joe alexander

Counselor interested in citizen groups that use Bitcoin

Last Notes

2025-07-07 16:39:52 UTC

- reply

In order to have a paradigm shift and build the decentralized future that we want, changing the money and stacking sats are just the first steps. For true decentralized community building to occur we need to change the model for how we build. Humans domination of our planet and becoming the apex predator are because of our ability to work together, a network effect. Most of our current societal models emphasize the individual. Incentives support and encourage the individual, as if a sovereign individual is the protocol level of society. This is incorrect. The protocol level of humanity are small interconnected intimate groups of 6 to 15 people. Often these groups gather around a specific morality. You can see an example of this in the current OP return debate within the Bitcoin community. Certain Bitcoin maximalists have a moral reaction to spam and are coming up with ways to attempt to outlaw it. Other maximalists argue with them. Both sides are having a moral argument. In my read of the situation most pragmatists don't like spam but the proposals to limit it would be ineffectual and in some ways worse.
Our morality & how that gets expressed matters deeply.

2025-06-20 13:40:41 UTC

@npub13ur…du47
The Therapeutic Citizen Project: A Way to use Decentralized Protocols for Human Evolution
The Therapeutic Citizen Project is a Social/Technological Protocol for our age. An idea built on the history of human cooperation that existed before the last 5000 years. The last 5000 years have been a domination model of human existence. The few control the many and society is stratified, this is not how our ancestors lived and thrived and became the top predator on our planet. The Therapeutic Citizen Project emerges at this critical juncture, proposing a revolutionary vision: to realign humanity to its core nature: social engagement. A way to heal the division of disengagement that has permeated our culture by using tools that are only now at this time in history available to us. The model integrates three powerful decentralized protocols—Bitcoin's monetary system, Nostr's communication layer, and Chaumian mints' privacy tools—with established therapeutic frameworks. To accomplish this we need to come back to who we are, social builders. We either grow and nurture the circles we live in or those circles shrink and get sick. We are at a time in history where we can build Web 3. A platform that we create as citizens to connect and learn & build the future we want to see in this time of rapid change and upheaval.
How did we get here? At the Crossroads of Crisis and Possibility
Central to this conversation is that we need a new narrative of what it means to be human. The common narrative that we are competitive, only care about ourselves and claw our way to the top through whatever means necessary has led to our world today. Today's world is divided, we are segregated into us vs. them groups. Social media algorithms, 24/7 news cycles, and a society increasingly focused on personality over values leave many of us feeling disconnected and overwhelmed. In the last 80 years we've undergone a profound shift from valuing character to valuing personality. Once, traits like integrity, humility, and kindness were central to what made someone worthy of admiration. Today, we're in an era where personality dominates—the loudest, boldest, and most attention-grabbing individuals are rewarded not for their depth of character but for their ability to perform, build an audience and market themselves.
As the author Gabor Maté argues in "The Myth of Normal," our society breeds disease and illness by neglecting "the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds." What we consider "normal" in contemporary society actually represents a profoundly traumatized state, with disconnection, addiction, and chronic stress accepted as inevitable features of human existence.
Trust, the fundamental element in building safe, predictable interactions and relationships between humans is at an all time low. Trust in centralized institutions such as banks, multinational and other corporations, governments, healthcare and even schools has decreased steadily over the last 50 years. 12% of Americans report they have no close friends up from 3% in 1990. In my area, mental health, we have never been more skilled. We can now effectively treat many conditions that 40 and even 20 years ago were untreatable. Yet the need for mental health continues to skyrocket. When medicine gets stronger and the results weaker we have to pull the camera back and see more of the big picture. My conclusion, our communities are sick, they are a result of the misaligned incentives built into our current domination/submission system.
While this era of division and mistrust may feel unprecedented, history suggests we've been here before. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in "The Fourth Turning," society operates in cycles of approximately 80-90 years, with the last phase marked by crisis and restructuring. Central to their 4th Turning, is the idea that as each generation moves further away from a major war they lose the visceral, gut punch memory of how horrific war is. Each successive generation becomes less willing to work with those that think and vote differently from themselves. We now stand in another Fourth Turning, ripe with political, economic, and social upheaval. In times of turmoil, change is not only inevitable but necessary. Those who thrive are those with the inner resources to adapt and work collaboratively toward a better future.
The 5000-Year Domination Experiment: How We Got Here
We live in a culture that for 167 generations has gone against our fundamental human nature. Our ancestors tolerated leadership only when seasonally necessary, with leaders having persuasive but no absolute authority. Just 5000 years ago—the last 2% of our time as Homo sapiens—heroic warrior cultures became dominant, and hierarchy became rigidly stratified for military purposes. Elites were created, and we adopted an evolutionary fork that has led to our current state.
The last 5000 years have been an experiment in domination/submission that we've mistakenly accepted as normal. This stratification into rigid classes doesn't promote safety or stability. When wealth inequality becomes extreme—as it is now, with the top 1% of Americans controlling 32-35% of wealth while the bottom 50% controls just 2%, it ignites moral outrage and destabilizes society.
Humanity has embraced the evolutionary fork of wholesale domination of large groups. The few control the many, with elites manipulating from the shadows through scary narratives that appeal to moral outrage. Someone truly powerful, a true leader, doesn't need to resort to fear as a weapon. The ones who want to control you, want you reacting rather than thinking. Evaluating, gathering information, and organizing is not what these elites desire. We forget that this class system we take as normal is a made-up fantasy—a narrative where some people are considered inherently better, their children entitled to privilege, while everyone else exists to serve.
Human Nature: Cooperation as Our Secret Sauce
Prior to the creation of elites about 5000 years ago. The archeological record of the last 30,000 years suggests that war was unknown. Sure there were skirmishes and some humans killed other humans but that was not commonplace. More commonplace was that when we met strangers we were curious and interested in what they had seen. We were interested in trade and novel goods from faraway places. Many theorists believe it is our friendliness—our capacity for cooperation—that has been the primary driver of our success as a species. Humanity's secret sauce is our community-building and networking capability.
As Rutger Bregman argues in "Humankind: A Hopeful History," humans are "hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another." This perspective challenges the dominant cynical view that has shaped much of Western thought and social organization.
The Republic's Original Vision: The Lost Promise of Civic Engagement
The USA, where I have the privilege to write this, was founded on an idea of freedom and self-governance. Our republic was established as a move away from monarchical rule and the nobility system. The founding fathers agreed on this principle but disagreed on specifics—could common men be trusted to vote without it becoming mob rule? They ultimately decided yes, though most states initially restricted voting to white landowners.
The founders knew that an involved, educated citizenry was the only way a democracy could thrive. In Lincoln's time, 80 years later, universal mandatory education was implemented to foster active citizenship. This focus on citizenry has since been lost. As mentioned earlier trust in centralized institutions—government, big business, banks, religions, political parties—is at an all-time low.
I got into Bitcoin in 2016 as an investment. After over 50+ hours of studying this technology I recognized the paradigm shifts that increased adoption will bring to money and our society. As I applied this new paradigm to my area: mental health, I realized that public blockchains are ideally suited for building therapeutic citizen communities worldwide that can address the root causes of our current crisis.
If this devaluing of trusted institutions happens every 80-90 years the time is now for big-picture power shifts. The next two years will be significant in this cycle, and the Therapeutic Citizen Project offers a framework for navigating and influencing this transition.
The Network Protocol for Humanity's Secret Sauce
At the heart of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is an idea that joining small interconnected citizen groups can reshape society. These groups will build the technology, services and self/group knowledge needed for societal transformation from the bottom up. To connect and foster these groups Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays), a decentralized protocol that amplifies humanity's natural networking capacity would be a natural tool. Unlike centralized social media platforms that censor content and track user behavior, Nostr enables censorship-resistant communication through a distributed network of relays without requiring trust in any central authority.
The technical elegance of Nostr lies in its minimalism—at its core, it consists of:
Public/private key cryptography for secure identity verification
Event objects (primarily text notes) signed by author keys
Relay servers that store and transmit events between users
Clients that interact with relays to publish and retrieve events
This simple foundation enables remarkably complex social interactions without the vulnerabilities of centralized platforms. For the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Nostr would provide several essential functions:
Community Coordination: Small healing communities use Nostr for internal coordination, scheduling meetings, sharing resources, and documenting their evolution. Unlike centralized tools that create dependence on corporate platforms, Nostr ensures communities maintain control of their communication infrastructure.
Knowledge Preservation: Through Nostr's distributed relay system, communities document “test kitchen proven” therapeutic techniques, financial education materials, and successful services. This creates an evolving body of wisdom accessible to all participants yet resistant to censorship or control.
Cross-Community Networking: Perhaps most critically, Nostr enables connections between communities without requiring hierarchical organization. Each group maintains autonomy while participating in a broader network of shared values and practices.
Intergenerational Continuity: Nostr's protocol-based approach ensures that knowledge and connections can persist across generations. As technology evolves, the basic protocol remains compatible, creating continuity despite inevitable changes in implementation details.
Censorship Resistance: In an era of increasing digital surveillance and control, Nostr provides communication channels resistant to governmental or corporate interference. This protects communities exploring alternative social structures from suppression.
Bitcoin: The Trustless Foundation for Financial Sovereignty
Within the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Bitcoin establishes the monetary foundation for community financial sovereignty. Through a study of global finance and individual wealth building community members share knowledge about self-custody of this scarce commodity. Bitcoin and its success and especially resilience is a new model, a better paradigm for how humans can work with money ideally suited for our technological age. A Bitcoin circular economy within the Therapeutic Citizen Project would be a natural way to build with this peer to peer protocol system.
Chaumian Mints: Privacy for True Sovereignty
While Bitcoin provides a foundation for financial sovereignty, its public ledger presents privacy challenges. Chaumian mints, named after cryptographer David Chaum, address this limitation by enabling privacy-preserving transactions using blind signature cryptography, allowing value transfer without surveillance.
This privacy isn't about concealment for illicit purposes but about protection from surveillance capitalism and governmental overreach—systems that perpetuate trauma-inducing power dynamics. In an age when your attention is constantly captured and sold, privacy represents true sovereignty. Chaumian mints also promote community and trust.
Web 3.0: Beyond the Attention Economy
Every day I spend some portion frustrated and struggling with the digital world—remembering passwords, determining whether communications are real or scams, navigating the battles between Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Each "free" service aims to capture my attention within their walled garden, harvesting my information and selling it to the highest bidder.
These are products of Web 2.0—read and write capability powered by advertising money from capturing our attention and selling our privacy. It's based on the old TV advertising model perfected over 70 years. The best way to create engagement is through strong emotions, with fear and outrage being the most powerful. An alternative now exists: Web 3.0—read, write, and own.
This new web allows individuals to own their content outright without depending on Web 2.0 platforms, or their hefty fees. Native digital money (Bitcoin) enables micropayments, putting individuals in charge through a pay-as-you-go model. Web 3 restores privacy and self-sovereignty. It is the platform that a Social/Technological Protocol of small trust communities would build with the technologies of Bitcoin, Nostr and Chaumian Mints. Only if citizens own and grow & use Web 3 can us win. We have seen where Web 2 with its misaligned incentives has gotten us, we need a Plan B and a more human way through this transition.
Community Structure: Circles of Trust
The Mission of Small Groups
The mission of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is to build therapeutic communities that enable members to study citizenship, financial literacy and their often hidden internal motivations. By combining a focus on these 3 areas, groups can pursue generational wealth and start to build the civic society they want their grandchildren to live in: a decentralized network of community groups.These small groups connect with others to form larger therapeutic communities that use blockchain as their recording and payment system for interactions benefiting the whole.
The Project organizes participants into "Circles of Trust"—groups of 8-14 individuals with a designated facilitator to mediate conflict and teach members to work together. Members commit to 1-3 hours of inquiry, study, and practice, including better self-care for every hour in group.
Groups build buddy systems for support and accountability. Leaders write notes to all members after group and mid-week, summarizing progress and goals. Members connect through calls, texts, and video conferences between meetings to promote compliance and prevent self-sabotage. Groups structure incentives so that when individuals achieve their goals, the whole group benefits—potentially through micropayments or other rewards.
Online sessions begin with grounding techniques to facilitate online aliveness, before moving into structured therapeutic tools. These groups are essentially study groups that commit to fostering the groups financial and therapeutic development first before they tackle social and logistical problems in their local community.
Principles of Group Development
These groups serve as building blocks for healthy lifestyle communities. Each member of an original group can develop their own group of 6-14 to join the larger therapeutic community. Later developments could include social service groups representing America's or the country they originate in, demographic mixed by race, socioeconomic status (5:1 disparity in 6-15 person groups), political affiliation (50% liberal/50% conservative), and religious orientation. These groups would address critical infrastructure needs, developing plans and action steps for local communities with members committing to weekly time contributions.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project recognizes this collective traumatization, understanding that individual healing cannot be separated from addressing the societal structures that perpetuate trauma. As Maté observes, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today's culture stresses the body and undermines emotional balance.
This insight has profound implications for how we approach healing. Rather than merely treating symptoms or focusing exclusively on individual psychology, the Project creates containers for healing that operate outside traditional hierarchical systems. These communities serve as microcosms of a different social possibility—spaces where both individual and collective trauma can be addressed simultaneously.
The Decentralized Healing Process
By combining financial sovereignty with therapeutic practices, communities create environments where members can:
Recognize conditioning: Identify how hierarchical systems have shaped beliefs and behaviors, often promoting a dependence on and for some a sense of entitlement that the centralized authority will take care of you
Reclaim sovereignty: Take responsibility for both financial resources and psychological well-being
Rebuild connection: Form authentic relationships based on mutual respect rather than power dynamics or charismatic personalities.
Restore balance: Create sustainable systems that honor both individual needs and collective well-being
Regenerate culture: Develop new social patterns that support healing and growth & build an educated active citizenry.
Develop services that other small and larger groups can adopt and learn from.
This process occurs simultaneously at individual, community, and network levels, creating a fractal pattern where healing at one level supports transformation at others. The decentralized nature of both the financial tools and communication infrastructure prevents the recreation of traumatic power dynamics while providing a safe & stable environment to grow and realize our best potential.
Conclusion: An Invitation to Participation
For the last five years, I've struggled with how to put this big idea into practical terms and develop the specifics necessary to operationalize this insight. I have a framework for study, but my biggest takeaway is that this structure needs to be built from the ground up by involved citizens who are hopeful about the future and work today to build the society they want their children and grandchildren to live in tomorrow.
The time is now for big-picture power shifts. The Therapeutic Citizen Project invites you to become part of—and help build—the society you want to live in. What I'm asking of you is to become involved in a movement that I estimate will take 1-3 generations, 30-90 years. I believe that in that timeframe, 85% of humanity could learn to work together instead of fighting each other.
Because of the 80-year cycles identified by Strauss and Howe, the next two years will be significant in determining long-term trajectories. Come study with us and add your voice to this movement. The least I expect you to gain is how to build generational wealth, develop trusted friends, and greater self-awareness of your own motives and moral drivers.
However, I expect you will come to see how focusing on practical ways to promote citizenry worldwide can help you and your community today. A paradigm shift always starts with a single idea that gains widespread adoption. Together we can influence and shape the outcome of this cycle, by building and using Web 3 communally. Nostr, Bitcoin, and Chaumian mints are tools we can now use to create the technological foundation for a more human future—one that honors our natural tendency toward cooperation rather than the domination systems that have traumatized us for 167 generations.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project isn't just a theory—it's an invitation to practical action that begins today and extends for several generations, creating the world our great-grandchildren deserve to inherit.

2025-06-19 12:08:34 UTC

This is a 2500 word paper on how we could use Nostr, BTC and Chaumain Mints to build 6-15 member groups studying themselves from a therapeutic perspective to build resilient communities. These communities would be builders & users of Web 3.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project: A Way to use Decentralized Protocols for Human Evolution
The Therapeutic Citizen Project is a Social/Technological Protocol for our age. An idea built on the history of human cooperation that existed before the last 5000 years. The last 5000 years have been a domination model of human existence. The few control the many and society is stratified, this is not how our ancestors lived and thrived and became the top predator on our planet. The Therapeutic Citizen Project emerges at this critical juncture, proposing a revolutionary vision: to realign humanity to its core nature: social engagement. A way to heal the division of disengagement that has permeated our culture by using tools that are only now at this time in history available to us. The model integrates three powerful decentralized protocols—Bitcoin's monetary system, Nostr's communication layer, and Chaumian mints' privacy tools—with established therapeutic frameworks. To accomplish this we need to come back to who we are, social builders. We either grow and nurture the circles we live in or those circles shrink and get sick. We are at a time in history where we can build Web 3. A platform that we create as citizens to connect and learn & build the future we want to see in this time of rapid change and upheaval.
How did we get here? At the Crossroads of Crisis and Possibility
Central to this conversation is that we need a new narrative of what it means to be human. The common narrative that we are competitive, only care about ourselves and claw our way to the top through whatever means necessary has led to our world today. Today's world is divided, we are segregated into us vs. them groups. Social media algorithms, 24/7 news cycles, and a society increasingly focused on personality over values leave many of us feeling disconnected and overwhelmed. In the last 80 years we've undergone a profound shift from valuing character to valuing personality. Once, traits like integrity, humility, and kindness were central to what made someone worthy of admiration. Today, we're in an era where personality dominates—the loudest, boldest, and most attention-grabbing individuals are rewarded not for their depth of character but for their ability to perform, build an audience and market themselves.
As the author Gabor Maté argues in "The Myth of Normal," our society breeds disease and illness by neglecting "the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds." What we consider "normal" in contemporary society actually represents a profoundly traumatized state, with disconnection, addiction, and chronic stress accepted as inevitable features of human existence.
Trust, the fundamental element in building safe, predictable interactions and relationships between humans is at an all time low. Trust in centralized institutions such as banks, multinational and other corporations, governments, healthcare and even schools has decreased steadily over the last 50 years. 12% of Americans report they have no close friends up from 3% in 1990. In my area, mental health, we have never been more skilled. We can now effectively treat many conditions that 40 and even 20 years ago were untreatable. Yet the need for mental health continues to skyrocket. When medicine gets stronger and the results weaker we have to pull the camera back and see more of the big picture. My conclusion, our communities are sick, they are a result of the misaligned incentives built into our current domination/submission system.
While this era of division and mistrust may feel unprecedented, history suggests we've been here before. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in "The Fourth Turning," society operates in cycles of approximately 80-90 years, with the last phase marked by crisis and restructuring. Central to their 4th Turning, is the idea that as each generation moves further away from a major war they lose the visceral, gut punch memory of how horrific war is. Each successive generation becomes less willing to work with those that think and vote differently from themselves. We now stand in another Fourth Turning, ripe with political, economic, and social upheaval. In times of turmoil, change is not only inevitable but necessary. Those who thrive are those with the inner resources to adapt and work collaboratively toward a better future.
The 5000-Year Domination Experiment: How We Got Here
We live in a culture that for 167 generations has gone against our fundamental human nature. Our ancestors tolerated leadership only when seasonally necessary, with leaders having persuasive but no absolute authority. Just 5000 years ago—the last 2% of our time as Homo sapiens—heroic warrior cultures became dominant, and hierarchy became rigidly stratified for military purposes. Elites were created, and we adopted an evolutionary fork that has led to our current state.
The last 5000 years have been an experiment in domination/submission that we've mistakenly accepted as normal. This stratification into rigid classes doesn't promote safety or stability. When wealth inequality becomes extreme—as it is now, with the top 1% of Americans controlling 32-35% of wealth while the bottom 50% controls just 2%, it ignites moral outrage and destabilizes society.
Humanity has embraced the evolutionary fork of wholesale domination of large groups. The few control the many, with elites manipulating from the shadows through scary narratives that appeal to moral outrage. Someone truly powerful, a true leader, doesn't need to resort to fear as a weapon. The ones who want to control you, want you reacting rather than thinking. Evaluating, gathering information, and organizing is not what these elites desire. We forget that this class system we take as normal is a made-up fantasy—a narrative where some people are considered inherently better, their children entitled to privilege, while everyone else exists to serve.
Human Nature: Cooperation as Our Secret Sauce
Prior to the creation of elites about 5000 years ago. The archeological record of the last 30,000 years suggests that war was unknown. Sure there were skirmishes and some humans killed other humans but that was not commonplace. More commonplace was that when we met strangers we were curious and interested in what they had seen. We were interested in trade and novel goods from faraway places. Many theorists believe it is our friendliness—our capacity for cooperation—that has been the primary driver of our success as a species. Humanity's secret sauce is our community-building and networking capability.
As Rutger Bregman argues in "Humankind: A Hopeful History," humans are "hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another." This perspective challenges the dominant cynical view that has shaped much of Western thought and social organization.
The Republic's Original Vision: The Lost Promise of Civic Engagement
The USA, where I have the privilege to write this, was founded on an idea of freedom and self-governance. Our republic was established as a move away from monarchical rule and the nobility system. The founding fathers agreed on this principle but disagreed on specifics—could common men be trusted to vote without it becoming mob rule? They ultimately decided yes, though most states initially restricted voting to white landowners.
The founders knew that an involved, educated citizenry was the only way a democracy could thrive. In Lincoln's time, 80 years later, universal mandatory education was implemented to foster active citizenship. This focus on citizenry has since been lost. As mentioned earlier trust in centralized institutions—government, big business, banks, religions, political parties—is at an all-time low.
I got into Bitcoin in 2016 as an investment. After over 50+ hours of studying this technology I recognized the paradigm shifts that increased adoption will bring to money and our society. As I applied this new paradigm to my area: mental health, I realized that public blockchains are ideally suited for building therapeutic citizen communities worldwide that can address the root causes of our current crisis.
If this devaluing of trusted institutions happens every 80-90 years the time is now for big-picture power shifts. The next two years will be significant in this cycle, and the Therapeutic Citizen Project offers a framework for navigating and influencing this transition.
The Network Protocol for Humanity's Secret Sauce
At the heart of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is an idea that joining small interconnected citizen groups can reshape society. These groups will build the technology, services and self/group knowledge needed for societal transformation from the bottom up. To connect and foster these groups Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays), a decentralized protocol that amplifies humanity's natural networking capacity would be a natural tool. Unlike centralized social media platforms that censor content and track user behavior, Nostr enables censorship-resistant communication through a distributed network of relays without requiring trust in any central authority.
The technical elegance of Nostr lies in its minimalism—at its core, it consists of:
Public/private key cryptography for secure identity verification
Event objects (primarily text notes) signed by author keys
Relay servers that store and transmit events between users
Clients that interact with relays to publish and retrieve events
This simple foundation enables remarkably complex social interactions without the vulnerabilities of centralized platforms. For the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Nostr would provide several essential functions:
Community Coordination: Small healing communities use Nostr for internal coordination, scheduling meetings, sharing resources, and documenting their evolution. Unlike centralized tools that create dependence on corporate platforms, Nostr ensures communities maintain control of their communication infrastructure.
Knowledge Preservation: Through Nostr's distributed relay system, communities document “test kitchen proven” therapeutic techniques, financial education materials, and successful services. This creates an evolving body of wisdom accessible to all participants yet resistant to censorship or control.
Cross-Community Networking: Perhaps most critically, Nostr enables connections between communities without requiring hierarchical organization. Each group maintains autonomy while participating in a broader network of shared values and practices.
Intergenerational Continuity: Nostr's protocol-based approach ensures that knowledge and connections can persist across generations. As technology evolves, the basic protocol remains compatible, creating continuity despite inevitable changes in implementation details.
Censorship Resistance: In an era of increasing digital surveillance and control, Nostr provides communication channels resistant to governmental or corporate interference. This protects communities exploring alternative social structures from suppression.
Bitcoin: The Trustless Foundation for Financial Sovereignty
Within the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Bitcoin establishes the monetary foundation for community financial sovereignty. Through a study of global finance and individual wealth building community members share knowledge about self-custody of this scarce commodity. Bitcoin and its success and especially resilience is a new model, a better paradigm for how humans can work with money ideally suited for our technological age. A Bitcoin circular economy within the Therapeutic Citizen Project would be a natural way to build with this peer to peer protocol system.
Chaumian Mints: Privacy for True Sovereignty
While Bitcoin provides a foundation for financial sovereignty, its public ledger presents privacy challenges. Chaumian mints, named after cryptographer David Chaum, address this limitation by enabling privacy-preserving transactions using blind signature cryptography, allowing value transfer without surveillance.
This privacy isn't about concealment for illicit purposes but about protection from surveillance capitalism and governmental overreach—systems that perpetuate trauma-inducing power dynamics. In an age when your attention is constantly captured and sold, privacy represents true sovereignty. Chaumian mints also promote community and trust.
Web 3.0: Beyond the Attention Economy
Every day I spend some portion frustrated and struggling with the digital world—remembering passwords, determining whether communications are real or scams, navigating the battles between Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Each "free" service aims to capture my attention within their walled garden, harvesting my information and selling it to the highest bidder.
These are products of Web 2.0—read and write capability powered by advertising money from capturing our attention and selling our privacy. It's based on the old TV advertising model perfected over 70 years. The best way to create engagement is through strong emotions, with fear and outrage being the most powerful. An alternative now exists: Web 3.0—read, write, and own.
This new web allows individuals to own their content outright without depending on Web 2.0 platforms, or their hefty fees. Native digital money (Bitcoin) enables micropayments, putting individuals in charge through a pay-as-you-go model. Web 3 restores privacy and self-sovereignty. It is the platform that a Social/Technological Protocol of small trust communities would build with the technologies of Bitcoin, Nostr and Chaumian Mints. Only if citizens own and grow & use Web 3 can us win. We have seen where Web 2 with its misaligned incentives has gotten us, we need a Plan B and a more human way through this transition.
Community Structure: Circles of Trust
The Mission of Small Groups
The mission of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is to build therapeutic communities that enable members to study citizenship, financial literacy and their often hidden internal motivations. By combining a focus on these 3 areas, groups can pursue generational wealth and start to build the civic society they want their grandchildren to live in: a decentralized network of community groups.These small groups connect with others to form larger therapeutic communities that use blockchain as their recording and payment system for interactions benefiting the whole.
The Project organizes participants into "Circles of Trust"—groups of 8-14 individuals with a designated facilitator to mediate conflict and teach members to work together. Members commit to 1-3 hours of inquiry, study, and practice, including better self-care for every hour in group.
Groups build buddy systems for support and accountability. Leaders write notes to all members after group and mid-week, summarizing progress and goals. Members connect through calls, texts, and video conferences between meetings to promote compliance and prevent self-sabotage. Groups structure incentives so that when individuals achieve their goals, the whole group benefits—potentially through micropayments or other rewards.
Online sessions begin with grounding techniques to facilitate online aliveness, before moving into structured therapeutic tools. These groups are essentially study groups that commit to fostering the groups financial and therapeutic development first before they tackle social and logistical problems in their local community.
Principles of Group Development
These groups serve as building blocks for healthy lifestyle communities. Each member of an original group can develop their own group of 6-14 to join the larger therapeutic community. Later developments could include social service groups representing America's or the country they originate in, demographic mixed by race, socioeconomic status (5:1 disparity in 6-15 person groups), political affiliation (50% liberal/50% conservative), and religious orientation. These groups would address critical infrastructure needs, developing plans and action steps for local communities with members committing to weekly time contributions.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project recognizes this collective traumatization, understanding that individual healing cannot be separated from addressing the societal structures that perpetuate trauma. As Maté observes, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today's culture stresses the body and undermines emotional balance.
This insight has profound implications for how we approach healing. Rather than merely treating symptoms or focusing exclusively on individual psychology, the Project creates containers for healing that operate outside traditional hierarchical systems. These communities serve as microcosms of a different social possibility—spaces where both individual and collective trauma can be addressed simultaneously.
The Decentralized Healing Process
By combining financial sovereignty with therapeutic practices, communities create environments where members can:
Recognize conditioning: Identify how hierarchical systems have shaped beliefs and behaviors, often promoting a dependence on and for some a sense of entitlement that the centralized authority will take care of you
Reclaim sovereignty: Take responsibility for both financial resources and psychological well-being
Rebuild connection: Form authentic relationships based on mutual respect rather than power dynamics or charismatic personalities.
Restore balance: Create sustainable systems that honor both individual needs and collective well-being
Regenerate culture: Develop new social patterns that support healing and growth & build an educated active citizenry.
Develop services that other small and larger groups can adopt and learn from.
This process occurs simultaneously at individual, community, and network levels, creating a fractal pattern where healing at one level supports transformation at others. The decentralized nature of both the financial tools and communication infrastructure prevents the recreation of traumatic power dynamics while providing a safe & stable environment to grow and realize our best potential.
Conclusion: An Invitation to Participation
For the last five years, I've struggled with how to put this big idea into practical terms and develop the specifics necessary to operationalize this insight. I have a framework for study, but my biggest takeaway is that this structure needs to be built from the ground up by involved citizens who are hopeful about the future and work today to build the society they want their children and grandchildren to live in tomorrow.
The time is now for big-picture power shifts. The Therapeutic Citizen Project invites you to become part of—and help build—the society you want to live in. What I'm asking of you is to become involved in a movement that I estimate will take 1-3 generations, 30-90 years. I believe that in that timeframe, 85% of humanity could learn to work together instead of fighting each other.
Because of the 80-year cycles identified by Strauss and Howe, the next two years will be significant in determining long-term trajectories. Come study with us and add your voice to this movement. The least I expect you to gain is how to build generational wealth, develop trusted friends, and greater self-awareness of your own motives and moral drivers.
However, I expect you will come to see how focusing on practical ways to promote citizenry worldwide can help you and your community today. A paradigm shift always starts with a single idea that gains widespread adoption. Together we can influence and shape the outcome of this cycle, by building and using Web 3 communally. Nostr, Bitcoin, and Chaumian mints are tools we can now use to create the technological foundation for a more human future—one that honors our natural tendency toward cooperation rather than the domination systems that have traumatized us for 167 generations.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project isn't just a theory—it's an invitation to practical action that begins today and extends for several generations, creating the world our great-grandchildren deserve to inherit.
Congratulations, you have finished this essay. I’m very interested in your feedback, & opinions as I am looking for collaborators.

2025-06-19 05:07:41 UTC

@npub1m5u…gkre
Hi Manuel: Nice talking with you outside bar 7 last night. Here is a copy of my paper, it’s about a 15 minute read.
I would be very interested in your thoughts & feedback.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project: A Way to use Decentralized Protocols for Human Evolution
The Therapeutic Citizen Project is a Social/Technological Protocol for our age. An idea built on the history of human cooperation that existed before the last 5000 years. The last 5000 years have been a domination model of human existence. The few control the many and society is stratified, this is not how our ancestors lived and thrived and became the top predator on our planet. The Therapeutic Citizen Project emerges at this critical juncture, proposing a revolutionary vision: to realign humanity to its core nature: social engagement. A way to heal the division of disengagement that has permeated our culture by using tools that are only now at this time in history available to us. The model integrates three powerful decentralized protocols—Bitcoin's monetary system, Nostr's communication layer, and Chaumian mints' privacy tools—with established therapeutic frameworks. To accomplish this we need to come back to who we are, social builders. We either grow and nurture the circles we live in or those circles shrink and get sick. We are at a time in history where we can build Web 3. A platform that we create as citizens to connect and learn & build the future we want to see in this time of rapid change and upheaval.
How did we get here? At the Crossroads of Crisis and Possibility
Central to this conversation is that we need a new narrative of what it means to be human. The common narrative that we are competitive, only care about ourselves and claw our way to the top through whatever means necessary has led to our world today. Today's world is divided, we are segregated into us vs. them groups. Social media algorithms, 24/7 news cycles, and a society increasingly focused on personality over values leave many of us feeling disconnected and overwhelmed. In the last 80 years we've undergone a profound shift from valuing character to valuing personality. Once, traits like integrity, humility, and kindness were central to what made someone worthy of admiration. Today, we're in an era where personality dominates—the loudest, boldest, and most attention-grabbing individuals are rewarded not for their depth of character but for their ability to perform, build an audience and market themselves.
As the author Gabor Maté argues in "The Myth of Normal," our society breeds disease and illness by neglecting "the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds." What we consider "normal" in contemporary society actually represents a profoundly traumatized state, with disconnection, addiction, and chronic stress accepted as inevitable features of human existence.
Trust, the fundamental element in building safe, predictable interactions and relationships between humans is at an all time low. Trust in centralized institutions such as banks, multinational and other corporations, governments, healthcare and even schools has decreased steadily over the last 50 years. 12% of Americans report they have no close friends up from 3% in 1990. In my area, mental health, we have never been more skilled. We can now effectively treat many conditions that 40 and even 20 years ago were untreatable. Yet the need for mental health continues to skyrocket. When medicine gets stronger and the results weaker we have to pull the camera back and see more of the big picture. My conclusion, our communities are sick, they are a result of the misaligned incentives built into our current domination/submission system.
While this era of division and mistrust may feel unprecedented, history suggests we've been here before. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in "The Fourth Turning," society operates in cycles of approximately 80-90 years, with the last phase marked by crisis and restructuring. Central to their 4th Turning, is the idea that as each generation moves further away from a major war they lose the visceral, gut punch memory of how horrific war is. Each successive generation becomes less willing to work with those that think and vote differently from themselves. We now stand in another Fourth Turning, ripe with political, economic, and social upheaval. In times of turmoil, change is not only inevitable but necessary. Those who thrive are those with the inner resources to adapt and work collaboratively toward a better future.
The 5000-Year Domination Experiment: How We Got Here
We live in a culture that for 167 generations has gone against our fundamental human nature. Our ancestors tolerated leadership only when seasonally necessary, with leaders having persuasive but no absolute authority. Just 5000 years ago—the last 2% of our time as Homo sapiens—heroic warrior cultures became dominant, and hierarchy became rigidly stratified for military purposes. Elites were created, and we adopted an evolutionary fork that has led to our current state.
The last 5000 years have been an experiment in domination/submission that we've mistakenly accepted as normal. This stratification into rigid classes doesn't promote safety or stability. When wealth inequality becomes extreme—as it is now, with the top 1% of Americans controlling 32-35% of wealth while the bottom 50% controls just 2%, it ignites moral outrage and destabilizes society.
Humanity has embraced the evolutionary fork of wholesale domination of large groups. The few control the many, with elites manipulating from the shadows through scary narratives that appeal to moral outrage. Someone truly powerful, a true leader, doesn't need to resort to fear as a weapon. The ones who want to control you, want you reacting rather than thinking. Evaluating, gathering information, and organizing is not what these elites desire. We forget that this class system we take as normal is a made-up fantasy—a narrative where some people are considered inherently better, their children entitled to privilege, while everyone else exists to serve.
Human Nature: Cooperation as Our Secret Sauce
Prior to the creation of elites about 5000 years ago. The archeological record of the last 30,000 years suggests that war was unknown. Sure there were skirmishes and some humans killed other humans but that was not commonplace. More commonplace was that when we met strangers we were curious and interested in what they had seen. We were interested in trade and novel goods from faraway places. Many theorists believe it is our friendliness—our capacity for cooperation—that has been the primary driver of our success as a species. Humanity's secret sauce is our community-building and networking capability.
As Rutger Bregman argues in "Humankind: A Hopeful History," humans are "hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another." This perspective challenges the dominant cynical view that has shaped much of Western thought and social organization.
The Republic's Original Vision: The Lost Promise of Civic Engagement
The USA, where I have the privilege to write this, was founded on an idea of freedom and self-governance. Our republic was established as a move away from monarchical rule and the nobility system. The founding fathers agreed on this principle but disagreed on specifics—could common men be trusted to vote without it becoming mob rule? They ultimately decided yes, though most states initially restricted voting to white landowners.
The founders knew that an involved, educated citizenry was the only way a democracy could thrive. In Lincoln's time, 80 years later, universal mandatory education was implemented to foster active citizenship. This focus on citizenry has since been lost. As mentioned earlier trust in centralized institutions—government, big business, banks, religions, political parties—is at an all-time low.
I got into Bitcoin in 2016 as an investment. After over 50+ hours of studying this technology I recognized the paradigm shifts that increased adoption will bring to money and our society. As I applied this new paradigm to my area: mental health, I realized that public blockchains are ideally suited for building therapeutic citizen communities worldwide that can address the root causes of our current crisis.
If this devaluing of trusted institutions happens every 80-90 years the time is now for big-picture power shifts. The next two years will be significant in this cycle, and the Therapeutic Citizen Project offers a framework for navigating and influencing this transition.
The Network Protocol for Humanity's Secret Sauce
At the heart of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is an idea that joining small interconnected citizen groups can reshape society. These groups will build the technology, services and self/group knowledge needed for societal transformation from the bottom up. To connect and foster these groups Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays), a decentralized protocol that amplifies humanity's natural networking capacity would be a natural tool. Unlike centralized social media platforms that censor content and track user behavior, Nostr enables censorship-resistant communication through a distributed network of relays without requiring trust in any central authority.
The technical elegance of Nostr lies in its minimalism—at its core, it consists of:
Public/private key cryptography for secure identity verification
Event objects (primarily text notes) signed by author keys
Relay servers that store and transmit events between users
Clients that interact with relays to publish and retrieve events
This simple foundation enables remarkably complex social interactions without the vulnerabilities of centralized platforms. For the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Nostr would provide several essential functions:
Community Coordination: Small healing communities use Nostr for internal coordination, scheduling meetings, sharing resources, and documenting their evolution. Unlike centralized tools that create dependence on corporate platforms, Nostr ensures communities maintain control of their communication infrastructure.
Knowledge Preservation: Through Nostr's distributed relay system, communities document “test kitchen proven” therapeutic techniques, financial education materials, and successful services. This creates an evolving body of wisdom accessible to all participants yet resistant to censorship or control.
Cross-Community Networking: Perhaps most critically, Nostr enables connections between communities without requiring hierarchical organization. Each group maintains autonomy while participating in a broader network of shared values and practices.
Intergenerational Continuity: Nostr's protocol-based approach ensures that knowledge and connections can persist across generations. As technology evolves, the basic protocol remains compatible, creating continuity despite inevitable changes in implementation details.
Censorship Resistance: In an era of increasing digital surveillance and control, Nostr provides communication channels resistant to governmental or corporate interference. This protects communities exploring alternative social structures from suppression.
Bitcoin: The Trustless Foundation for Financial Sovereignty
Within the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Bitcoin establishes the monetary foundation for community financial sovereignty. Through a study of global finance and individual wealth building community members share knowledge about self-custody of this scarce commodity. Bitcoin and its success and especially resilience is a new model, a better paradigm for how humans can work with money ideally suited for our technological age. A Bitcoin circular economy within the Therapeutic Citizen Project would be a natural way to build with this peer to peer protocol system.
Chaumian Mints: Privacy for True Sovereignty
While Bitcoin provides a foundation for financial sovereignty, its public ledger presents privacy challenges. Chaumian mints, named after cryptographer David Chaum, address this limitation by enabling privacy-preserving transactions using blind signature cryptography, allowing value transfer without surveillance.
This privacy isn't about concealment for illicit purposes but about protection from surveillance capitalism and governmental overreach—systems that perpetuate trauma-inducing power dynamics. In an age when your attention is constantly captured and sold, privacy represents true sovereignty. Chaumian mints also promote community and trust.
Web 3.0: Beyond the Attention Economy
Every day I spend some portion frustrated and struggling with the digital world—remembering passwords, determining whether communications are real or scams, navigating the battles between Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Each "free" service aims to capture my attention within their walled garden, harvesting my information and selling it to the highest bidder.
These are products of Web 2.0—read and write capability powered by advertising money from capturing our attention and selling our privacy. It's based on the old TV advertising model perfected over 70 years. The best way to create engagement is through strong emotions, with fear and outrage being the most powerful. An alternative now exists: Web 3.0—read, write, and own.
This new web allows individuals to own their content outright without depending on Web 2.0 platforms, or their hefty fees. Native digital money (Bitcoin) enables micropayments, putting individuals in charge through a pay-as-you-go model. Web 3 restores privacy and self-sovereignty. It is the platform that a Social/Technological Protocol of small trust communities would build with the technologies of Bitcoin, Nostr and Chaumian Mints. Only if citizens own and grow & use Web 3 can us win. We have seen where Web 2 with its misaligned incentives has gotten us, we need a Plan B and a more human way through this transition.
Community Structure: Circles of Trust
The Mission of Small Groups
The mission of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is to build therapeutic communities that enable members to study citizenship, financial literacy and their often hidden internal motivations. By combining a focus on these 3 areas, groups can pursue generational wealth and start to build the civic society they want their grandchildren to live in: a decentralized network of community groups.These small groups connect with others to form larger therapeutic communities that use blockchain as their recording and payment system for interactions benefiting the whole.
The Project organizes participants into "Circles of Trust"—groups of 8-14 individuals with a designated facilitator to mediate conflict and teach members to work together. Members commit to 1-3 hours of inquiry, study, and practice, including better self-care for every hour in group.
Groups build buddy systems for support and accountability. Leaders write notes to all members after group and mid-week, summarizing progress and goals. Members connect through calls, texts, and video conferences between meetings to promote compliance and prevent self-sabotage. Groups structure incentives so that when individuals achieve their goals, the whole group benefits—potentially through micropayments or other rewards.
Online sessions begin with grounding techniques to facilitate online aliveness, before moving into structured therapeutic tools. These groups are essentially study groups that commit to fostering the groups financial and therapeutic development first before they tackle social and logistical problems in their local community.
Principles of Group Development
These groups serve as building blocks for healthy lifestyle communities. Each member of an original group can develop their own group of 6-14 to join the larger therapeutic community. Later developments could include social service groups representing America's or the country they originate in, demographic mixed by race, socioeconomic status (5:1 disparity in 6-15 person groups), political affiliation (50% liberal/50% conservative), and religious orientation. These groups would address critical infrastructure needs, developing plans and action steps for local communities with members committing to weekly time contributions.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project recognizes this collective traumatization, understanding that individual healing cannot be separated from addressing the societal structures that perpetuate trauma. As Maté observes, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today's culture stresses the body and undermines emotional balance.
This insight has profound implications for how we approach healing. Rather than merely treating symptoms or focusing exclusively on individual psychology, the Project creates containers for healing that operate outside traditional hierarchical systems. These communities serve as microcosms of a different social possibility—spaces where both individual and collective trauma can be addressed simultaneously.
The Decentralized Healing Process
By combining financial sovereignty with therapeutic practices, communities create environments where members can:
Recognize conditioning: Identify how hierarchical systems have shaped beliefs and behaviors, often promoting a dependence on and for some a sense of entitlement that the centralized authority will take care of you
Reclaim sovereignty: Take responsibility for both financial resources and psychological well-being
Rebuild connection: Form authentic relationships based on mutual respect rather than power dynamics or charismatic personalities.
Restore balance: Create sustainable systems that honor both individual needs and collective well-being
Regenerate culture: Develop new social patterns that support healing and growth & build an educated active citizenry.
Develop services that other small and larger groups can adopt and learn from.
This process occurs simultaneously at individual, community, and network levels, creating a fractal pattern where healing at one level supports transformation at others. The decentralized nature of both the financial tools and communication infrastructure prevents the recreation of traumatic power dynamics while providing a safe & stable environment to grow and realize our best potential.
Conclusion: An Invitation to Participation
For the last five years, I've struggled with how to put this big idea into practical terms and develop the specifics necessary to operationalize this insight. I have a framework for study, but my biggest takeaway is that this structure needs to be built from the ground up by involved citizens who are hopeful about the future and work today to build the society they want their children and grandchildren to live in tomorrow.
The time is now for big-picture power shifts. The Therapeutic Citizen Project invites you to become part of—and help build—the society you want to live in. What I'm asking of you is to become involved in a movement that I estimate will take 1-3 generations, 30-90 years. I believe that in that timeframe, 85% of humanity could learn to work together instead of fighting each other.
Because of the 80-year cycles identified by Strauss and Howe, the next two years will be significant in determining long-term trajectories. Come study with us and add your voice to this movement. The least I expect you to gain is how to build generational wealth, develop trusted friends, and greater self-awareness of your own motives and moral drivers.
However, I expect you will come to see how focusing on practical ways to promote citizenry worldwide can help you and your community today. A paradigm shift always starts with a single idea that gains widespread adoption. Together we can influence and shape the outcome of this cycle, by building and using Web 3 communally. Nostr, Bitcoin, and Chaumian mints are tools we can now use to create the technological foundation for a more human future—one that honors our natural tendency toward cooperation rather than the domination systems that have traumatized us for 167 generations.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project isn't just a theory—it's an invitation to practical action that begins today and extends for several generations, creating the world our great-grandchildren deserve to inherit.
Congratulations you have read the whole idea. Let me know what you think & other thoughts on how to move forward.

2025-06-19 04:55:22 UTC

- reply

Dear Guga:
Very nice to meet you as well.
Below is a copy of my essay, it’s about a 15 minute read. I would be very interested your thoughts & feedback.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project: A Way to use Decentralized Protocols for Human Evolution
The Therapeutic Citizen Project is a Social/Technological Protocol for our age. An idea built on the history of human cooperation that existed before the last 5000 years. The last 5000 years have been a domination model of human existence. The few control the many and society is stratified, this is not how our ancestors lived and thrived and became the top predator on our planet. The Therapeutic Citizen Project emerges at this critical juncture, proposing a revolutionary vision: to realign humanity to its core nature: social engagement. A way to heal the division of disengagement that has permeated our culture by using tools that are only now at this time in history available to us. The model integrates three powerful decentralized protocols—Bitcoin's monetary system, Nostr's communication layer, and Chaumian mints' privacy tools—with established therapeutic frameworks. To accomplish this we need to come back to who we are, social builders. We either grow and nurture the circles we live in or those circles shrink and get sick. We are at a time in history where we can build Web 3. A platform that we create as citizens to connect and learn & build the future we want to see in this time of rapid change and upheaval.
How did we get here? At the Crossroads of Crisis and Possibility
Central to this conversation is that we need a new narrative of what it means to be human. The common narrative that we are competitive, only care about ourselves and claw our way to the top through whatever means necessary has led to our world today. Today's world is divided, we are segregated into us vs. them groups. Social media algorithms, 24/7 news cycles, and a society increasingly focused on personality over values leave many of us feeling disconnected and overwhelmed. In the last 80 years we've undergone a profound shift from valuing character to valuing personality. Once, traits like integrity, humility, and kindness were central to what made someone worthy of admiration. Today, we're in an era where personality dominates—the loudest, boldest, and most attention-grabbing individuals are rewarded not for their depth of character but for their ability to perform, build an audience and market themselves.
As the author Gabor Maté argues in "The Myth of Normal," our society breeds disease and illness by neglecting "the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds." What we consider "normal" in contemporary society actually represents a profoundly traumatized state, with disconnection, addiction, and chronic stress accepted as inevitable features of human existence.
Trust, the fundamental element in building safe, predictable interactions and relationships between humans is at an all time low. Trust in centralized institutions such as banks, multinational and other corporations, governments, healthcare and even schools has decreased steadily over the last 50 years. 12% of Americans report they have no close friends up from 3% in 1990. In my area, mental health, we have never been more skilled. We can now effectively treat many conditions that 40 and even 20 years ago were untreatable. Yet the need for mental health continues to skyrocket. When medicine gets stronger and the results weaker we have to pull the camera back and see more of the big picture. My conclusion, our communities are sick, they are a result of the misaligned incentives built into our current domination/submission system.
While this era of division and mistrust may feel unprecedented, history suggests we've been here before. According to William Strauss and Neil Howe in "The Fourth Turning," society operates in cycles of approximately 80-90 years, with the last phase marked by crisis and restructuring. Central to their 4th Turning, is the idea that as each generation moves further away from a major war they lose the visceral, gut punch memory of how horrific war is. Each successive generation becomes less willing to work with those that think and vote differently from themselves. We now stand in another Fourth Turning, ripe with political, economic, and social upheaval. In times of turmoil, change is not only inevitable but necessary. Those who thrive are those with the inner resources to adapt and work collaboratively toward a better future.
The 5000-Year Domination Experiment: How We Got Here
We live in a culture that for 167 generations has gone against our fundamental human nature. Our ancestors tolerated leadership only when seasonally necessary, with leaders having persuasive but no absolute authority. Just 5000 years ago—the last 2% of our time as Homo sapiens—heroic warrior cultures became dominant, and hierarchy became rigidly stratified for military purposes. Elites were created, and we adopted an evolutionary fork that has led to our current state.
The last 5000 years have been an experiment in domination/submission that we've mistakenly accepted as normal. This stratification into rigid classes doesn't promote safety or stability. When wealth inequality becomes extreme—as it is now, with the top 1% of Americans controlling 32-35% of wealth while the bottom 50% controls just 2%, it ignites moral outrage and destabilizes society.
Humanity has embraced the evolutionary fork of wholesale domination of large groups. The few control the many, with elites manipulating from the shadows through scary narratives that appeal to moral outrage. Someone truly powerful, a true leader, doesn't need to resort to fear as a weapon. The ones who want to control you, want you reacting rather than thinking. Evaluating, gathering information, and organizing is not what these elites desire. We forget that this class system we take as normal is a made-up fantasy—a narrative where some people are considered inherently better, their children entitled to privilege, while everyone else exists to serve.
Human Nature: Cooperation as Our Secret Sauce
Prior to the creation of elites about 5000 years ago. The archeological record of the last 30,000 years suggests that war was unknown. Sure there were skirmishes and some humans killed other humans but that was not commonplace. More commonplace was that when we met strangers we were curious and interested in what they had seen. We were interested in trade and novel goods from faraway places. Many theorists believe it is our friendliness—our capacity for cooperation—that has been the primary driver of our success as a species. Humanity's secret sauce is our community-building and networking capability.
As Rutger Bregman argues in "Humankind: A Hopeful History," humans are "hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another." This perspective challenges the dominant cynical view that has shaped much of Western thought and social organization.
The Republic's Original Vision: The Lost Promise of Civic Engagement
The USA, where I have the privilege to write this, was founded on an idea of freedom and self-governance. Our republic was established as a move away from monarchical rule and the nobility system. The founding fathers agreed on this principle but disagreed on specifics—could common men be trusted to vote without it becoming mob rule? They ultimately decided yes, though most states initially restricted voting to white landowners.
The founders knew that an involved, educated citizenry was the only way a democracy could thrive. In Lincoln's time, 80 years later, universal mandatory education was implemented to foster active citizenship. This focus on citizenry has since been lost. As mentioned earlier trust in centralized institutions—government, big business, banks, religions, political parties—is at an all-time low.
I got into Bitcoin in 2016 as an investment. After over 50+ hours of studying this technology I recognized the paradigm shifts that increased adoption will bring to money and our society. As I applied this new paradigm to my area: mental health, I realized that public blockchains are ideally suited for building therapeutic citizen communities worldwide that can address the root causes of our current crisis.
If this devaluing of trusted institutions happens every 80-90 years the time is now for big-picture power shifts. The next two years will be significant in this cycle, and the Therapeutic Citizen Project offers a framework for navigating and influencing this transition.
The Network Protocol for Humanity's Secret Sauce
At the heart of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is an idea that joining small interconnected citizen groups can reshape society. These groups will build the technology, services and self/group knowledge needed for societal transformation from the bottom up. To connect and foster these groups Nostr (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays), a decentralized protocol that amplifies humanity's natural networking capacity would be a natural tool. Unlike centralized social media platforms that censor content and track user behavior, Nostr enables censorship-resistant communication through a distributed network of relays without requiring trust in any central authority.
The technical elegance of Nostr lies in its minimalism—at its core, it consists of:
Public/private key cryptography for secure identity verification
Event objects (primarily text notes) signed by author keys
Relay servers that store and transmit events between users
Clients that interact with relays to publish and retrieve events
This simple foundation enables remarkably complex social interactions without the vulnerabilities of centralized platforms. For the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Nostr would provide several essential functions:
Community Coordination: Small healing communities use Nostr for internal coordination, scheduling meetings, sharing resources, and documenting their evolution. Unlike centralized tools that create dependence on corporate platforms, Nostr ensures communities maintain control of their communication infrastructure.
Knowledge Preservation: Through Nostr's distributed relay system, communities document “test kitchen proven” therapeutic techniques, financial education materials, and successful services. This creates an evolving body of wisdom accessible to all participants yet resistant to censorship or control.
Cross-Community Networking: Perhaps most critically, Nostr enables connections between communities without requiring hierarchical organization. Each group maintains autonomy while participating in a broader network of shared values and practices.
Intergenerational Continuity: Nostr's protocol-based approach ensures that knowledge and connections can persist across generations. As technology evolves, the basic protocol remains compatible, creating continuity despite inevitable changes in implementation details.
Censorship Resistance: In an era of increasing digital surveillance and control, Nostr provides communication channels resistant to governmental or corporate interference. This protects communities exploring alternative social structures from suppression.
Bitcoin: The Trustless Foundation for Financial Sovereignty
Within the Therapeutic Citizen Project, Bitcoin establishes the monetary foundation for community financial sovereignty. Through a study of global finance and individual wealth building community members share knowledge about self-custody of this scarce commodity. Bitcoin and its success and especially resilience is a new model, a better paradigm for how humans can work with money ideally suited for our technological age. A Bitcoin circular economy within the Therapeutic Citizen Project would be a natural way to build with this peer to peer protocol system.
Chaumian Mints: Privacy for True Sovereignty
While Bitcoin provides a foundation for financial sovereignty, its public ledger presents privacy challenges. Chaumian mints, named after cryptographer David Chaum, address this limitation by enabling privacy-preserving transactions using blind signature cryptography, allowing value transfer without surveillance.
This privacy isn't about concealment for illicit purposes but about protection from surveillance capitalism and governmental overreach—systems that perpetuate trauma-inducing power dynamics. In an age when your attention is constantly captured and sold, privacy represents true sovereignty. Chaumian mints also promote community and trust.
Web 3.0: Beyond the Attention Economy
Every day I spend some portion frustrated and struggling with the digital world—remembering passwords, determining whether communications are real or scams, navigating the battles between Google, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Each "free" service aims to capture my attention within their walled garden, harvesting my information and selling it to the highest bidder.
These are products of Web 2.0—read and write capability powered by advertising money from capturing our attention and selling our privacy. It's based on the old TV advertising model perfected over 70 years. The best way to create engagement is through strong emotions, with fear and outrage being the most powerful. An alternative now exists: Web 3.0—read, write, and own.
This new web allows individuals to own their content outright without depending on Web 2.0 platforms, or their hefty fees. Native digital money (Bitcoin) enables micropayments, putting individuals in charge through a pay-as-you-go model. Web 3 restores privacy and self-sovereignty. It is the platform that a Social/Technological Protocol of small trust communities would build with the technologies of Bitcoin, Nostr and Chaumian Mints. Only if citizens own and grow & use Web 3 can us win. We have seen where Web 2 with its misaligned incentives has gotten us, we need a Plan B and a more human way through this transition.
Community Structure: Circles of Trust
The Mission of Small Groups
The mission of the Therapeutic Citizen Project is to build therapeutic communities that enable members to study citizenship, financial literacy and their often hidden internal motivations. By combining a focus on these 3 areas, groups can pursue generational wealth and start to build the civic society they want their grandchildren to live in: a decentralized network of community groups.These small groups connect with others to form larger therapeutic communities that use blockchain as their recording and payment system for interactions benefiting the whole.
The Project organizes participants into "Circles of Trust"—groups of 8-14 individuals with a designated facilitator to mediate conflict and teach members to work together. Members commit to 1-3 hours of inquiry, study, and practice, including better self-care for every hour in group.
Groups build buddy systems for support and accountability. Leaders write notes to all members after group and mid-week, summarizing progress and goals. Members connect through calls, texts, and video conferences between meetings to promote compliance and prevent self-sabotage. Groups structure incentives so that when individuals achieve their goals, the whole group benefits—potentially through micropayments or other rewards.
Online sessions begin with grounding techniques to facilitate online aliveness, before moving into structured therapeutic tools. These groups are essentially study groups that commit to fostering the groups financial and therapeutic development first before they tackle social and logistical problems in their local community.
Principles of Group Development
These groups serve as building blocks for healthy lifestyle communities. Each member of an original group can develop their own group of 6-14 to join the larger therapeutic community. Later developments could include social service groups representing America's or the country they originate in, demographic mixed by race, socioeconomic status (5:1 disparity in 6-15 person groups), political affiliation (50% liberal/50% conservative), and religious orientation. These groups would address critical infrastructure needs, developing plans and action steps for local communities with members committing to weekly time contributions.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project recognizes this collective traumatization, understanding that individual healing cannot be separated from addressing the societal structures that perpetuate trauma. As Maté observes, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today's culture stresses the body and undermines emotional balance.
This insight has profound implications for how we approach healing. Rather than merely treating symptoms or focusing exclusively on individual psychology, the Project creates containers for healing that operate outside traditional hierarchical systems. These communities serve as microcosms of a different social possibility—spaces where both individual and collective trauma can be addressed simultaneously.
The Decentralized Healing Process
By combining financial sovereignty with therapeutic practices, communities create environments where members can:
Recognize conditioning: Identify how hierarchical systems have shaped beliefs and behaviors, often promoting a dependence on and for some a sense of entitlement that the centralized authority will take care of you
Reclaim sovereignty: Take responsibility for both financial resources and psychological well-being
Rebuild connection: Form authentic relationships based on mutual respect rather than power dynamics or charismatic personalities.
Restore balance: Create sustainable systems that honor both individual needs and collective well-being
Regenerate culture: Develop new social patterns that support healing and growth & build an educated active citizenry.
Develop services that other small and larger groups can adopt and learn from.
This process occurs simultaneously at individual, community, and network levels, creating a fractal pattern where healing at one level supports transformation at others. The decentralized nature of both the financial tools and communication infrastructure prevents the recreation of traumatic power dynamics while providing a safe & stable environment to grow and realize our best potential.
Conclusion: An Invitation to Participation
For the last five years, I've struggled with how to put this big idea into practical terms and develop the specifics necessary to operationalize this insight. I have a framework for study, but my biggest takeaway is that this structure needs to be built from the ground up by involved citizens who are hopeful about the future and work today to build the society they want their children and grandchildren to live in tomorrow.
The time is now for big-picture power shifts. The Therapeutic Citizen Project invites you to become part of—and help build—the society you want to live in. What I'm asking of you is to become involved in a movement that I estimate will take 1-3 generations, 30-90 years. I believe that in that timeframe, 85% of humanity could learn to work together instead of fighting each other.
Because of the 80-year cycles identified by Strauss and Howe, the next two years will be significant in determining long-term trajectories. Come study with us and add your voice to this movement. The least I expect you to gain is how to build generational wealth, develop trusted friends, and greater self-awareness of your own motives and moral drivers.
However, I expect you will come to see how focusing on practical ways to promote citizenry worldwide can help you and your community today. A paradigm shift always starts with a single idea that gains widespread adoption. Together we can influence and shape the outcome of this cycle, by building and using Web 3 communally. Nostr, Bitcoin, and Chaumian mints are tools we can now use to create the technological foundation for a more human future—one that honors our natural tendency toward cooperation rather than the domination systems that have traumatized us for 167 generations.
The Therapeutic Citizen Project isn't just a theory—it's an invitation to practical action that begins today and extends for several generations, creating the world our great-grandchildren deserve to inherit.
Congratulations on reading the whole essay. Let me know what you think.

2025-05-30 02:56:50 UTC

Hello everyone.
This is my first post on Nostr
#introductions
I am interested in coordinating with anyone going to BTC Prague June 2025. Even though I’ve been into Bitcoin for seven years, this is the first Bitcoin conference I will be attending.
I’m a psychotherapist from Portland, Oregon, USA and have a group practice.
I’m interested in using Nostr, BTC and Chaumain Mints to build s 6-15 member groups studying themselves from a therapeutic perspective and how to work with other members with divergent viewpoints.

2024-10-09 01:00:50 UTC

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Humanity is messy but preferable centralized monitoring/control. We have always thrived best in small groups

2024-10-09 00:59:09 UTC

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Well said

2024-10-09 00:50:23 UTC

Hello everyone. This is my first post on Nostr or any social media.
I am interested in the intersection of citizenry, Bitcoin & small group development. I am looking for collaborators on a pilot group who share the above interests.
Outside of running my group counseling practice I love bicycling, cooking, cross country skiing & learning about global finance.