The market has imploded. Fine. Web3 will come out stronger.
But it’s up to us.
“Work as if you live in the early days of a better world.”
– Alasdair Gray
Recently, I was thinking about the astonishing work of Alasdair Gray. Painter, poet, polymath, a hero to many Scots, but shamefully overlooked outside of Britain. His novel Lanark is one of my favourite books of all time and I think his visionary art is up there with William Blake.
He was known for his aphorisms, which he would often incorporate into his paintings and book designs. He tended to repeat these phrases across multiple works, like he was casting a spell made stronger with each repetition. Most famous among them is the line “Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.” Although it was taken from a poem by Canadian poet Dennis Lee, it has become synonymous with Gray.
It is engraved on the side of the Scottish Parliament Building in Edinburgh, which opened in 2004.