‘The wealthy nations…have colonized the future. We treat the future like a distant colonial outpost devoid of people, where we can freely dump ecological degradation, technological risk, and nuclear waste, and which we can plunder as we please…Today our societal
attitude is one of tempus nullius: The future is seen as “nobody’s time,” an unclaimed territory that is… devoid of inhabitants…The tragedy is that the unborn generations of tomorrow can do nothing about this colonialist pillaging of their futures. They cannot…
defy their colonial oppressors…They are granted no political rights or representation; they have no influence at the ballot box or in the market. The great silent majority of future generations is rendered powerless and airbrushed out of our minds…This is the age of
the tyranny of now!”
Roman Krznaric: The Good Ancestor: How to Think Long Term in a Short-Term World
Disruption, far from being the red signboard of a hazard requiring caution, is now the zeitgeist of our times. Whether we examine technology, business, or politics, disruption is now often positively portrayed and even sought after. Is your technology disruptive? Cool! Is your business causing market disruption?
Smart! Are your politics disrupting the community? Wow!
This technology will disrupt the market, create mass unemployment, or endanger lives. Should we consider the implications before launching it? The loudest in our age answer that here is no need for such caution stop adhering to precautionary approaches! This business will disrupt the environment and cause multiple negative externalities. Should we approve of such business practices without a thorough review? Few would
dare raise their voices and say let us deliberate the pros and cons. This politics will disrupt the community by fueling racial or class polarization. Should we not eschew such messaging that fosters such disruption? The answer in our times usually is who cares!
In this carnival of chaos, voices advocating restraint are dismissed as killjoys, vestigial relics unfit for the adrenaline rush of the moment. Who has the time to pause when the spirit of the age demands immediate action? These disrupters cast incrementalism aside as quaint indulgences of a bygone century. Any out-of-the-box solution is lionized, and anything remotely in-the-box is derided as a relic that is fit only for the museum of eventual obsolescence. Those who dare to question the long-term consequences of disruptive technologies or populist politics are treated as fossils from a previous age, pariahs to be deliberately ignored. After all, who has time to be prudent when chasing the seductive high of breaking things?
In this festival of illusions, those who benefit from such disruption philosophy, in the form of more profit and power, market this latest gospel as the modern cure-all for all kinds of problems. They promise salvation through the “liberating” plunge of upheaval. They assure the people and the markets that their unknown or untested ideas and methods have miraculous powers that will usher in digital or political nirvana. Why does the allure of disruption hold such sway? It may be because we live in an era where the tectonic plates of ancient certainties have shifted far away from their firm grounding. Millions now live in urban centers, uprooted, unknown, and uncertain. When the familiar anchors of community, faith, and stability prove friable, the psyche, feeling forlorn and abandoned, adopts a peculiar nihilistic logic: if my life is in ruins, why not raze everything else to the ground? Disruption becomes not merely a strategy but a mass catharsis for some a fallacious formation of solidarity in shared disorder, a fake beacon of salvation through turmoil, and an endeavor to explore uncharted and untested waters
“gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o’ the world were now undone.
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!”
Shakespeare: Macbeth
It sounds wild, but this nihilism is the spirit of our times— an idiosyncratic intonation that the beneficiaries of this latest gospel sponsor and exploit to sell their disruptive polyphony of technologies, businesses, and politics, perpetuating the cycle of dislocation and uprootedness, which helps them stay in the market. More consumers and followers join their ranks despite their ill-thought-out analyses of technologies, business, and politics why would they cease and desist?
For others, this disruptive mindset becomes a search for a replacement for lost certainties, groundings, and assurances. Millions in urban centers search for new roots, identities, and anchors, a way for durable self-tethering. This is why, in our age, these millions are ready to bestow blind allegiance to messianic digital and political leaders. These new heralds of disruptive businesses and politics seekers of more monopolistic profits, dictatorial power, and unaccountable pelf nihilistically preach the virtues of annihilating institutions, ideologies, and norms, offering intoxicating illusions in their place.
This philosophy of disruption, this repertoire of rhetorical cult populism of our times, feeds on this appetite for new anchoring possibilities and hopes of millions of unmoored masses. These disrupters do not solve the problem of the personal dislocation of millions but convert it into a license for collective eruption.
This disruption philosophy bears an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Vietnam War rationale: “We must destroy the village to save it.” Beneath this worldview lie dark truths and sobering realities: excitement sans accountability, illusions sans solutions, adrenaline rush sans wisdom. The proponents of such technologies and ideologies have no incentive to stay behind to clean up the new fissures they generate. The collateral damage, hollowed-out communities, destabilized institutions, and environmental degradation is conveniently externalized and left for others to endure. Thus, disruption becomes less of a strategy for progress and more of a high-octane exercise in consequence evasion, with the generous helping of moral hazard as its pièce de résistance.
This ostensibly modern yet profoundly myopic philosophy of disruption is neither revolutionary nor benign; it is reckless at best and perilous at worst. Far from heralding an enlightened future, it merely echoes the timeless folly of hubris repackaged in the fashionable guise of innovation. Beneath its veneer of progress lies a familiar arrogance: the belief that anarchy can be a panacea and that turmoil is inherently virtuous.
As with all such delusional ideologies, this disruption philosophy is not merely reshaping the world but profoundly scarring the fabric of our communities, institutions, and ecosystems. The ghastly consequences of this mindset will endure long after the ephemeral buzz of disruption fades. Future generations will be burdened by the detritus generated by such disruptive techno-logies, businesses, and politics. They will question why we enthusiastically embraced upheaval as progress and mistook the delusion of disruption for wisdom. Perhaps they will see our age not as an age of innovation but an era of avoidable folly and arrogance.
“The world of the future will be an ever more demanding struggle against limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.” (Norbert Wiener: God and Golem, Inc.).
Thus, when the cacophony of nihilistic disruption beckons, let us exercise sagacious restraint. Or, to borrow from the vernacular, it’s better not to pick the phone up when the wrong number rings. Some calls are best left unanswered.
