire", and the whole society will gradually transform from a competitive society to a cooperative society.

If lying flat is to respond to the debt of no one in an inactive way, then the digital nomads are responding to the debt of no one in an active way. Even though many digital nomads have not yet developed such a sense of historical mission, they are actually doing so up.

Digital Nomads and Social Experiments

Digital Nomads (Digital Nomads) was first proposed by former Hitachi CEO Makimoto Jixiong in his 1997 book "Digital Nomad". According to Makimoto, the so-called digital nomad refers to people who "earn first-world income through the Internet, but choose to live in places where the price level of developing countries is high". This formulation has very serious philosophical consequences, which manifests itself in the emergence of "geographical arbitrage" in reality. As Mu Zitong pointed out, Tsukio Makimoto probably never imagined that digital nomads would one day be denounced as “neo-colonialists.” For example, in Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Portugal and many other countries, the activities of digital nomads have aroused opposition from local residents, because they have raised local prices, disrupted the local economic order, and forced local living resources to become nervous.

Different from these negative cases, in China, digital nomads have shown good qualities and virtues, continuously created good words and deeds, and through their own words and actions, they have changed the structure of will power diffused in the world and dispelled Keynes Many delusions left to us by doctrine.

A typical case is the founding team of DNA. They not only explore the possible ways of human existence in the modern technological environment, but also allow participants to record their exploration experiences in graphic form through the "Digital Nomad Takeover Plan", thus gathering different Human perspective and experience. For example, in the public life provided by DNA, Liang Mengmeng allows people to regain the familiar feeling between people. In this kind of public life, interpersonal relationships are more important than doing things. People share experiences with each other. Everyone can try to do some new things, such as skateboarding, playing guitar, throwing battle ropes, and holding exhibitions... Everyone Encourage and motivate each other.

Source: DNA Digital Nomads

How is this public life possible? On the one hand, because the materials necessary for our daily survival are very limited, modern society can easily provide these necessities, so that people have leisure time; on the other hand, the relationship between people is relatively free, There is no pre-established hierarchical order, so everyone is more relaxed when chatting, and when the chat is open, it is easy to hit it off, and the atmosphere will rise when the hit is hit, and everyone will easily enter the state when the atmosphere rises. From the point of view of health preservation, this state is similar to what Huang Yuanji said, "friends gather to talk, meet each other, and suddenly the yang energy is soaring, and the real energy is blooming."

Also worth mentioning is the recently launched Breadtree "Run and Lay Plan". Breadtree Garden put forward the "Three Elements of Lying Flat", and established the Investment Learning Camp, Food Freedom Camp, and Spiritual Growth Camp. The investment school establishes the relationship with the surrounding economic order through the network. The food freedom camp is based on the food forest theory and the permaculture theory (permaculture, which imitates the natural sustainable development method, continuously observes nature and actively interacts and responds to satisfy human food. , energy, housing and other material and non-material needs) to meet everyone’s material needs in life, and the spiritual growth camp pays attention to everyone’s spiritual life and spiritual development.

Source: Breadtree Garden

In the spiritual growth camp, everyone communicates along two paths. One is the path of deconstruction. They use the resources of philosophy, history, anthropology, phenomenology, logic, psychoanalysis and other disciplines to deconstruct some solidified identities. The other is the road of construction. Participants freely explore the possibility of life growth from the perspectives of multiple disciplines such as body, career, emotion, art, education, and new life systems.

It can be found that the bread trees are not really lying down, they are just doing social experiments under the banner of lying down, and the basic paradigm of this social experiment is to explore the possible existence of human civilization in a niche.

Niche was originally an ecological term, also known as ecological niche, ecological niche or ecological habitat. It is a general term for the environment in which a species lives and its own living habits. For example, the niche of an elephant includes the foraging of elephants. The location, the type and size of the food, and the rhythm of the elephant's own life. The environment and the living habits of species are interactively constructed. For example, the rhythm of life of elephants is closely related to the environment in which elephants live. Just like elephants, we humans also rely on the environment to live, and our living habits are also shaped by the environment; the difference from elephants is that the environment we live in is a technological environment, and we have the ability to create and transform the environment Ability, the environment we create will affect the living habits of us and our descendants. Our current living habits are actually shaped by our previous generation or the environment created by the previous generation. For example, children now almost all play mobile phones, that is Because they live in an environment where mobile phones are within reach.

The thing that cannot be overlooked is that the whole environment is always here before we are born. In modern society, the problems we face are not only sustainable development issues, but also more complex issues, because we are in an era of globalization. In the era of globalization, in addition to caring about the diversity and life record of personal life (as the founding team of DNA did) and the sustainability of the environment (as the food freedom camp in Breadtree Garden did), We also need to be concerned about the issue of world order. After all, since the birth of the atomic bomb, the destruction of civilization has become a dark cloud hanging over the heads of all modern people.

Digital nomads also respond to such questions with their actions and words. From March to May 2023, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik launched a flash city experiment called Zuzalu in Montenegro, which brought together 200 residents from all over the world. Tang Han, a member of the Wrong Neck Sanguan Advisory Group and the founder of SeeDAO, also wrote an article summarizing that in a new self-organized community, the identity differences and opposition of participants in the original order are weakened, and everyone can untie the shackles of order. Free debate, association, opposition and construction without presupposition. The weakening of identity antagonisms is very important for peace. In the past, wars broke out because we always lived in a confrontational world, and we had to choose sides, either side A or side B, and A and B formed a potential hostile relationship. If I was on side A People only need to pay attention to the interests of side A, and don't care about the life and death of side B. However, if we choose to be loyal to a partial concept rather than the whole concept, there is always the possibility of actualizing potential hostility. In Zuzalu's social experiment, everyone discovered the possibility of getting rid of the restrictions of identity and returning to "human beings".

There is no doubt that we are all human beings, and we all live in the world together, so the most important thing between us is not to share the cake, not to waste time and energy in meaningless competition, but to unite to make the cake.

It is worth noting that the internet has changed the cake form. Cakes in the material sense are limited and cannot be easily copied. Every piece of cake consumes the persistence of the world. If this consumption exceeds the regeneration of the world, then civilization will not be sustainable. The Internet can provide a cake in the spiritual sense. The production and replication of this cake consumes extremely little power, and the consumption of the world's persistence is also very small. If the unsustainability of modern civilization is to be weakened, it means that the existing distribution logic needs to be updated based on Internet technology. This transformation of distribution logic and the transformation of human life style are two aspects of the same thing.

This does not mean that human beings should escape from the real world and spend most of their time living on the Internet. We can find that the offline life of digital nomads is also very rich. They are actively exploring various body technologies and social technologies that do not consume fossil energy, such as carrying out various activities like the DNA team, and studying permaculture like the bread tree garden. The theory of perpetuity, discussing the world order like Zazulu, their common feature is that they will record and disseminate their activities, so that their ideas can affect more people, and tell their experiences as stories to pass on. In this sense, their lives are both low-entropy and happy. Such a way of life is not only conducive to the sustainable development of civilization, but also conducive to the uniqueness of everyone in public life.

In the final analysis, the transformation of social structure is the general trend, and the key lies in updating the current distribution logic around the cake of spiritual significance, bringing out many new ways of life for human beings in the future era. In this process, not only can we not suppress those who are actively making cakes, but we must actively encourage them to make cakes, provide a good environment for them to make cakes, and enable new cakes to be made. As the saying goes, "Three hundred and sixty lines of action lead to champions." The whole society needs to be diverse before it can be stable. Only in a stable and diverse society can people's lives be of high quality and everyone feel happy. In this sense, the existence of digital nomads, their active exploration of habitats, brings a faint ray of hope for the future of civilization.

It can be found that, as a social experiment, the significance of digital nomad actions does not need to wait until the future, but has already been presented in the present. The reason is that digital nomads have always been wandering in the new space where the Internet and the physical world converge. They do not simply return to a simple pastoral life, but actively explore the possibility of the environment and the possibility of existence, and use Internet technology to record and disseminate their lives, so that offline life and online life Get blended in all sorts of interesting ways. Through the Internet, they spread their experiences and ideas to more people, which touched everyone.

For now, this recording activity falls somewhere between light-hearted everyday sharing and serious history-making. The pictures and texts written by many digital nomads are a bit like records of life experience, which makes some readers feel that they are not much different from tourist check-in, and ignore the efforts made by digital nomads in exploring order, such as building a warm community atmosphere, Creating a feeling of healing during a conversation, freely sharing the inspiration gained in the process of reading... In our industrial age, these behaviors are unique and universal. Not everyone can go abroad, nor can everyone visit the British Museum or the Louvre, but everyone can start from the environment in which they live and find the "way" to live with others. Every community can record One's own life becomes the common memory of the community, and the most outstanding part of it will also become the memory of human civilization.

Looking back, Tsukio Makimoto defined digital nomads as "earning a first-world income through the Internet, but choosing to live in places with the price level of those developing countries", which is actually referring to Japanese young people of that era The possibility of life we have is the question of "how to live". In our country, digital nomads are not only concerned about the issue of "how to survive", they also care about the issue of "how to exist". In this sense, the "digital" space is not only a place to make money, but also a place to record and share life. On this big stage, digital nomads can show their existence to the world.

The impact of digital nomads on the world is subtle. For example, after I read Tang Han's article, I thought that "people" always need to give themselves an identity, so it is not enough to break away from the restriction of identity, because once we meet in the world, we always need to play different roles. For example, you are a teacher and I am a blacksmith. Of course, we play different roles, and we can also have a greater common identity, for example, we are all descendants of the dragon, so that we can be harmonious but different in the process of communication. However, if I am the descendant of the dragon and you are the descendant of the phoenix, our identities will become potentially antagonistic again. So what to do? At this time, we need a new common overall concept. In this sense, since we all exist together on this planet, we need to see ourselves first and foremost as part of the history of world civilization. If we start to explore the stars of the universe in the future, then in order to live in harmony with alien civilizations, we need to regard ourselves as members of the history of civilizations in the universe.

Since we are all part of the history of world civilization, intergenerational conflicts become illusory. In life, you are the elder and I am the junior. There is an elder-child relationship between us. You take care of me and I respect you. In the history of world civilization, we are all fellow travelers, and we are all concerned about the unsustainability of modern civilization. You are responsible for maintaining the current order, and I am responsible for exploring a new order. I record my actions in words and let you know me through the Internet. The things I do, you get inspired by the things I do. In this sense, we are doing the same thing in different corners of the world, and together we are dispelling the legacy of Keynesianism.

Homeless settlements and the future of civilization

As a social experiment, the works obtained by digital nomad actions are homeless settlements. As a living environment for digital nomads, homeless settlements, like villages and cities, are gathering places of natural objects, technology, culture, politics and economy. The form of homeless settlements is somewhere between rural and urban.

The characteristic of the countryside is that natural objects constitute the main body of the environment, and natural objects exist in the ecological cycle of nature. Therefore, as long as the carrying capacity of the land is not exceeded, the rural environment is almost sustainable, but rural life is often simple. Cities are characterized by a high degree of technologicalization, where the technological environment almost obscures the natural environment. Since the technological system has its own operational logic, the culture, politics, and economy of cities are often based on the operational logic of technology itself.

As an extension of human beings, technology carries all kinds of human nature to a certain extent, exists as a material carrier of memory, and completely transforms the living environment of human beings. Because the city has various technologies, it also brings out various niches, produces various occupations, and gives birth to various organizations. For example, the hammer brought out the blacksmith shop, the blacksmith worked in the blacksmith shop, and the blacksmith organization was formed through mutual communication between blacksmiths. In the same way that the loom brought out the mill, the weavers and the weavers' organisation, the textbook and the blackboard out of the classroom, the teacher and the teacher's organisation, the train out of the railroad, the locomotives and the locomotives' organisation. …

The technical system is characterized by interlocking, and many occupations in the city are also interdependent, and each occupation works in its own relatively isolated environment, continuously laboring and producing, forming a state of automatic operation, specialization The degree is getting higher and higher, and the links between all walks of life are getting closer. For example, steel factories can establish contacts with many industries such as automobiles, aviation, ships, and parts processing, and continuously sign contracts to continuously produce steel.

The economic system is between the technical system and the public life of human beings, and plays a regulatory role, but the ability of this regulation is getting weaker and weaker. The reason is that after the decoupling of the US dollar and gold, the Bretton Woods system collapsed, and the currency became a number, and the number has no upper limit. The goal of capitalist society is to pursue the proliferation of capital, and there is no upper limit to the proliferation of capital, so the entire society will continue to produce to meet the needs of capital proliferation. Arendt had foreseen in the 1960s that the essence of modern society is a "labor-consumption" society. The biggest problem in this society is to turn most people into laborers and consumers, and let people's lives fall into a labor-consumption cycle. After all, people always live in the environment, are affected by the environment, and always need to adapt to the environment in order to survive. For people, such a society eliminates their leisure and public life, makes people busy earning money, and after earning enough money, is satisfied with living a stable life, and gradually forgets to care about their own situation. At the same time, for civilization, because human production activities never stop, and even drive consumption in reverse, such as mobile phones and computers have become consumer goods, which need to be replaced every few years. Such a life consumes the world's persistence Is extremely fast, far exceeding the regenerative nature of the world.

In a labor-consumer society, the problem is not insufficient production capacity, but overcapacity, and the trend of overcapacity is difficult to stop. The reason is also that the technical system is characterized by interlocking chains. For example, if a steelmaking plant shuts down, the problem will not be particularly serious for the society, because there are other steelmaking plants working, but the employees of this steelmaking plant will not be able to obtain income, and their lives will be difficult. Similarly, if mechanized products in modern society are sufficient to meet the needs of human life, theoretically, most steel factories can be shut down, but if this is the case, people in all related industries will lose their jobs.

The more serious problem is that because the technological system has a tendency to accelerate development, and human culture, politics, and economy are based on the operation logic of technology itself, the entire modern civilization shows a tendency to accelerate development. There is no doubt that this trend is unsustainable. The problem is that this trend cannot be stopped, or even just slowed down. What deserves more attention is that the structure of the crisis of modern civilization is so complex, and modern people living in modern civilization are so busy that they don't even have the time and energy to calm down and understand this crisis. Can be coerced by the trend of the modern technological system, but unable to make an authentic response. At the same time, since everyone follows the logic of efficiency in the modern technology system and pursues to achieve the set goals with maximum efficiency, the operation of the modern technology system is becoming more and more efficient. In this way, the frequency of the modern technology system's requirements is higher, and everyone will live a better life. The more tired you are, the less time and energy you have to understand your situation, and your life will enter a vicious circle. It is becoming more and more difficult for people to get together to seriously discuss ideas and things, to care about the times, and to respond to the times. In addition, modern waste is continuously produced and can only be disposed of through landfill and incineration, which aggravates the deterioration of the environment. This is what Heidegger called set-setting, Habermas called instrumental rationality, and Marcuse called one-dimensional man.

However, this monotonous, continuous, unsustainable way of life provided by modern technology is not necessarily the fate of modern people, if we can recognize our situation and see a new way of life.

In this sense, there is much more that digital nomads can do. The reason is that homeless settlements do not need to bear the heavy history of the city, and are not as simple as the countryside.

A homeless settlement is an open environment to be designed. Digital nomads can choose a piece of land in the countryside as a base for social experiments, explore the technological route of human civilization in a highly naturalized environment, and gradually form their own culture during the exploration process, thus developing various ecological Cultural communities, exploring the possible way humans live in modern civilization.

This exploration is not blind, as there are some fundamental questions worth answering. for example:

(1) People's public life in big cities is rapidly dissolving under the impact of the technological system, so how can homeless settlements create an ideal form of public life?

(2) There are already unsolvable garbage problems in big cities, so how can homeless settlements handle garbage well in the process of technologicalization and maintain the original recyclability of nature?

(3) Digital nomads are already recording their own lives, and these records are expected to become history in the eyes of future generations, so how can digital nomads integrate their own way of existence into the history of world civilization? Of course, the discussion of these issues is itself part of public life.

That is to say, if digital nomads can dabble in the history of world civilization, such as the history of technology, urban development, science, and art, and understand the various forms of civilization, they may get more inspiration in the process of reading and communicating. It is also able to see more abundant possibilities, and at the same time understand and record the goals and significance of one's own actions from the perspective of the history of world civilization.

In addition, digital nomads, as "vagrants", are inherently mobile and do not always stay in homeless settlements. Digital nomads can also go to the city to conduct investigations and gain a richer understanding of the current situation of the city. For example, I once tried to investigate the garbage stations in Chongqing, learned about the lives of old people who scavenged waste, and gained some more direct understanding of the garbage problem. During this process, I also went to the transfer station, looked at the surrounding environment of the transfer station, and put forward the idea of the composting experiment. However, when I tried to interview the staff at the transfer station, I was turned down because they were wary of me as a stranger. In this sense, if digital nomads want to better understand the human condition, they need more extensive support, so that they can visit some modern enterprises, and gain a deep understanding of the technical structure of modern enterprises through on-site observation and interviews.

As part of the history of world civilization, digital nomads are expected to strive for excellence. The reason is that we choose to embrace uncertainty, face up to the debt of no one, assume all possible risks after leaving a stable job, act out of concern for civilization, and show the world the human beings in the current technological environment through the Internet. possible way of life.

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About the Three Views of Crooked Neck

We were born from SeeDAO's SIP-79 proposal, and most of our members are from the SeeDAO community, including old crypto OGs, academic experts, financial experts, media people, office workers, college students...

There are two meanings of "Three Views of Crooked Neck", one is "Three Views of Crooked Neck", which means to "observe" web3, to witness, record, and spread everything about web3. The second is "Crooked Neck·Three Views". What "Crooked Neck" wants to show is a punk attitude that is both serious and humorous.

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