Thank you for your thoughtful note, Morgan.

I think one can be excited about decentralization and interested in bringing diverse peoples into the mix without having to bring up race or gender at every turn, or atone for privilege. The distributed ledger space is not dominated not by white men, per se, but by all sorts of ethnicities and nationalities (Asian, South Asian, Mediterranean, Balkan, Caucasian, are all represented very well, for example). Unsurprisingly, these are the same ethnic groups that gravitate to tech.

It is certainly true, though, that this area is dominated by men.

However, I think it robs people — especially women — of their agency to suggest that it’s the responsibility of some group X that is interested in some thing Y to socially engineer some idealized notion of egality or gender parity. People get into different things for different reasons that have little to do with systematic exclusion. In particular, analytical types tend to get into the ideas of blockchain and decentralization. The women I know in this space are phenomenal, and deserve to be there. But not everyone finds it interesting. Just like techies rarely find marketing or social work interesting.

I don’t think it would be appropriate for someone to show up to a conference of a female-dominated industry (teachers, social workers, marketers or nurses) and demand that they create gender parity, or admit that they have some sort of socially-constructed power hierarchy over their respective industries. They simply gravitated to humanistic fields due to their interests, and perhaps due in part to their endocrine systems.

Now, you write: “While I applaud your focus on creating a decentralized and anti-authoritarian society, it’s not psychedelics or blockchain that will create that. It’s a diverse group of people sitting around a table (potentially a virtual one) making empathic decisions together that will create that society.”

This is absolutely true. I don’t consider this to be an “either/or” proposition, but rather a “yes and…” proposition.

Technology has the power to create the table. Technology has the power to break up hierarchies, whether corporate or government ones. Psychedelics might have the power to allow us to be more empathic and less authoritarian. Community, compassion and culture allow us to see our common humanity within each other. But forced social engineering or perpetual victimhood creates the conditions for real people to fracture, perhaps to understand themselves merely as victims, as opposed to powerful, ascending spirits in a world of possibility and pluralism. That’s where we need to go in our outlook.

You also write:

“For the purposes of designing egalitarian decentralized solutions for the future, what that means is women and people of color need massively larger representation in this discussion and design process. White men currently in the driver’s seat need to prioritize this decentralization of power in the blockchain space and create a safe space for it to happen.”

What’s so wonderful about technology is that if you can design better protocols, the world is your oyster. It’s that simple. People don’t care if the coder has a vagina if it’s good code. In this case, technology is just a set of protocols for human interaction. It can create incentives for us to move in certain directions, but it takes everyone’s compassion and circumspection to be more humane. If that’s what you’re suggesting, I can’t but agree. But crusades for gender parity or racial proportionality are at odds with the wider project of pluralism I care about. In this way, I acknowledge the existence of oppression and marginalization, but I refuse to make it the only lens through which to see the world. I want to make technology-based systems more inclusive because I care about humanity and the future our kids will grow up in.

The meta view for me, here, is that we are creating our own cosmopolitan tribes in the cloud. People can build these based on all kinds of considerations beyond just the crude distinctions of race and gender. I personally want to build communities around ennobling ideas and meaningful shared experiences. And I truly hope these are diverse and inclusive without being doctrinaire or dogmatic.

I find your suggestion that psychedelics have been appropriated, perhaps expropriated, from indigenous groups disconcerting. LSD was found by accident by a Swiss guy in Basil. Lycergic acid was in fermented ergot in Ancient Greece. Psilocybes have been around for a long, long time. Ayahuasca is a beautiful plant medicine with origins in Meso-America, it’s true, but does that mean it’s gifts are off limits to the rest of humanity? I believe we all have wonderful things to share with each other cross-culturally. The idea of putting groups into a bell jar seems deeply problematic, and again, robs folks of their agency.

Finally, people have asked me to talk about my own experiences (or lack thereof) with these substances. I would be very happy to talk about that in a perfect world. Maybe one day. Maybe I’ll get to “come out” in one of your films.

Best of luck in your filmmaking endeavors. And again, thank you for challenging these ideas in such a civil manner.