Healing Web 3.0: NFTs & Mental Health
Matias Tapia
For our first-ever guest piece for Unlearning Blog, Jermaine Gregory writes about his experience in one of our Twitter spaces recently. I hosted a space for the Unlearning community about NFTs and artistry - but the space pivoted to mental health. Though unexpected, the discussion was incredible for me to listen to because it was both intimate and insightful. I will let Jermaine continue from here:
I sit here at 2 am the morning after my birthday, a little wine leftover, and a cold mojito on my desk from the evening before, I am perusing the thoughts of my own mind as I observe the words, tones, and dynamics of voices reverberating throughout the Twitter space led by Ilhan Jama.
Her community is called Unlearning, and that is exactly the kind of experience I’m about to describe to you over the next few hundred words or so.
She cuts in with a question, bringing in a theme from a previous speaker’s contribution about meeting personal needs in regards to the life desired to live outside of a patriarchal and hyper-capitalist cultured society.
As I listened my ears pricked up as there was mention of “coaching”. We were supposed to be discussing investing. The coach in me wanted to jump on stage, spouting off to unravel the frustrations they may have been experiencing, but as I sat with my feminine essence and truly listened to the feeling cascading into my mind, I felt so at ease and my desire to become a ‘satellite for patriarchal themes’ dissolved away.
Men… we want to “fix” everything, and often it’s nothing that needs to be fixed, just acknowledged and heard. Like with any tech problem. You have to understand what the problem is before you can remedy it. Something the conversation became tinted with briefly as the recognition of widespread misogyny, men, and masculine dominance in many spheres of life for the women and men ‘on stage’ became apparent.
I know that there are undertones of knowing the feeling of being silenced in sharing life experiences, and being a man understanding dynamics of how cis-gendered, heterosexual norms feed into the way we’re socialized and by providing pockets within a centralized space such as Twitter to break off and create authentic space for powerful self-expression, mostly by women-identified, yet equally as powerful from the men-identified who shared their thoughts and feelings in solidarity.
Brilliant speakers, a stage of contributors that touched on the personal efforts of giving yourself to a passion project from a place of authenticity and integrity to your experiential process of the influence circumstances and the impacts have on you, as you sojourn through self-discovery and establishing an all-encompassing thrust towards a fulfilling lifestyle.
A flurry of questions occur:
“Does the art you create tell your story?”
“Are you manifesting a subconscious aspect of yourself into the material world in the form of your art?”
“Is YOUR art YOU?”
Interestingly enough crochet is an intricate practice. It’s process-driven, it’s repetitive and perhaps this is an element of grounding the chaotic creative form, the focus of a different type, leaving you feeling relaxed and having decompressed from worries and concerns.
This is necessary, and being a coach, I feel that self-care isn’t practiced and advocated enough in our lives, let alone in the Tech field.
Our early experiences leave invisible traces revealing themselves as unconscious behaviors later in life, and these behaviors can be lived out without our realizing, only being revealed when somebody else brings it to our attention through communicating directly or through playing out a reactive interaction that feeds into satisfying the egoic nature of protection in tandem with the validation of the subconscious, unrealized way of being that is embedded within us.
Generational Tech Phobia
Generational reflections later in life would lead, you might believe, one to become known to oneself. Not only that but an understanding of self that has you in thrust toward your intention. Pure ones that lead to fulfilling relationships with ourselves and also with each other. Those that merge western societies’ imaginary boundaries of age, race, culture, or gender and sexuality backgrounds.
Change is the only constant in life…
This space has been a breath of fresh air, purely authentic expressions and reflections of the authenticity of a group of individuals who have connected somewhat over and through the pull of art intersecting with technology. There was nothing performative about it. It progressed into where it did because that was what the people wanted and the way Ilhan allowed the focus of attention to flow in the direction it wished is testament to the level of deep and profound understanding her essence embodies and as it integrates through her contacts and following, we witness how much Web 2.0 has impacted the lense which we approach the opportunity of Web 3.0.
Books by big tech geniuses on how they drive their teams to the brink of mental health capacity on a regular basis, and for extended periods, on my shelves don’t seem so impressive anymore when we consider the culture and the differences between where we are fledging into a micro in the decentralized crypto-blockchain sector, and where we funneling out of from the macro centralized- fiat sector.
It is exactly what we need in this crucial moment, ensuring the accommodation of the people, the bodies, the identities, and the intersectional complexities layered on top of the unlearning process.
Jermaine Gregory (Reap Mind Coaching) can be found on Twitter, Instagram, & Facebook.
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