#fungible

[parlorroom]

It's pronounced fang-eye-ble 🧛🙏

Watch this episode of Parlor Room on Dropout!

[barcoland]

Lucky🤖 Robots🍀 Foundation🏦 Welcomes Newcomer: bg10bo03ha03ar17he04

[titleknown]

So, inspired by @fuckyeahdnd ‘s Nifty the Goblin, I decided to make my own lil friendly creative-commons pixel goob as a fuck-you to NFTs, a lil mushroom person called Fungible, complete with walk cycle!

Then I made some larger walk cycles of the design because I'm not the best at time management! I hope they're endearing despite my sub-par animation skills!

And, as befitting their inspiration, here's the license:

Licence: You can copy, modify and distribute this work, even for commercial projects, strictly excluding those relating to or containing non-fungible tokens (so-called "NFT") or blockchain (related) projects.

Have fun!

[austin-butlerian-jihad]

non-fungible just means something that can be killed in a way that matters

[reniadeb]

[kendxllroy]

f u n g i b l e

[aowski]

It Could Be No One Else

Does anyone’s life matter? Does my life matter? Does it matter if I can’t seem to change anything? Does it matter if I do the right thing? Does it matter if no one cares about my well-being? Would anyone miss me if were suddenly gone? 

At my first job, I was introduced to this idea of human value. Daily I was reminded of my replaceability by a poem displayed prominently on the wall:

“Take a bucket and fill it with water,

Put your hand in it up to the wrist,

Pull it out and the hole that's remaining,

Is a measure of how much you'll be missed.”

— “The Indispensable Man” (Saxon Kessinger)

The poem alluded to the most insidious aspect of our society, fungibility. Fungibility is defined as that which is interchangeable or replaceable. Mass production was made possible with the advent of replaceable components which had to be identical. Even the machinery of mass-production became replaceable.  In effect, it became a fungible asset. Later, as our economy transitioned from stuff to service, the workers became fungible. The stage had been set for this long ago.

Way back in the 17th century, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes said “The Value or Worth of a man is... his Price.”  This is the paradigm we observe in our everyday experience. Our society recognizes human value as market value. But is there an alternate ethic?  From two different stories in pop-culture, from two different genres, we can catch a glimpse of the answer.

In Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, we follow the story of a young man, George Bailey, whose was always dreaming of going to college, travelling the world, and being somebody in it. At pivotal points in his life, when faced with decisions, his character (virtue) is tested. He is repeatedly called to sacrifice his dreams for the well-being of others. Finally, through a mistake by his uncle, and the thievery of his nemesis, he is charged with embezzlement. Facing arrest, he goes to a bar and gets drunk. Then despondent, he goes to a bridge to jump off and end his life. However, an angel named Clarence beats him to it, and in one more virtuous act, George jumps into the river to save Clarence. Clarence shows George what would happen if he had never been born. In doing so, Clarence saves George. The lesson is obvious, but there is a deeper lesson about George’s life:

“When George pulls Clarence out [of the river], Clarence shows him that although the price he paid for virtue was costly, he was the one man who could pay it, thereby standing against a great tide of evil. For all the lives George Bailey touched throughout his life, what he really held back through his (often small) virtuous actions was utter depravity and darkness. He saved countless lives, he prevented financial ruin, he elevated the lowly, he prevented the establishment of institutions degrading to women, he built a community for families where instead there would have been a graveyard. For as costly as George’s virtue was to him personally, the absence of his virtue would have cost his community far more.” —K. B. Hoyle (“George Bailey at the Bridge - The Costly Virtue of It’s a Wonderful Life”)

From the science fiction genre, the Star Trek spin-off Deep Space Nine, we are introduced to another man, quite unlike George Bailey, Benjamin Sisko. At the beginning of the series, we watch him become a widower when his wife dies. A few years later, an embittered Sisko is assigned the command of Deep Space Nine, an abandoned station orbiting the planet Bajor. It was a thankless command that virtually no officer would aspire to and so he considered resigning the commission. His thoughts of resigning were interrupted by the Prophets (timeless beings) who began to show him the arc of his life. The Prophets give him a new perspective and thus propel him into a new mission: bringing peace to warring factions on Bajor.  His title now was not only commander, but “The Emissary of the Prophets”.

Over the course of the series, we learn that his destiny is to save Bajor from another set of timeless beings, the evil Pah-wraiths. This destiny makes demands on Benjamin’s life, demands that he (like George Bailey) chafes against. Near the end, Benjamin sees a vision of a woman, Sarah, a Prophetess, whom he discovers is also his birth mother. In a vision, Sarah confronts Benjamin with his destiny, a destiny he is trying avoid:

Benjamin: “But why me? Why did it have to be me?”

Sarah: “Because it could be no one else.”

That “it could be no one else” points us to the sacred uniqueness of our lives. Sacred uniqueness is the counter-narrative to fungibility. Because if anyone else could do it, then why bother? Why make  the difficult choice?  Why sacrifice? Why practice virtue at all?

Because each of us is unique, each of us has decisions to make that are unique to our circumstance. Each of us is in a position to “bend the moral arc of the universe” as MLK put it, whether we realize it or not. 

“One should see the world, and see himself as a scale with an equal balance of good and evil. When he does one good deed the scale is tipped to the good - he and the world are saved. When he does one evil deed the scale is tipped to the bad - he and the world are destroyed.”—Moses ben Maimon (aka Maimonides)

Our lives are pivotal. Our decisions will affect all that is to come, changing the course of the future. For those who come after us, it will be “a future we will not see” (Elijah Cummings).

So that begs the question, to me at least, what is incumbent upon me because it could be no one else? Whose lives do I touch? What is my unique position that no one else has? To paraphrase Viktor Frankl, "what does life demand of me?" 

[spelledcoffee]

via Giphy https://ift.tt/39Pij33