10 lessons Toni Lane Casserly taught the world
My dear friend, Toni Lane Casserly, died 2 days ago. She was a primal force — a Joan of Arc of the Great Transition. Often referred to as the Queen of Blockchain.
Toni and I made magic together all over the world. We’d see each other in Davos for the World Economic Forum doing our best to spread messages of love and win-for-all system change. We danced until sunrise in Burning Man celebrating the sweetest nectar life has to offer. We shared a tent at one festival last summer. We are very close — I’d call her my sister and she my brother. Perhaps we came from the same place — she reminded me of what it is to see and be seen. We’d talk for hours about transforming the world into a thriving civilization for all life. We’d debate strategies to transition power away from Nation-States and into communities. We’d discuss how to create more harmony between masculine and feminine. Our conversations we’re more like making music together when you create that synchronic field and become a tuning fork to the cosmos. We had many idea babies together.
To honor Toni’s incredible contributions I wanted to share 10 lessons she taught and will continue to teach the world:
- “The Nation-State is approaching irrelevancy”
Toni was a planetary citizen. She saw Nation-States as part of the problem given they struggle to agree with each other on compromises that are fit for the need of the future of our species and biosphere. I am confident that the history of the future will see Toni as an early visionary in these shifts.
This is a fantastic TEDx talk Toni gave in Berlin on ‘Do we need Nation-States’:
2. “We already live in the world of abundance”…
“That world already exists. We are just blind to it. Because we continue to believe that our existence is based on winning a game that has been created for us not once that we define ourselves. When artificial intelligence and automation is able to replace most of the labor that has been artificially defining human purpose we will become a more self-defined humanity. And in embracing this self-definition we will embrace our own creative potential and through that, I believe, further explore ourselves and our liberty.”
This was an extract from the talk Toni gave at a Remember The Future 2030 event I organized in Davos last year. Have a watch on this video at 21.20 in:
3. “Decentralized Government will Arise from Self Sovereign Identity”
Toni was a fervent believer in self-sovereign identity and evangelized that the technology to create human sovereignty already exists but the world is yet to catch up. This is a great blog the summarizes some of Toni’s favorite ideas:
4. “Being called ‘totally crazy’ is my favorite compliment”
Toni was eccentric and original. Toni was an acupuncture point for the collective — Toni took her spiritual practice and self work very seriously. She was a deep well diver. I noticed that when Toni was integrating trauma she was doing so for both herself and the collective. Toni carried codes for the collective. This is the human version of what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the Nooesphere. Toni was like a human volcano of the emotions of the collective. She knew how to express her emotions in an unbridled way — perhaps one of the most freely self-expressed people I’ve ever met. As a result, she experienced terrible smear campaigns and continuous gender abuse. She was both courageous and sensitive.
5. “Imagine a world where governments compete for your citizenship”
Toni’s imagination was completely unbridled. She had a way of seeing the possibility in everything and everyone. Her range of topics was incredible. She was a 21st Century Renaissance Woman. As her dear friend Henrik Jones said to me this evening ’Toni spoke in perfect paragraphs’. She was beautifully eloquent and had a laser shaped mind combined with one of the biggest and most open hearts of anyone I’ve known.
This BigThink interview shows some of these ideas:
6. “We don’t need to strap a rocket ship to a mule”
Toni knew the current political and social-economic system was doomed for failure. 4 out of 5 people in the world believe the system is broken and not working for people. While 2 out of 3 people, unfortunately, believe the future will be even worse. The simple truth is if we were to redesign the world right now it would look nothing like it does today. Toni reminded us all that we should not dream short of reimagining the entire planetary system. This is the greatest opportunity of our lives and what Toni and I both believe was the reason we were born.
7. “If you want to create the future you need to understand the past”
Toni was a student of indigenous wisdom. She was adopted into Native American traditions with her dear friend and mentor Chief Phil Lane Jr. Toni knew the value of ritual, wisdom traditions, initiation and honoring our ancestors. She stood up boldly for the rights of the oppressed.
8. “Blockchains can create community consciousness”
Toni saw how technology was a tool to unleash human consciousness. She was a brilliant pioneer in the role blockchains would provide in the return to community. For example, she was an LGBTQ rights pioneer with a BitNation solution she helped create called, Smart Love that enabled couples to get married on the blockchain. Her company www.Cultu.re is a total pioneer in a space that will forever change how we think of governance. Just as Facebook connects people to friends, Cultu.re connects people to communities. This is the last Cultu.re deck she shared with me:
9. “In order to dream you must first be in the darkness”…
“We have seen the rise and fall of civilization since the dawn of man. And if you look around at what is happening in Nation-States today it is clear to see we are in the Dark Ages. But in order to dream, you must first be in the darkness. So I would like to ask all of you today to take your dream and turn it into action, into agency, and create the world you would like to see. Because the future is borderless and governed digitally.”
Toni knew the power of going into the darkness in herself and the collective. She knew this only made her brighter.
10. “I know I have found the future”
I have no doubt Toni hailed from another time and dimension. She belongs to an Age in the ancient future. She time-ported into our present as a bright light — she shone a mirror for us to remember who we are and what we’re here to be. But she struggled with the state of the world. I watched Toni’s heartbreak in front of me for the reality of our existence. I salute her as my time travelling sister. Never doubt the impact you’ve had on the world. Thank you, Toni, I love you.
