Disruption

Disruption

People used to proudly call themselves disrupters. They said, “If it ain’t broke, break it”. Disruption is a word that has been lightly and causally tossed around in the past few years, by overconfident overprivileged young males, mostly. At least, until real actual disruption happened with the Great Pandemic of 2020. Had enough disruption?

Not nearly enough, I fear. Has this time out from business as usual really made us aware of the enormity of the challenges we face, like it or not, for the better or worse? Have we learned the lessons offered by this crisis-opportunity? I fear not...

Has this wake up call served to give us a chance  to reassess our ways, or only sensitized us to our addiction to things as they are, hardening and strengthening our attachments?  When the economics are tough they say we can’t afford to change our destructive ways. But when the economics are roaring hot, we are told we can’t afford to slow things down either. So when, exactly, will we stop the way we are going so as to not end up where we are headed?! 

Who is saying this? All of us who don’t want to do anything in a different way, because, fear. Fears of losing what we have, fears of not being able to do whatever we are in the habit of doing, in just exactly the way we are doing it now. This is further codified into law, by the monetary power and influence of big corporations.  

History is full of headlong rushes to destruction, despite the cries and warnings at the time. The Earth is full of degraded landscapes, now wastelands, where forests once stood, where streams once gushed with sparkling pure water, birds flew in flocks so big the sky was dark with them, rivers so full of fish that you could walk across them on the fish, meadows so thick with flowers that as John Muir once wrote about his walk across California, you stepped on a hundred wildflowers every step of the way, all the way.

Already I can hear the resumption of the roar. Where I live you can actually hear the roar of the city below in the valley bowl, and the uptick of airline flight overhead.

This disruption we are perpetuating on the planet sure needs some disruption. And soon.

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

– Albert Einstein