Imagination as Alchemy
What is the role of imagination in building better futures that are financially empowering?
The possibility of liberatory futures is rooted in the courageous practice of imagination.
The practice of imagination is vast and varied; it is formed, informed, and deformed by a diversity of experiences, relationships, perspectives, and narratives. Futurism means that we simultaneously create ‘maybes’ out of possibilities and probabilities, and also borrow from our archives of memory and experience in the journey from ideation to creation.
In the context of Web3, to dream of what could be has meant that we lean into the lessons of Web1 and Web2, while, as best as possible, diligently moving towards an open sea [pun intended] of innovations, questions, and iterations. Where we are now, in the learning and development of Web3 products, processes, and global community is futurism in practice. Indeed, the excitement has been wavy—with some provocations about recent, but significant slumps in the industry signalling that this might be ‘the end of Web3’.
In Crypto Witch Club (CWC), however, we understand that these highs and lows are to be expected. These summers and winters of Web3 and crypto attract different people, and also serve as fuel to nudge us towards clarifying our purpose, building community, and setting well-informed, long term goals. Through the CWC community, we have an opportunity to practice a Longpath₁ approach to working, building, creating and learning in Web3. This means that we are choosing to model new practices that center people’s wellbeing, empowerment, collective world-building, and decentralized power-sharing in order to facilitate a mission of using Web3 to unlock social, cultural, and economic abundance intergenerationally and trans-locally.
Ancient technologies
In the spirit of reflective learning, we might be able to observe how some elements of Web3 are re-engineerings of ancient technologies of personal and community-care. Decentralization and community governance are not new, and neither is an emphasis on accessible, verified data. At the same time, the utilization and relevance of Web3, especially at this time in our socio-political reality, has a sense of ‘newness’ and ‘urgency’ to it. There is not only a desire for a new way of connecting and building wealth on digital platforms, but also an increased scrutiny of the ways that our modus operandi on the internet is not aligned with folks’ desire for collective ownership, financial empowerment, and a shift of power back to creators and contributors on the internet.
As someone who practices mindfulness and also calls themselves an ‘imagination alchemist₂’, a core part of my ethos of imagination praxis in Web3 has been to proactively center deliberate slowness when creating, connecting, and critiquing. At the start of my Web3 journey in November 2022, I found myself incredibly overwhelmed by the deluge of information and product offerings that were being published daily. Indeed, I felt a sense of excitement to witness how ‘fired up’ the Web3 space was (and continues to be).
At the same time, I had moments of feeling like the content was engulfing me, rather than me choosing to engage with it.
It took me a couple of tries in several communities as well as some wise counsel from trusted mentor(s) to begin to find my grounding. Most importantly, once I clarified my purpose and connected the dots between my personal purpose and my desired contribution to the Web3 collective, I was able to self-direct my process and journey. I came to the conclusion that, in this rapidly expanding and evolving Web3 space, one of the best things we can do for ourselves is to “turn down the noise and tune ourselves toward our unique self-defined signals”.
It is through choice and consent that we can claim empowerment.
This—a sense of sovereignty and self-determination—is necessary for all fields of empowerment. For the purpose of this piece, I am referring here specifically to financial empowerment.
What is financial empowerment anyway?
I would like to believe in multiplicity of definitions of ‘financial empowerment’. By doing so, I acknowledge that our diverse individual, cultural, and community contexts play a role in influencing our relationship with finances, and consequently, determine our perceptions/sense of feeling ‘empowered’.
Personally, my definition has been recently and profoundly shaped by the depth of learning I have been accessing as a student enrolled in a course called Trauma of Money. It is through this trauma-informed learning journey that I come to define financial empowerment as: “A felt sense, state, and process in one’s body when giving, receiving, transacting, thinking, and speaking about money which:
centers an ongoing practice of compassion for oneself and all life,
leads with curiosity when shifting behaviours, beliefs, and mindset,
acknowledges the need for and/or seeks external support to skillfully navigate challenging financial situations,
affirms self-sovereignty in decision-making and equally, takes responsibility, and
orients toward a spirit of abundance of resources for oneself and the collective.
I will be the first to tell you that this definition is one that I am in the process of embodying and embracing. I am not “there” yet… but I am on the journey towards a more expansive and compassionate relationship with money.
Linking financial empowerment to imagination, what I note is that my process of coming to this definition began with me asking myself this simple yet provocative question: What else is possible? Creating new relationships with finances must be founded on the premise that something different is possible… whether or not we have clarity on what this ‘something else’ is. Our willful disengagement from old patterns and calcified (money) habits moves in tandem with our choice to orient towards an alternative way of thinking, being and doing.
“How can we expect to change social structures when we continue to nurture the same habits of mind in our mental structures?”
—Ruha Benjamin
Imagination is a rippling field of action
The singular decisions we make—whether related to building in Web3 and/or personal finance—have a ripple effect across the communities and systems we are part of. This is what facilitator, author, and doula adrienne maree brown refers to as ‘fractals’. These ripples begin with a single point of action, which, as I argue, is synonymous with activating our imagination.
Imagination, as Prof. Ruha Benjamin shares, is a “field of action”; it is a “battlefield”. With that kind of energy, it makes sense that claiming empowerment—whether financial or otherwise—demands that we are courageously stubborn about the possibility of what else is possible beyond what we have lived through, what we are currently experiencing, what we have been told is the limit for us, and any other form of internalized or projected incarceration.
What I have been learning is that, in the path of creating new templates, patterns, experiences, and ways of being, one of the most important steps we can take is to create the evidence of that which we long for. To relentlessly dare to create, even in the smallest sense, a glimmer of what is possible beyond the conditions and paradigms that you want to leave.
In our CWC community, this means we consistently and relentlessly give ourselves permission to lead with curiosity, ideate, design and launch minimum viable products (MVPs), learn from experiences that seemed like failures, and seek support from fellow learners/artists/educators, etc. Through such disposition to liberatory imagination₃, we plant seeds for collaboration, sustainability of our projects/movements, impactful initiatives, generational shifts, and empowerment at a personal and collective level.
“We cannot build what we cannot imagine … We cannot allow systems to dictate to us when it is our time to dream. We have to claim that for ourselves.”
—Walidah Imarisha
₁ "Longpath" is a verb: to Longpath means to actively counter our instinct for short-termism by making decisions, today, that create far futures where humans, ecosystems and planet flourish, Source: Longpath.org
₂ Alchemy is “a medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold; a power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way” This power to transform things for the better, real or imagined, led to figurative meanings for alchemy and alchemist. Source: Miriam Webster Dictionary
₃ “If the carceral imagination captures and contains, then a liberatory imagination opens up possibilities and pathways, creates new templates, and builds on a Black radical tradition that has continually developed insights and strategies grounded in justice.” Source: Captivating Technology
About The Author
Meet Njoki Mbũrũ
Njoki Mbũrũ is our Resident Public Interest Witch at Crypto Witch Club — covering storytelling, Afro-futurism, power, and public policy. She is based on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
Follow Njoki on LinkedIn here and join our Crypto Witch Club community to connect with her and fellow Resident Witches and community members.
Resources referenced
Anderson, William. 2022. “What Comes after FTX for Blockchain Technology?” Forbes. November 15, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/williamanderson/2022/11/15/what-comes-after-ftx-for-blockchain-technology/?sh=3811313e7ee2.
Benjamin, Ruha. 2019. Captivating Technology : Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life. Durham: Duke University Press.
Crypto Witch Club. 2023. “A Crypto Witch Club Web3 Demystification.” Crypto Witch Club. March 29, 2023. https://www.cryptowitchclub.io/crypto-witch-club-blog/what-even-is-web3.
“Democracy, Fractals, and Sci-Fi (adrienne maree brown) | How to Citizen.” 2023. www.howtocitizen.com. February 16, 2023. https://www.howtocitizen.com/episodes/democracy-fractals-and-sci-fi-adrienne-maree-brown.
Othering and Belonging Institute. 2019. “Ruha Benjamin on ‘the New Jim Code? Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Liberatory Imagination.’” YouTube Video. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JahO1-saibU.
“TRAUMA of MONEYTM.” n.d. TRAUMA of MONEYTM. https://www.thetraumaofmoney.com/.
Wallach, Ari. n.d. “Longpath: Becoming the Ancestors Our Future Needs.” Longpath. Accessed October 26, 2023. https://www.longpath.org/about.