We are metaverseal barbarians standing on the border
No, we are not uncivilized barbarians, we are outsiders, so we have different languages and different systems compared to many in the mainstream population.
However, our secondary languages are in the process of producing major literature. And some in the Old World have correspondingly referred to us as dangerous invaders!
Therefore, I am here to call on us "barbarians" to unite together...
What are we waiting for?
"What are we waiting for, assembling in the forum?" The barbarians are coming today."
This is the greek poet Constantine The first line of Waiting for the Barbarians, written by Constantine P. Cavafy in 1904.
I think it resonates with a lot of us, why? As writer Lidija Haas put it in his new poem last year:
"The so-called barbarians represent another kind of lesser group of people — they are coded as foreign, threatening, criminal — and they can be used to frighten the populace and justify any authoritarian measures." Such people don't exist, but they need to be made up."
Think about how Ethereum, DeFi, NFTs, etc. are increasingly starting to face painful, and sometimes outright unfair, regulatory booms. Or some ordinary people also accuse anything related to NFTs of being an outright hoax.
Of course, we can justify these criticisms, and many Web3ers and NFTers are happy to do so, but whether or not the naysayers are aware of it, or even care about it, there's an undercurrent of anti-freedom lurking in their most vicious insults, and they're starting to feel like we crypto nomads are the savages in this equation, right.
Look, there are many reasons to go up the road, to face these difficulties sincerely, and to constantly explain things that others don't know! Keep doing these things!
However, to be comprehensive, we must be realistic. We are increasingly being molded into modern barbarians. There are some interesting subtleties here, so I'll explain them further in the next section. But what do we do? I think that first we should recognize where we are and then act accordingly.
Why are we barbarians?
Definition of "savage clan" from Civilopedia
We're the barbarians of Web3, the barbarians of the metaverse, or whatever you call them.
Admittedly, after rebooting the legendary strategy game Civilization, I've been thinking about this lately. I found a ... Surprisingly authoritative and fair definition of a barbarian.
Here, there are some key conclusions to note:
The etymology of "barbarians" comes from ancient state insiders who simply did not understand what their nomadic outsiders were saying. These outsiders aren't stupid, they just speak a different language and live in a very different (and freer) culture.
Thus, the barbarians are not retrogressive or isolated, but non-state peoples who "coexist with the state". Barbarians resisted clean rule, sometimes pirates, and sometimes major extensions of diplomatic and trade networks.
Thus, back and forth, nations tried to "control and appropriate" the remnants of the barbarians. Ultimately, however, these two aspects are interdependent and indeed coexist.
Sure, comparing the barbarians of yesteryear to the cryptocurrency-savvy adventurers we have today is a bit like comparing apples and oranges, but here are some striking similarities.
It is true that we may be mavericks at the forefront today, so to speak, but our relationship with "insiders" is an interdependent relationship. We "outsiders" may say things they don't yet understand, like Web3 and NFT, but we can expand their culture and trade networks. It's just a fact that our systems may be different, but they're not lagging behind.
We may already have internal and external disputes, but the state, together with us modern barbarians, can make everyone's life better. That was true in the past, and it is true now.
Go mainstream
For night has fallen, and the barbarians have not yet come.
These are the last few lines of Cavafy's Waiting for the Barbarians, which describe the ferocious barbarians that everyone had previously feared, which actually didn't exist at all. Instead, barbarians are more of an allegory than a reality.
At this point, this is how I've recently read most of the mainstream accusations and criticisms against Ethereum and NFTs. Some "insiders" see us as "outsiders" as monsters, and as we "monsters" don't gather at the gates (because we've always been inside them), more and more people will realize that the "metaverse barbarians" don't exist.
Looking back, we've figured out where we are, but what now?
The stakes are high because if we make a lot of mistakes, cryptocurrencies and NFTs may only give way to the closed virtual world of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and Fortnite + Facebook over time. This is not the future that any of us here believe in, and this is not what we meant to be Bankless and "barbarians."
So what we're going to do is: we go up where they go down, we educate where they mislead information, we build where they wither, we avoid where they go all out, we become diplomats where they touch. If we continue to do so, then we have a great opportunity to change the course of human history for the benefit of all.