UPDATE: Virgo is on pause while github.com/gnolang/gno becomes complete.
We are surrounded by fire.
When you follow the news and reports, you find that there is little hope for our future and the future of our children, or that we're on the cusp of the greatest times for humanity.
The system that we have inherited and co-created has become unsustainable.
Though our potential is unlimited in the long run, we have forgotten how to live in harmony. We have been robbed ourselves, yet still we are stealing from the prosperity of future generations.
For the sake of consumption powered by capitalism.
Capitalism is combustion. One's superior ability to accumulate capital begets more capital exponentially. Capitalism is a most magnificent fire that is engulfing our planet.
Power begets power, oil begets oil, and when left unchecked, capitalism extinguishes itself.
When the power of combustion is harnessed in a macro-economic design to bring sustenance and harmony and balance to this ecosystem which we all reside, then we may have a chance of surviving, and fulfilling our collective destiny.
That is, to harness the power of our sun, to reach out to the stars, to spread out and multiply the joy of our being.
As Carl Sagan said, "We're made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself."
And this stardust just wants to finally feel at home, and at peace and in love with ourselves, and at peace with the laws of the universe.
While capitalism may appear to be an unstoppable force, the fact of the matter is, capital and private property are constructs of our collective hallucination. It is we the people who enforce property laws. It does not need be this way. Our minds are open and powerful enough to consider different ways of being.
And we must. Unless we want to find ourselves completely surrounded by the machines of private property, and become discarded, as the prophet James Cameron had forewarned us about.
We must each use our voices, that we have always had but never had the opportunity to effectively use, and sing out loud with a thunder that pierces through the fabric of this constructed hallucination, and change the tune of our reality, for the progression of this song called humanity.
Today we are given a golden opportunity to harness the gift of computing in our hands, and communicate at the speed of light, to reimagine where we as a collective society decide to devote our collective focus and power.
By the nature of free, voluntary trade, we can make this transition entirely peaceful, to synthesize a new beginning that transcends the false duality of capitalism vs socialism.
Under no authority, and with no preconceived notion of nations, and rethink the way we have been considering borders and citizenship, For all people are citizens of this world.
Time is in short supply. We are dealing with an apocalyptic set of unfolding tragedies. A deteriorating environment, worsening global warming and climate change, soon to be causing the loss of power and electricity, and food shortages.
(what color is the air?)
the worsening economy, through the implosion of a global pyramid scheme, responsible for the exploitation of people, and our natural resources.
the relentless struggle to obtain more, whether driven by capitalist ideals -- or by production quotas, and exploited by profit mongers, causing us people to lose sense of what it means to be human.
The racket of war, for oil and power, already disintegrating continental unions.
And in the greatest superpowers we see, the tolerance and acceptance of darkness, of opacity and unaccountability, and decay into tyranny.
We must not compromise on our core values. Of transparency, accountability, individual freedom and, not just of sustainability, but of regenerative environmental integration, (for we are tenders of the earth), of democracy and equality, and of open mindedness.
By fully committing to our common core values, of transparency, accountability, invidivual freedom and environmental stewardship, of providing voice and exit, of democracy, security, and efficiency, of open mindedness and dialog, of cooperation, if we truly commit to our core values, if we organize these communities to be decentralized and autonomous yet connected,
Then from the votes of the people, with our hands and feet lead by our reason, with our attention and associations, with our words and allegiances, with radical transparency, the right communities will emerge and prosper.
When moon? No, that is just a stepping stone. When Virgo. If starting is half the journey, we would be half-way when,
When the software that powers our social networking and communications are completely open source and free, with privacy well integrated and enabled by default, and there exists not one monopoly or an oligopoly but a vast federation of networks speaking a common protocol for interoperability.
When the protocols are well designed enough for multiple implementations to compete to provide constructive dialog & information discovery, and also designed to enable our long term happiness and well-being.
When our mobile and desktop devices are completely open and Free designs, such that anyone could manufacture them, and that we can know with near certainty that our devices in our hands are secure and not compromised by any authority.
When open and Free hardware is produced in volumes large enough to lower its cost and increase its quality.
When the world has become so saturated with open source, when it becomes the norm, where genuine contributions are rewarded automagically.
When our hardware devices are optimized not only for usability, but also for waste reduction and reusability via modularity, and to take into account the full cycle of manufacturing to disposal in the cost of things, rather than designed for profits from consumerism.
When our social services and public agencies are not held hostage by executive incompetence, but are comprised of a network of interoperating decentralized autonomous organizations, where any majority (of individuals) has the power to enact change.
When we have trust in our institutions by virtue of their openness and transparency and accountability.
When our representatives are not merely talking heads on censored media channels, but are people that we know through our exposure, accounting for different areas of expertise,
When we synthesize these open and free software, hardware, protocols, procedures, and data to make intelligent collective decisions for resource management, and to enable radically transparent operation which is necessary for accountability, but also to facilitate constructive dialog.
When it all comes together to enable human coordination at any scale, from social groups to corporations and coops to international communities united under a common mission, to states and municipal governments with a public engaged in democracy,
When all the people of the earth feel that their voices are heard and that it matters,
When our internet infrastructure becomes sufficiently open and resilient, when censorship becomes impossible due to the nature of an incentivized networking protocol owned and operated by each local community.
When our financial system is designed to give power to the people and environment it should serve, rather than bow to the hollow,
When no authority has the ability to dictate which monetary system one can use by decree, but rather when we the buyers and sellers get to vote with our crypto wallets, what causes to support, such as via the adoption and holding of a local currency, where inflationary issuances and voluntary tax revenues are used to fund common infrastructure development; not by virtue of legislation, but goodwill and social cohesion.
When our financial system is designed to heal the people and the planet on which they depend, rather than incentivize the exploitation of it.
When we are given the opportunity to master any aspect of the technological infrastructure on which our livelihoods depend,
When we no longer need to expend our time and livelihood accounting for our taxes, but rather we are in control of (if and) where they are allocated, in an open, transparent, and auditable model.
When all of these new systems work together to heal the planet and our sense of greater community bound by love, not hate and fear.
"Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!" - Mayer Amschel Rothschild
"If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.” - Sir David Attenborough
"Big Brother is Watching You." - George Orwell, 1984
Our social-communications/financial/governance systems must be designed to help us coordinate better to solve the world's biggest challenges.
Virgo is an open association of individuals and organizations working together to create better open tools for coordination at all scales.
We believe that global coordination tools can be made by following the virtues of openness and accountability, stemming from a kind of radical transparency; and by drawing from lessons from history of our financial and sociological systems.
"The European Commission is "currently investigating potential anti-competitive behavior" related to the Libra Association amid concerns the proposed payment system would unfairly shut out rivals, the EU authority said in a questionnaire sent out earlier this month." - Bloomberg 2019-08-20
"In mythology, a Libra is related to the Greek Goddess of Justice, Themis, the Greek mythology version of Atalanta (meaning balanced), and Astraea (daughter of Themis), who went up to heaven and became the constellation of Virgo, and carried the scales of justice, which is the constellation Libra." - Wikipedia
Bitcoin is the IDEA and BRAND of decentralized, transparent, accountable Money. Facebook-Libra is a BRAND of an industry managed Money. Open-Libra is the IDEA of decentralized, transparent, accountable Finance. Virgo is an IDEA and BRAND of decentralized, transparent, accountable Human Coordination.
Virgo as a BRAND is managed by a DAO called the United DAOs of Virgo, or UDV for short.