In one sense, this entire course has been building up an understanding of what implementing a blockchain at (inter)planetary scale could mean for humanity. Vienna Looi calls it a "world computing fabric" and you can think of it as the great gift of this time, because it is not bound by space in the same sense we are (there is one world machine, which is everywhere and nowhere). Benjamin Bratton calls it "planetarity" - a radically different sort of philosophy. He asks:

Here, again, we run into the seeming paradoxes waiting in the shadows of anything we truly wish to learn. Can planetary sapience - a world wide web of wisdom - survive the consequences of its own appearance? Can we shoulder what Bratton calls "an unpayable debt", can we learn to receive gifts in good faith and with the kind of responsibility they require to become spirited? Doing so requires creativity and an appreciation of nuance. Automation can be ecological, intelligence can be multiple, "planetarity" need not mean singular purpose: it is diversity, after all, which is an appropriate response to scarcity. To return once more to Ivan Illich (and a co-conspirator of his, Jacky Brown):

These new econo-linguistic networks that implement money as a fully programmable protocol, which anyone is free to use and where the cost of speaking meaningfully is well-defined everywhere do not fit well into any model we have. To reference Eric Raymond again, they are neither cathedral nor bazaar. However, as with everything else in this course, serene temples and bustling merchant tables are not mutually exclusive: they are two ends of the same spectrum.

Before we managed to merge the narratives around which we organize with our shared records of societal debt, Jesus had to throw the tables out the temple. However, it wasn't because the two are fundamentally incompatible. Three gospels state that his reason was that the authorities were thieving from the people. If you control the temple - i.e. the people's access to meaning - then you can use it to manipulate commercial transactions for your own benefit. It was these tables of power Jesus overturned.

When you build digital temples no-one controls, then commerce and communion need not be at odds. Faith and finance (and every fiction between) are a reflection of one reality. There is no separation between these activities, bar that which we create for ourselves.

This is not to promote religious zealotry in crypto: it is about recognizing that the heart of value has always been shared truths which are developed and extended through narrative.

Exploring truth together using shared tools no-one controls creates the conditions required to fuel lifelong learning, that is, to scale ability across the species. Language was the first logically decentralized system and increases in literacy have always resulted in large social changes; tectonic shifts in how we relate (to) our shared myths. Scaled blockchains are the evolution of logically decentralized systems for the creation, negotiation, and transfer of value.

Speaking of language, the word "religion" has a fascinating history. Cicero traced it's roots to relegere, which he interpreted as "read again". However, the Church Fathers (Augustine in particular) preferred tracing it to religare, which means "to bind fast" (and carries with it connotations of obligation).

If you prefer the Church Father's interpretation, you can enrich the connotation of obligation with Graeber's perspective of what debt really is. It also poses the question: "What are you bound to - incidentals, or fundamentals?" Continuously investigating the bounds of your life means peeling away your preconceived expectations.

As Graeber points out, in the original Aramaic, The Lord's Prayer reads, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those who are indebted to us." The root of the life we are given is a debt upon us. The highest response possible is to forgive others and pay forward your share.

For too long the means of payment, the means of expressing our gifts in ways which are valuable and which create more value for those around us, have been owned by temple authorities. We now have the opportunity to create more consciously the times in which we live and engineer valuable stories which are not owned by one person or group; just as no-one owns the meaning of words.

To illustrate how rich the results are when no-one owns the means by which we communicate, we can turn to Cicero's interpretation of religion as relegere, or "read again". Let's start by returning to read more deeply the roots of this highly contested word. mapachurro reminds us:

We are called to "read" (perceive, observe, interpret), again and again, in each moment of our lives. Such reading presupposes relationship. If you are the reader, who is writing? One calls the other into this mutual binding, and we are invited to respond with care. It is a holy invitation, for we are re-creating here and now, re-creating again and again, mutually, among us, this shared life.

Care, in this context, might apply not just to our ability to cultivate greater hospitality for more "others" in how we read each moment of life, but also to an increasingly fine awareness of all that we have not considered. Care like this brings not just hospitality, but honesty and humility: all of which are prerequisites for mutual binding that is constructive and healthy. They might also be the preconditions for grace.

And, God knows, we need grace if this world wide web is to body forth the wisdom required to survive the consequences of its own appearance.

If you are distracted or bored or turned off by the word "religion" no matter what its roots are, we offer you instead this poem:

Here is hope that finds
when all hope is lost,
the faith that binds
when all belief is broken,
the lifetime given
when time has run out,
the god who stays
when all gods have gone,
gently holding your heart,
saying, look again
at how we are learning to love.