Encryption and privacy are what make this reality work. You think you are you. I think I am me. This reality's ability to keep those separate is a privacy featu

Encryption and privacy are what make this reality work. You think you are you. I think I am me. This reality's ability to keep those separate is a privacy feature. From a Buddhist's perspective our understanding (Dharma) is that we are, on some level, all the same entity. One of the early sutras put it this way: > "Discrimination is consciousness. Nondiscrimination is wisdom. Clinging to consciousness will bring disgrace but clinging to wisdom will bring purity. Disgrace leads to birth and death but purity leads to Nirvana." Encryption gives the means by which we can enable privacy between ourselves, or what we think of as self. If we enable complete privacy from all others, we drop into a self-world. If we disable privacy, and join all the others disabling privacy, we drop into an isolated type of Nirvana, with the implication everything becomes quite boring. I have compared this in the past to the observed push and pull of public and private cloud business models. One solution may come via virtual realities where we can arrive at consensus in a fair and measured way without centralized control. It is my belief that immutable data structures backed by encryption, such as a blockchain, are the path out of this mess. Here's Alan Watts talking about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBOcFwUzIIQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBOcFwUzIIQ