Concrete Materialist?
The Original BlockChain Klepto Currency
Setting: A serene, timeless garden. Sunlight filters through the leaves of an ancient olive tree. SOPHIA, the embodiment of wisdom, sits on a simple stone bench. BARUCH, the philosopher, approaches and joins her.
Sophia: Welcome, Baruch. I was just observing the great human marketplace. The sheer energy expended, the frantic exchange. And yet, for all the activity, so little of true value seems to be acquired.
Baruch: (Nodding slowly, a thoughtful gaze in his eyes) It is because they misunderstand the nature of their currency. They believe it to be gold, or reputation, or power. They spend their lives accumulating tokens they think will purchase contentment.
All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.
— Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677)
Sophia: But the real currency is something far more intrinsic, isn't it? It is the one thing they are born with and the one thing they can truly choose where to spend.
Baruch: Indeed. A person’s tranquility or turmoil is a direct reflection of the worthiness of the object of their devotion. If they bind their heart to something fleeting—the applause of a crowd, a lover’s passing fancy, a cache of coins—their peace will be just as precarious. It will rise and fall with the tide of fortune, and they will be perpetually shipwrecked.
Sophia: I have a name for this system you so clearly perceive. I call it the Original Blockchain Klepto Currency.
Baruch: (A rare smile touches his lips) An intriguing title. Please, elaborate.
Sophia: Think of a life as a chain of transactions. Each significant attachment, each investment of love and focus, is a new ‘block’ linked inextricably to the last. This creates a personal ledger—a blockchain—that records what a soul has valued. It is immutable; you cannot go back and erase the devotion you gave to a worthless cause.
Baruch: I see the ‘Blockchain’. But why ‘Klepto Currency’? What is being stolen?
Sophia: Happiness itself. The potential for it. The system is rigged from the start. This currency—love, affection, devotion—is the most valuable asset a being possesses. When they are conditioned to invest it in objects of low quality, like fame or ephemeral pleasure, the transaction promises a return, but it is a lie. The very act of the exchange steals their inner peace. They pour their finite, precious currency into a vessel that cannot hold it, and are left with nothing but the hollowness of the vessel itself. It is a theft of the soul, one transaction at a time.
Baruch: A theft disguised as a purchase. They believe they are buying joy, but the price is their own serenity. So the ‘currency’ is love, and the ‘kleptocrat’ is the very system that encourages attachment to unworthy things. The chain they build block by block is not one of wealth, but of bondage.
Sophia: Precisely. They create a perfect, unchangeable record of their own impoverishment. They wonder why their portfolio of worldly success feels so empty, not realizing their core spiritual asset was siphoned off long ago, spent on things that perish.
Baruch: And the only way to escape this system is to refuse to transact in it. One must find a different object for their attachment, an object that does not perish and whose value is not subject to the whims of the world.
Sophia: An object that is eternal, infinite, and unchanging.
Baruch: Yes. The rational order of the universe. The unshakeable truth of existence itself. What I have sometimes called $Deus$ $sive$ $Natura$. To attach one’s love to understanding this is to invest in an asset with infinite returns. It cannot be stolen, for it is everywhere. It cannot decay, for it is the foundation of all things. The happiness derived from it is not a fleeting acquisition, but a constant state of being.
Sophia: So the choice is simple, though profoundly difficult for a mind lost in the marketplace. To continue trading in the Klepto Currency, building a blockchain of sorrow, or to make one final, supreme transaction: to invest the entirety of one’s love into the quality of the eternal.
Baruch: And in so doing, to find they have purchased the one thing that was never for sale: freedom.
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