Burn It Down

“Burn it down.” He said, and I heard it the same as a right hook to the jaw sounds in your skull. The right hook that makes you woozy and your knees weak.

He’s my buddy, but he really threw me for a loop. This moment for me was like a judo match where your opponent uses your own momentum against you and you find yourself on your back gasping for breath, or that time in your memory when you’re nearly asleep as a child in your father’s car and he goes straight when you expected him to turn. Home is to the left, why didn’t you turn left, Pa? You lean into your expectation and reality fakes you out.

Of course this was only one event and we probably agree that one anecdotal story is not sufficient information to create a theory about the future.

But it happened again. The second time it was only on the internet, but the pattern was the same. Rage exploded from a friend I’d never seen it from before. This rage was expressed in reply to some particular political affront, and we all know that’s just a proxy. An historically peaceful individual explodes and rages at another individual, completely out of character and in defiance of their historical behavior. That’s the fact.

But then the third time. My best friend, my oldest friend who has remained close despite our different life paths meets me for lunch in a town from our childhood and among the smalltalk, and the big talk, a moment of real talk slips through. Even though today he draws his pay from the system, he divulges that he has serious plans for a tomorrow where the system has failed. Heysu Christo, this guy has security clearances.

The pattern I see and am rocked by is that people who are normally self-controlled, docile, and happy to buy into the system--despite its corruptions—are angry and losing trust. They’re reaching the end of their patience and their tolerance and when that happens we can look to history to learn about the French Revolution and it’s guillotines, because that one is really the best example of this moment’s pattern.

I don’t want to dwell on the destructive side of this equation and so I won’t even take the time to discuss the source of Walmart and Amazon’s success in driving the small business out of business. I can do that later and this is only the intro. For now I’m simply hoping to find people who are willing to explore the fact that as biodiversity is strength and beauty to an ecosystem, so is market diversity strength and beauty to an economy--a society.

The institutions cannot save us because they are the problem. They cannot and do not adapt. Instead they attempt to force the world to suit their own needs despite the destruction it manifests; this controlling anger creates blowback in the same way that every action creates an equal and opposite reaction.

We need a better idea.

Cryptocurrency could be it, if we make the right choices.