I'm a musical omnivore and not afraid of taking in and developing a taste for different genres. My father's uncle was a Wagner tenor and an international opera star in the 1930s and 40s. I collected Frank Zappa CDs in my teens and I love progressive metal bands such as Meshuggah.

Still, a simple song like John Lennon's "Imagine" remains one of my favorite songs of all time. The lyrics represent my vision of a better world in a very accurate way. Even more so after I discovered Bitcoin.

Imagine there's no heaven

The thought of an afterlife may seem like a comforting thought, but one mans' comfort is another mans' tool. A sociopathic leader can make a person die for a "higher cause" with a promise of a reward in the afterlife. Belief in an afterlife is also somewhat lazy. Admitting to yourself that every single moment of your life is scarce is difficult. But it is the key to a fulfilling life.

Life is not a rehearsal. Nor is it a test. But it is your only shot.

It's easy if you try

Most believers in an afterlife have questioned the notion. But the question is not if there's an afterlife or not. The question is whether the idea of an afterlife is man-made or not. To answer this, we use the best method we know. We follow the money. Does anyone stand to gain something from a belief in an afterlife? The answer is a resounding yes.

Religious and political leaders can use this to their advantage in many ways. Even in secular states the default option for what to do with a deceased human is some sort of burial ceremony. This makes people believe that their relatives have ended up in a better place. Because of this, they are less likely to question what actually happened to them when they were alive.

No hell below us

Nowadays, very few people believe in hell. Even the pope of the Catholic church has at least hinted that he doesn't believe in it. What most christians believe though, is that committing sins can have divine consequences. The notion of sin has a lot in common with the notion of hell. It makes people scared of things that aren't dangerous. It also puts them into a mental state where guilt is a primary underlying feeling. This is horrible in itself. Imagine how many kids there are that blame themselves for their parents’ divorce. Imagine all the people that think they're somehow responsible for an accidental death.

Scaring people is very practical if you wish to control their actions. Notice how obedient everyone was during the height of the recent pandemic. Or after 9/11, 2001. The words of Benjamin Franklin ring as true today as they did in his day: 

"Any society that will give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both".

Above us only sky

We've discovered more about the universe we live in during the last ten years than in all history. To begin with, we've figured out that all the stars have at least one planet in orbit around them. This increases the probability of there being alien life out there a lot.

There is so much to unpack in the physical universe that it's hard to imagine why people need to cling on to fairy tales. Not only by zooming out but by zooming in you realize this. The realm of quantum mechanics is as intriguing as it is strange. The possibility of the many worlds theory being correct opens up a whole new set of concepts to think about. What does the multiverse look like? Are there more or less quantities of this or that universe? Can there be if the number of universes out there is infinite?

Imagine all the people, living for today

Living for today is hard. In truth, all you ever have at a certain moment in time, is whatever your brain does at that particular moment. From this perspective, you should focus on two things a lot more than you do now.

First, get to know your mind. Try to experience what having a thought feels like. Try to realize that your thoughts are all you have. Everything in the world presents itself to you through the lens of your mind.

Try also to maximize the number of pleasant moments you can have in life. You do this by being a good person to the people around you and by preparing for the future.

Preparing for the future might seem somewhat contradictory to living for today. If you do it right though, it can be very satisfying in the moment as well. If you do a job that you enjoy doing, you set the stage for your future self while enjoying the now at the same time.

The connection between the inner and the outer world is what spirituality is all about.

Imagine there's no countries

It took me quite some time to realize that the nature of the nation state and the nature of religion are the same. Countries are constructs of the human imagination. They are no more real than the gods, the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.

What is real though, is the looming threat of violence that they're all founded upon. Think about it. How did your nation come into existence? When some of your ancestors chose to take your other ancestors' stuff by force. That force echoes through the ages.

Democracy is the continuation of this violence, albeit with the addition of the right to vote. Voting can help a nation get rid of a bad leader but it can't change the political direction of every country. More government, more institutions, more rules and above all, more money printing. It is happening everywhere.

Politics is a career choice nowadays. Don't expect politicians to solve societal problems. They can't. They don't have the tools. All they can do is shovel the problems forward in time and hand them over to the next generation. It's amazing how far we've come despite them.

It isn't hard to do

Not hard at all. All you have to do is realize that governments can't give you anything, only take stuff away. The little they give back is much more expensive than what a free market would have produced.

Institutions grow like cancer. We have very few ways of stopping the process through democratic means. A right to do this or that is not what it's marketed to be. A right is nothing but a permission. The government doesn't let you do things, they permit you to do them. Like they had the moral obligation to stop you in the first place.

All the things a government does, the free market can do better. The only reason that this seems to be untrue is that the government can print money. When they do, they enrich themselves at your expense. It is a very sneaky process and it makes their institutions look much more effective than they are. Everyone pays for taxes and inflation in more ways than they think. The poor, who don't have that much material wealth in physical assets, pay the most. As Murray Rothbard said:

 “It is easy to be conspicuously 'compassionate' if others are being forced to pay the cost.” 

Nothing to kill or die for

Central banking is the primary funding mechanism for wars. By inflating the money supply, nations can increase their military production short term. They can pay tank factory workers with the new money. Whatever the war demands becomes the state's top priority.

Waging war against other human beings is by far the most immoral activity a person can engage in. The fact that we're so gullible that we let sociopaths govern us is very depressing.

Now imagine a system that lets everyone hide non-inflationary money in their heads.  A system in which you cannot know how much a person owns, and you can’t take it by force. In such a world, the best way of enriching yourself would be to provide something of value to your fellow man. Right now, that isn't the case. It is much more effective to rob people through taxes and inflation.

And no religion, too

Keeping the ducks in line is important to our dear leaders and religion is the best tool they have for that. Especially in war times. This is the main function of almost all organized religions. Through the promise of an afterlife, religions control the lives of millions.

Even religions that seem peaceful and mysterious to westerners do this. Look at hinduism for instance. The caste system lets the powerful reign supreme for generations. The common man is never given a chance to climb the societal ladders in his lifetime. Instead, he's promised a better life in his next one. If he agrees to being a good little obedient slave in his current life. Martyrdom wouldn't exist if it wasn't for organized religion.

Imagine all the people, living life in peace

Only the individual can make a decision. People choose to be violent because they believe that they have something to gain from it. Only by making sure that they don't can a society become less violent. Only by individual choice can a man make himself less exposed to violence.

The best way of doing this is by opting out of as many violence-dependent systems as you can.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one

Most people want to live in free, non-violent societies. The only thing that's stopping us is our lack of imagination. Again and again, we fall for the temptation of letting a third party decide our fates for us. They market themselves as necessary for our survival and as long as we keep falling for it, we won't be free.

The good news is that here's a new grassroots movement in town. This time around, the light at the end of the tunnel is not another oncoming train. It's a true glimmer of hope. More and more people have pierced the veil and discovered the naked truth about all the emperors. We have the tools. We only need to start using them.

I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one

Money is a winner-takes-all game. Carl Menger called it the most saleable good in the market. For monetary goods, saleability through time is as important as saleability through space.

Because of its fixed supply cap and censorship resistance, Bitcoin is that good. It will eat its competition as long as it survives. It is inevitable and this is a very good thing. A global, sound money, free market will propel humanity forward like never before.

For the world to live as one, everyone in the world will need to be able to live their lives as they wish. As Michael Jackson said, "If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change".

Start by changing what savings technology you use.

Imagine no possessions

At least imagine the lion's share of what you own being something else than stuff. Keynesian economic theory and inflationary currencies has made us all addicted to stuff. Frivolous, unnecessary stuff that we don't need.

Put ten percent of your wealth in Bitcoin and wait for five years. See what happens. One fine day, the Bitcoin part of your net worth will be worth more than the rest of your stuff. If everyone did this, Bitcoin's value would go up a lot.

Bitcoins are unconfiscatable, meaning that trying to take them is futile. Especially if their owner knows how to secure them. When the largest part of a people's wealth is in their heads, violence becomes a lot less effective.

I wonder if you can

Preparing for a new paradigm can be mentally exhausting. Bitcoin will change the world in so many ways that it's very hard to accept its existence at all.

Remember how old people used to refuse to use computers or the internet? The Bitcoin revolution will change the world even more than the internet did.

Our mental shields are up like never before. Our school systems have miseducated most people into believing that capitalism is bad. Or at least very flawed. Most people believe that something needs to be "done" about it. That we'd all live in misery if it wasn't for the coercive redistribution methods of the state.

They all mistake fiat money crony capitalism for the real deal. They all fail to see that it is "doing something about it" that causes the problems in the first place.

No need for greed or hunger

"Greed is good", said Gordon Gekko, the bad guy in the movie Wall Street from 1987. Was he right? Well, it sort of depends on your definition of greed.

According to the dictionary, greed is "an intense and selfish desire for something. Especially wealth, power, or food." But how then would you describe a strong urge to give your children a better start in life? Is that greed too? Not only the greedy strive for a better life, everyone does.

A better way to describe greed without the negative ring the word has, is low time preference. Having a low time preference means that you think about the future. That you're willing to sacrifice short term pleasure for long term gains. Like going to the gym instead of to the pub. Is that greed?

Hunger might have been a huge problem when John Lennon wrote Imagine, but not today. As the world progresses, hunger becomes less and less of a problem everywhere. In a global Bitcoin economy, food would be cheaper and cheaper every day.

A brotherhood of man

Yes, man. Can't we drop the gender politics bullcrap once and for all? We’re all the same in that we’re all different. A basic respect for individual rights is the key to an undivided society.

Imagine all the people, sharing all the world

Imagine, everything there is and everything that will ever be, divided by 21 million.

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope someday you'll join us

And the world will live as one 

In citadels, of course.