A high level overview of decentralization as a principle for a good life.

E Pluribus Unum

Everyone reading this, is already living a decentralized life. The beauty of the Internet, is that our life is no longer centralized in physical proximity, we are able to expand our lives onto a plane of human existence lived in an interconnection of numerous machines.

We feel this when our phone dies or gets lost. Panic. It's like our hand was cut off. A part of us is missing. And that's not a bad thing, because we can carry on living even without this digital part of our life. Usually we carry on living by frantically searching for our phone or ordering a new one. But we are able to carry on nonetheless, because only a part of our life has been cut off, and the rest can continue.

This is the heart of the principle of decentralization: that even if parts of the whole shut down or get destroyed, the decentralized beast can continue living. An image typically given is that of a table with many legs. If you have your traditional table with four legs, cut one off, and the table is useless. It only had the minimum amount of parts to survive, and it dies an ignoble death when one is removed.

But a table with one hundred legs, cut off nine, even forty-two, and it will still stand tall.

A Razor Doesn't Live

The principle of decentralization, is built upon the reality of redundancy. Having multiple layers in place for each function of the entire organism, so if one fails, the others can continue to function. It's the reason we have two kidneys and two lungs. We live much better with both sets functioning, but we can lose one of each set and still survive.

Living a decentralized life, is living in such a way that we've identified the various areas of our life (shelter, sustenance, physiological, communal, self-actualization), and have layers of redundancy for each to insure continued survival.

Because that is the goal of a decentralized life: to survive at the very least, and to ultimately thrive. Redundancy greatly helps with the survival part, and gives us a strong foundation from which to thrive.

Know Thyself

Consider your life, what parts of it are only being held up by one table leg, how can you add another?

In the 2020 quarantines, many found their exercise routines lacked redundancy when their gyms closed. If those same people had exercise routines they did at home from time to time, they could have easily continued to care for their physical health, and in so doing, shored up their mental health in a time of increased stress.

Let's not make similar mistakes.

It's time to add legs to the table.

Identify. Build. Survive. Thrive.

Part 2: Points of Failure