A kind of convoluted thought about child mortality, #science, #religion, #bitcoin and #fiat. Bear with me.
Science/engineneering and religion/spirituality mostly have an antagonistic relationship and throughout history have always shaped each other. One thing I rarely considered in this reciprocal relationship is the simple fact that the common state for mankind has been that child mortality was around 40-50% before reaching reproductive age. That means that in order to just avoid the vanishing of your family, your tribe, your town, your state, women needed to have at least 4 kids on average, often before the age of 20. And the risk of them themselves dying during child births was high.
Pretty much every parent had had to bury multiple own their own children, every sibling saw the death of a brother or sister as children, many saw their mothers dying when they where still young. The natural state of being for any human was death, loss and uncertainty and exposure to all of these as a regular occurance. How was the mind and perspective on life shaped by this reality?
In such a world, there was likely an inclination to be more cautious, to save both resources and emotional energy, and to prepare for the inevitable hardships that would come. The need to cling to moments of joy created a mindset that prized stability, savety and foresight. Is there be a connection to the preference of hard money in past times? Gold and Bitcoin align with a worldview shaped by loss, scarcity, and a high time preference. It encourages people to save and preserve wealth, knowing that the worst can happen at any time. There is a comfort in something that is solid, enduring, and impervious to external manipulation in an uncertain reality. In the face of death and loss, saving both materially and emotionally was essential.
Only the quite recents developments of the last ~100 years (chemistry revolution, antibiotics, understanding of infections diseases & pathogens, etc.) has really changed our relationship with death. Today, the average person is not exposed to death and loss during their formative years. Now, with increased safety of childbirth, there is less of an instinctive need to prepare for the worst. People may feel less of a need to cling to hard assets or to preserve wealth for a rainy day. Instead, fiat currency takes over because external stability seems more assured (so no need to look for it in hard money).
In essence, a world with lower child mortality rates may have subconsciously on a societal level favor fiat money over bitcoin, as people no longer face the same degree of existential uncertainty that characterized the lives of previous generations. Without the same degree of existential uncertainty that once shaped earlier generations, the mindset of saving and preservation has been replaced by a more speculative approach to wealth, where greater risks are accepted, even in the form of money itself.
Anyway, my point is that beyond the well-documented technological impacts that favored the rise of fiat in the modern world which are explored by
@Lyn Alden,
@Saifedean Ammous, and others, maybe on another level the scientific and technological revolution in the last ~100 years might have also indirectly favored the invention and rise of fiat, by changing child mortality and - connected to this - people's relationship to their own personal time preference.
(I was listening to a recent Lex Fridman interview with a historian discussion ancient Rome where child mortality was briefly brought up)
#bitcoin #fiat #science #religion #death #nostr
