Announcing: The Disruptor

The Disruptor is a new online newsletter arising from the ashes of my blog DisruptorBOK. While both are about change, The Disruptor takes a new direction.

Our new tagline is "seizing the day in an age of learned helplessness." Learned helplessness is that sinking feeling when you realize the future is coming fast, will probably kill you, but there's nothing you can do about it. Except take the cards dealt to you by the elites.

While that may sound like a joke, it's not. We've been on the edge of a precipice before. Think World War I, The Great Depression, Dust Bowl, World War II...or The Great Recession of 2009. Those events all resulted from rapid, poorly managed change. Some argue that such events are inevitable. Just part of the cycle of destruction and renewal. Or the circle of life.

If you can't accept that dismal proposition, The Disruptor is for you. Our aim is to point out some fundamental truths that normal people might need to create a better future:

1) Our emperors (elite politicians, academics, corporate masters, movement leaders, etc.) have no clothes. None of their plans and schemes are any good. Well, maybe good for them, but poison for us (normal people).

2) Our only hope for the future is to stop being complacent and start exercising some self-determination. Forging our own path will be hard. But relatively speaking, it's easier than we've been led to believe.

3) While the above describes a revolution of sorts, it's not violent. It's also not about ripping society apart, screaming at people with bullhorns, justifying looting, or lying down on the freeway.

4) What we're after is a smart revolution. It's about using the agency (capacity to act) that we already have (but don't know it) to create a brighter future. We can exercise that agency in any number of ways–learning, writing, organizing, running for office, starting businesses, smart resource management, pursuing legal avenues...

You won't find long-form essays here. There's no time for that. The subject (our future) is vast and we want to cover it all. Short and to the point will have to do.

So, if you have a sinking feeling that lunatics have taken over the asylum and our future is slipping away, why not join the conversation? Subscribe to receive emails when new content is published!

Happy disrupting.

Jeff Franz-Lien