What disruption actually means

Friday, 23 January, Year 7 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

Motto: Shall feast on fawn and prawn.

The common habit among English speaking folk is for everyone to speak of the matters he's least qualified to speak of, and for everything to be chiefly discussed by they least qualified to discuss whatever it may be. You don't merely have thieves screaming "Thief!" in this unfortunate cultural space, but gender relations negotiated by a chorus of fat female whales and dispeptic male otakus ; legislation as the result of the labours of fraudsters and cowards ; maturity defined by prepubescent children and ancient harridans ; value explained by peniless ne'er-do-wells in conclave ; scholarship as a convention of the functionally illiterate and so on and so forth qs and beyond qs, ad nauseam and beyond even that!

It is then of little surprise that the blandest of the bland speak of nothing but "disruption", as a modern facelift of that (by now) ancient "revolutionizing". Who thinks himself as disruptive, who represents himself as disruptive, who talks of disruption and goes around in circles proudly riding the stick with a large "DISRUPTION" tag glued to the upper end ?

Why, idiots who imagine making a deal with a corrupt prosecutor is some sort of normalcy. "He was offering me 30 years, of course I took two". This is disruption now. That's disruption for you : playing along, because hey, not playing along might be difficult. Convenience, the new "disruption".

Why, idiots who imagine "never talk bad of another Bitcoin company" is a strategy. It's "professional", don't you know, to hobknob with known scammers, to keep pretending like hey, "I just work here", to keep shoving the dirt under the carpet until it forms a pile larger than the entire carpet, at which point calls for "regulation" can be conveniently used to you know, sort-of pretend like, version 2.0.

These are the dorks in the business of "disruption". However... that's not what disruption actually means. What disruption actually means is that you will not be able to keep on going like before.

That's it. That's the long and the short of it : you. won't. be. able. to. go. on. like. before.

Whether you're "just a government employee" that was "just doing your job", and hang for it ; whether you're "just a journalist" doing you know, "just what journalists do", which is to say penning insanities for very little money ; whether you're "just an entrepreneur" doing the general nonsense that has ended up meaning in the US ; whether you're "just a regular guy", doing the regular guy sort of social media bullshit while welfare papa-government pays your bills and feeds you bad cheese on stale crackers. Whatever you may be, wherever your place in the hierarchy of life (yes, it's a god damned hierarchy, you're no-one's equal!), whatever you are currently failing to do by not even trying, irrespective of any excuse, circumstance, story an' alternative worldview you might have prepared for just such an eventuality : you won't be able to go on like before.

Yeah, you. You.

That's disruption. That's what it means. That's what it does. The shit you used to think is okay ? Nope. It isn't. The shit you used to think "everyone does it" ? Nope, they don't. The comfort of commonality, where you don't actually have to think, merely follow, and in so following end up with a warm meal and a warm bed ? Nope, not anymore. Not that crowd, at any rate, and there's absolutely no guarantee we would even allow you to follow us, considering you somehow - magically ? - gathered together enough wits and penetration to even identify who we are, or how you'd go about following us in the first place.

That's disruption. That's disruption, and it's coming for your very asshole. It's coming for your very asshole and it doesn't intend to be asking absolutely any sort of questions.

No means Yes. Yes means Yes. Silence means anal. There are no plans you can plan, there are no insurances you can buy, there is no government that will save you, no grace you can recitei, there is absolutely nothing that'll protect you from disruption. Because that's what disruption is : the thing that asks no questions, takes no prayers, considers no considerations, and changes who you are and what you do. Whether you like it or not. Whether you want to or not. That's it.

Disruption is that unpleasant thing you can not be protected from.

———
  1. GRATIANO: Can no prayers pierce thee?
    SHYLOCK: No, none that thou hast wit enough to make.

    []

Category: Bitcoin
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5 Responses

  1. saifedean`s avatar
    1
    saifedean 
    Friday, 23 January 2015

    There's a name for the phenomenon you accurately describe in your first sentence: Rothbard's Law. Like most smart ideas one can come up with today, good old uncle Murray figured it out first: "people tend to specialize in what they are worst at. Henry George, for example, is great on everything but land, so therefore he writes about land 90% of the time. Friedman is great except on money, so he concentrates on money."

  2. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    2
    Mircea Popescu 
    Friday, 23 January 2015

    I'm not sure this holds true for people. It's true of US folk, and only recently at that.

  3. Re people specializing in what they're worst at: one possibility is that this specialization is in the mind of the observer, whereas their "specialist" has merely identified their weakest area and is concentrating on improvement through open, unabashed social usage and testing (this'd preclude specific posturing as described in the article, of course).

    Then again, I rather doubt this'll seem as possible when I'm fresh from interacting with folks as opposed to being fresh from slumber.

  4. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    4
    Mircea Popescu 
    Saturday, 24 January 2015

    Except irl the "specialization" is merely declarative.

  1. [...] the tails of the What disruption actually means piece I received a lot of quite pointed questions and rather excited entreaties to apply the theory [...]

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