The Inner Meaning of Slavery

What is sanctuary?

In the first part of this series, quoting Bayo Akomolafe, we claimed that sanctuary is where slowing down happens. But not slowing down as in creating a place to rest more comfortably while we ultimately move in the same direction at a lower velocity.

Slowing down as in tuning into a wider awareness symbolised by crossroads and tricksters; as in more fully inhabiting the monstrous, the fugitive, the illegibly collective parts of life. We said:

“Claiming sanctuary, making sanctuary, requires that you become intimate with the monsters on the door handle, not that you pretend to some standard of purity. You must physically touch them to enter here. One such monster is obvious: the casino.”

We quoted Bayo on this critical point:

“Let us make sanctuary is the invitation of a slave ship [...] The places we have avoided, the places modernity has pathologised, are the sanctuary sites, the libated grounds, the fertile grounds where we can actually make sanctuary. [... The slave ship] is a way of losing shape, of losing our sense of being human and it is there that, I feel, that a different sense of freedom can emerge.

"Making sanctuary is, in some sense, to reframe modernity with the realisation that none of us disembarked those slave ships, that we’re still perpetuating this hierarchical kind of society.”

But what does it actually mean to become intimate with the casino at the door? How are we to turn that monster into a way to enter this bizarre cathedral? What are we to say to the people demanding better BD, more corporate relationship management, higher chain revenue?

One way is to recognise that the cathedral is a slave ship, because then the casino isn’t granting you access to power and privilege. With that illusion remedied, the casino can become a place where you learn how to work with the meaning of money. If the casino can teach how to work with money, rather than for money, then your work becomes devotional.

And so you become a slave in the sense of Ram Das, or Abdullah, or any of the many other names from many other traditions which signify the deeper, more wholesome, meaning of “slave”: one who has submitted to a greater truth, who works for something beyond themselves.

Craft and the Cathedral

If you’re already there, no further explanation is required. But if you’re not, we can turn to a synonym for ship that offers a different way to contextualise the casino and why it is the door into deeper, devotional work with the meaning of money. That word is craft.

There is an incredible series of essays being released as we speak called Songflight. It is written by Simon Russo, a trader who made more than $500 million, though the story is about craft, process and commitment, not the money. He writes:

“The million isn't ‘dollars’ any more. It's ‘method units.’ The price of admission to a non-negotiable process. Risking a million dollars felt out of control to the daily-finance-mind, but the process reassured that it was the only acceptable risk unit. In other words, risking less than a million would be truly out of control. (And yes, you trade your method units in for dollars at the end of the day. But there's a whole separate room for that. There's no currency allowed in the cathedral.)”

There’s no currency allowed in the cathedral.

That’s it. The great secret summarised in one sentence, hidden in parenthesis. It's not about dollars. It's not about symbols set up by other people, and blindly agreed to by the majority. It is about your process, your craft, and what it reveals to you about the workings of your mind. It is about what it reveals of who you really are.

Once you know the truth of this for yourself, the casino becomes the cathedral. It was always the same place. There is no difference between samsara and nirvana, between there and here, ji hokkai and ri hokkai. Only the feet are two inches off the floor.

"Craft, like the cathedral, sits at the intersection of things that shouldn't intersect. Art and science. Sacred and profane. Engineering’s precision—spreadsheets, processes, feedback loops. And spiritual disciplines—detachment, patience, flinchless sitting in uncertainty. Even aspects of worship. Best way I can describe it."

Commitment to the Process

Simon’s story fascinates me, because I have always felt that trading was the least interesting way to spend my time and energy, even though I am absolutely committed to working with money. It took Simon to show me, again, that it doesn’t matter what you do. All that matters is how you are when you’re doing it.

How you are is defined by the quality and clarity of your commitment and how that translates into the discipline of your craftsmanship. You can make a cup of coffee, or you can make an enormously profitable trade and–one of the most surprising facts of life in this world!–there can be no essential difference between the subjective experience of these two things.

"Mastery of craft is mastery of self, and that’s a big clue. Mastery is knowing a given crop of progress will feed you, and sowing the right mistakes. Process seeded so deeply it stops competing with instinct and starts passing for it."

So, what is your process? Simon’s was a spreadsheet called Cal.xlsx. Mine is called thebluebook.co.za. There are at least as many processes as human beings living in the world. The thing is to commit to the process itself, rather than the personal results it may or may not have. The casino is one of the hardest places in which to do this (because the personal results are so immediate) and so it can also be one of the most rewarding.

If you are a slave to someone or something, the casino is the ultimate trap; an inescapable monster; the house of the lotus eaters itself. If you are a slave to the process, which is always greater than you, then it is itself a cathedral greater than soul can hope or mind can hide.

“My results had outrun my ability to conceive of them—by exactly that much. The same numbness that let me risk a million per trade had hidden how far we'd actually come.

It took the DWAC trade to see it, and to realize how fully we'd put ourselves into process's hands. Deeper than discipline. It was surrender. Process alone told me it was the right way to run. Process alone could measure how fast [...]

There is no sweeter proof of craftsmanship: when your progress outruns your own comprehension of it. When you argue with your own process—and lose—because you do not know how far you've come.

This was my goal in sharing what I have in these posts. There is a way to live where what you've built outruns what you can imagine. All of this is available to anyone who puts in the work.”

A Slave to Joy

Many people involved with Ethereum know this, or some version of it. Vitalik has consistently improved his ability to express his version, recently quoting George Bernard Shaw about being the Unreasonable Man.

The Ethereum Foundation excels when talking in the negative and focussing on topics like subtraction and defender’s advantage. We turned to Vaclav Havel to help us understand why this is such a powerful and lasting perspective to adopt.

But Simon’s story shows that there is also the positive to strive for: a devotional commitment to process which blends art and science, the sacred and the profane, engineering and worship. There is nothing new about this: it is perennial. Go to Sagrada Familia if you don't believe me. It is not just about defence and being Unreasonable. It is also about the joy of watching the results outrun your ability to conceive them, about watching what you have built outrun what you can imagine. It is not just about discipline. There is also surrender, and it is almost unbearably sweet.

“What is pain to me, or fear? To endure this joy was far harder.”

This is what we're playing for in our casino-cathedral. It is greater than any amount of money. It is greater than any thing you can imagine. It is to touch the monster, seed the process, commit to what it reveals, find yourself already in the cathedral, and then look directly at the mirror above the altar and really see. It is an infinite game, an eternal process. It is always happening right now.

"Whatever ‘mastery’ is, I am entirely convinced it is reliant on the highest possible fidelity of self this side of death."