Hello, Привет and 你好！

Hello people of Steem! My name is Ryan, and I’m pleased to be joining this community - it seems like y’all have a pretty good thing going here. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks exploring Steemit a bit, reading posts, FAQs, the Steem Whitepaper, and generally getting my mind around how the blockchain, cryptocurrencies like Steem and DApps like Steemit, work. So much to learn, but a really interesting adventure to begin, too! So, this is me: 

and so is this: and so is this.

As an information tech professional and evolving writer, I’ll be posting mostly long form articles here about the various subjects that interest me: technology, geopolitics, ponerology, psychology, philosophy, history and astronomy, just to name a few. I have a personal blog that I’ve been running for, oh, many moons now and I contribute to independent news and journalism website Sott.net (The World For People Who Think). I also use Twitter fairly voluminously when I use it (who doesn’t, right? 😄) and I’m looking forward to seeing how the economics of cryptocurrency and the transparency of the blockchain will hopefully provide a platform that will self-correct all the problems inherent in a platform like Twitter (censorship, excessive centralisation of power, rampant abuse, low signal-to-noise ratio etc.) and other popular social media platforms along the same lines.

I’m also an ex-DJ with a penchant for Dutch gabber, and like health, fitness, travel and all things Eurasia; I’m currently living in Australia, learning Russian (Привет!), and I intend to move there as soon as practically possible. Я знаю, правый? I took a voyage to Russia and China at the beginning of 2017; Crimea, St Petersburg, Moscow, and the Trans-Siberian railway through to Harbin, in the north of China, then onwards to Beijing - a totally life-changing experience that I’m writing a series of articles about at the moment (I’ve already published part one, I’ll re-post it here soon). Here’s some pics:

My philosophical and spiritual influences include Pythagorus, Aesop, Socrates, Confucius, Mencius, Kant, Kierkegaard, Ouspensky, Gurdjieff, Collingwood, Castaneda, McKenna, my grandmother Jess (rest her soul) and Laura Knight-Jadczyk (a true genius in every sense of the word).

Five books that I think are must-reads:

12 Rules For Life - Jordan Peterson

In Search of the Miraculous - Piotr Ouspensky

Political Ponerology - Andrezj Lobaczewski

The Secret History of the World (Volume 1) - Laura Knight-Jadczyk

The Wave (Volume 4) - Laura Knight-Jadczyk

Man’s Search For Meaning - Victor Frankl, The Hero with a Thousand Faces - Joseph Campbell and The Idea of History - Robin Collingwood also rate a mention as well.

One of the interesting things inherent in the Steemit platform is that robust discussion can have economic benefits. On other social media platforms we’ve seen the phenomenon of how trolls try to shut down or vector fruitful discussions under the guise of stopping “hate speech” - on Steemit, this kind of activity can actually activate an anti-censorship mechanism. All attention, bad or good, can result in economic advantage for the author, something that intolerant, reactive types loathe. Their only way of counteracting such a result is to not feed the discussion, thus allowing space for concepts to be explored without ideological bias - at least consciously. Where such efforts can be considered state-sponsored, the decentralised nature of the blockchain provides a way for the discussion to be easily routed outside state or legislative boundaries, preventing control at the level of networks or hardware. While not attack-proof, I’ve already seen examples on Steemit of malicious actors being quickly suppressed by the effective countermeasures of those genuinely interested in the welfare of the community. It gives me hope that some part of the Internet can continue to evolve in a productive manner useful for humanity!

I look forward to seeing how Steemit and its community grow, and being a part of that, in some small way. Nice to meet you all - I hope you enjoy my posts; comments are definitely welcome!

Best wishes,

Ryan