As a once-and-future free-range human, I’ve been thinking about how to shake off the commercial algorithms that have hacked into my life and are now driving it. The key, I’ve concluded, is novelty. Whether it’s true, as the ethobotanist and psychonaut Terence McKenna claimed, that the pursuit of novelty is “the only one way to live a truly progressive life,” it’s a mighty tempting strategy to air out. “From a species perspective, the job of each individual is to be unlike anyone who’s living or who ever lived,” McKenna wrote. “To do things, and react to things, in a way no one has quite done before.”
This is of course pretty much an act of cultural treason. There’s a reason Atomic Habits was a #1 world bestseller and nobody has written Atomic Novelty. Habits are safe. Flout them and people in charge start furrowing their brows, because now you’re likely to start breaking rules, too. Even the rules of the universe? Many smart people claim we don’t actually have free will, even though it feels like we do. I decided to engineer a day that tests that discouraging premise — a day where you chase free will around, trying to outfox it. The experiment wouldn’t really prove anything one way or the other. But it might yield some ... unexpected returns.
Lately I get lost in my garden.
It's become my refuge, the source of my calmness and base of my spiritual quest.
There I feel the joy of putting a seed in the ground at just the right moment and watch life sprout . . . there in late Spring I taste the thrill of broad beans quickly boiled with a teaspoon of butter & dash of soy sauce . . . and there in mid Summer I thrust my hand into the Earth and pull out a sweet potato.
And lately, something even more profound.
I used to be the vegetable guy. Masako, the love of my life for over half a century, was the one who planted the flowers. But now that she is bedridden and needing lots of care, the roles have changed. Now I’m the flower guy . . . Cosmos, Sunflowers, Marygolds, Forget Me Nots . . . this spring, as my desire to grow vegetables and eat them sharpened, all of a sudden —POW! — I have a wild, primitive need to plant flowers, too. I went crazy!
So peppered throughout my rows and plots and pots this year, there are not only veggies to eat, but flowers — wild and gorgeous — to behold.
Feels like in a very personal way I’m experiencing what I’ve been talking about in Adbusters lately: The birth of a new aesthetic — a vibe shift from straight-line to wobbly thinking.
— KL
In the US we have two different pathways toward deepening totalitarian control. One is the Right Wing, Christian Nationalist path, which will be attempted if Trump wins the election. The Koch-funded Heritage Foundation has developed a 1,000 page action plan for Trump’s presidency that is absolutely harrowing.
The other path is the “progressive” World Economic Forum liberal technocratic path, which many people fear will become more pronounced and is already here, to some extent, with “surveillance capitalism.” That’s where the Dems are going.
A third path is on the horizon. A new kind of politics, beyond the left and the right, where We the People start calling the shots from below.
Imagine this ...
The Middle East heats up ... missiles rain down on Tel Aviv. Gallant takes out Iran’s nuclear facilities with a series of tactical strikes. Iran retaliates by bombing Israel’s nuclear HQ at Dimona. Israel mobilizes for total war. The Revolutionary Guards go on high alert. Bibi asks the United States to intervene.
The world holds its breath.
What do you think?
Back in the 1970s, America made a strategic blunder. It was the #1 manufacturing nation in the world, and it figured it could coast. It didn't worry about defending its position. Instead, it turned to the finance and the service industry and bet big here.
Now the chickens have come home to roost.
I went to Costco to buy a big-screen TV expecting to spend three or four, maybe even five thousand bucks. And sure enough, there were SONYs and Samsungs for around that price. But then a salesperson pointed me to a new Chinese TV that had just come in at $1950. He said China is about to dominate the industry. And the same thing will soon happen with automobiles too, he said. Chinese EVs costing less than $10,000 will wipe out the European and American auto brands.
In May, Biden imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars. He said it's to counter unfair Chinese subsidies and practices. The New York Times and most of the Western media also spun it that way, running a bunch of stories justifying the tariffs. China was deliberately positioned as the villain.
The sad truth is that in many critical industries, America simply can't compete anymore. Without tariffs, the American auto industry would die.
It all goes back to that stupid industrial policy mistake America made half a century ago, putting it on the downslope. — KL
Inventing a new way to live, one that will allow us, as a species, to go on living, is what economists call a "wild problem." It will take a mighty imaginative leap, really a heave of consciousness. But we can do it. We have to.
The time for tiny tweaks to the status quo is over. We've run out of time for that. The only thing that will save us is massive buy-in to a major paradigm shift, a different way of living and loving on planet Earth. A lighter, looser, sparer one. More, because less.
Here's how people typically change their minds. They do it the way a climber scales a rock face, inching out beyond the last point of protection — so that if they fall, they fall only as far as what they last believed.
Our rethinks are not big stretches, in other words. Just variations on what we think right now.
So it's worth asking: in the year 2024, are humans actually able to throw over the side a lifestyle we've been raised to think is somehow our birth right? Are we capable of making a leap like that?
"It's just the way things are."
There are lots of things in life we never really give a second thought to. We do it this way because, well, that's all we've ever known. We assume that wiser heads than ours put it all in place.
Of course that's often bullshit.
He couldn't stand straight lines and right angles, which aren't much found in nature. Things not made by us mostly curve. Nothing worthwhile is plum, level or square.
So observed Gaetano Pesce, the great Italian designer, who died at age 84.
From this man's brow burst organic, protoplasmic designs for things like bookcases and sofas, blazing with intense, saturated color.
One of them went supernova: the zaftig UP5 armchair, dubbed La Mama, was a shout-out to feminism. Women, he felt, are "victims of male prejudices and fears and stupidity." (As a young macho guy, he too was guilty of that same pig-headedness, he admitted, before he got knocked off that horse by a woman he adored.)
He kicked against a world the rest of us live in without giving it a second thought.
The design of modern cities appalled him. He chided the architects: what you've built is "the very image of non-freedom." In an exhibit for the Louvre, he made office towers out of meat, which gradually rotted until the stench became overpowering.
He started out nonlinear and just got gooier, until by the time he was in his eighties he was pretty much just liquid. "As liquid as time," he said.
14 years ago, when Julian Assange leaked US army intelligence documents about the Baghdad airstrikes on Wikileaks — and then more incriminating documents, including Baghdad and Afghanistan war logs — we thought: “Now we’re getting somewhere ... now our political system will heave.”
It didn’t.
But now we know what happens to whistleblowers when they stick their neck out.
So it takes incredible courage. But here’s the thing: it shouldn't be up to some brave individual to step up and illuminate systemic institutional violence. Those secrets should never be kept.
Secret-keepers should feel shame — crippling embarrassment.
This is what we holler from the rooftops — until keeping secrets becomes unconscionable: #MakeSecrecyTaboo
Step 1: We change the way we talk about secrecy. We start talking about it the way we talk about germs, viruses, bribery, insider trading — inherently filthy, something that needs to be excised from the body politic.
Step 2: We embark on an all-out fight to get rid of secrecy at all levels of our democratic system.
No more hush hush stuff at city hall! No more hidden police videos. No more closed-door trade deals. Or in-camera grand jury deliberations. Or secret presidential liaisons with foreign leaders.
We mandate jail-time for politicians and CEOs who do secret things. We shame them the way we shame people who lie, pay bribes, commit sexual harassment.
We ridicule and punish government departments that issue redacted documents. We jump on secrecy whenever and wherever we see it starting to build, from City Hall to the CIA.
If we can get this done, get transparency enshrined, then total openness can become a critical part of the mythology of the 21st century.
The stakes are huge. As long as elites and powerful forces are able to concoct wars and geopolitics in secret, we the people will never see a single day of peace on Earth. Not a single minute. Hatred, greed, jealousy, fear may be the ingredients of war, but secrecy is the heat that it needs to rise ... So long as secrecy prevails, peace, unity and brotherhood will always remain dreams.
But the truth shall set us free.
I spotted a little spider dashing across the floor.
My immediate reaction was, “Damn, I gotta squish this sucker — can’t have creepy-crawlies nesting up in the house.”
But then I squatted down and saw what it was up to.
It was looking for food . . . stopping every few seconds to sniff something out . . .Whenever I got too close, it panicked and scampered off for safety.
Suddenly, I liked this creature. In uncanny ways, it had so many of the same kind of sensibilities and survival instincts that I have.
So I thought what the hell, it’s not doing any harm . . . why not share the house with it?
A two-state solution!
—KL
When you immigrated to the holy land, when you were just a tiny fraction of the people there, you could have come with an open hand, ready to share the land with the indigenous people there.
But no. You came with a closed fist.
Yes it was a tough neighborhood; you were not welcome; wars were launched against you. But even still, you could have done it differently. In those all-important early days, when trust is forged or fractured, you drove Palestinians out of their villages, massacring many. That was your original sin — your Nakba.
And then in the years that followed, you closed borders, built walls, expanded settlements, set up two-tiered land and water and justice systems. You persecuted and jailed those who resisted ... “mowed the grass” in Gaza whenever it grew too high. You ignored international law, the Geneva convention and UN Security Council resolutions. And you refused to ever consider the right of refugees to return.
Admit it, O people of Israel: you failed to respect the humanity and dignity of generations of Palestinians. You treated them like subservient, second-class citizens — never as equals.
With the insight of a people persecuted for millennia, exterminated in pogroms and mass-murdered in a Holocaust, you could have found, in your wise rabbinic tradition, a way for Arabs and Jews to live together. But you didn’t want to share the land. You wanted it all. And in the process, you turned your Zionist project into a nightmare; the West Bank into a patchwork of disconnected enclaves surrounded by your settlements; Gaza into an open-air prison — and now a killing field.
It’s too late to rewrite history. But you can change the script you’re holding in your hands.
Show us. The world waits for you to conquer your fears and, in the years to come, emerge as a shining example of peaceful coexistence for the people of the 21st century to emulate.
O People of Israel, the time has come to loosen up and play some jazz.
— Kalle Lasn
We create a new world by simply letting go . . . cultivating a certain looseness of mind . . .
. . . opting for small rather than imposing things.
Muted colors.
Understatement instead of hyperbole.
Not the action but that pregnant moment before the action.
We abandon the spectacle . . . and revel instead in the intimacies of everyday life: the touch of a lover, a chat with a bright-eyed stranger, a quiet moment in the wild.
We activate mystical feelings of oneness with nature!
We abandon our devices and learn to have fun again. Just crazy, uninhibited fun.(Where did that go?)
Love your towel . . . give it a name . . . talk to it . . . rub your face in it day and night . . . when it starts to fray, don’t ditch it . . . keep hugging it . . . let it grow old . . . watch it fall apart bit by bit . . . and then, one fine day when you know in your heart that the day has finally come . . . give it one last hug and compost it into your garden.
Our world is failing.
Climate shocks are displacing millions.
Inequality is stoking massive civil unrest.
Genocidal wars are breaking out with increasing frequency.
We may be heading for total global collapse.
But it doesn’t have to be this way ... this could also turn out to be the most exciting, the most successful era in human history.
An Interview with Kohei Saito
Author of Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto
AB: The big reveal of your recent work is the contents of these newly discovered notebooks that Marx wrote late in life. We learn that he had a nuanced understanding of ecology and earth systems. I think it’s a big surprise to many that Marx had any kind of environmental sensitivity at all! But you’re sort of dusting him off for a new generation.
KS: After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many people believed that Marx had nothing more to say. But then a few things happened. One was the economic crisis of 2008. Then three years later we had the Fukushima nuclear disaster. At that point the problems with capitalism were becoming hard to ignore. I started thinking... okay, capitalism has something to do with this — the maximum use of energy and resources is a characteristic of our daily economic activity under this system. But Marx seemed so outdated.
Then I was lucky enough to get invited onto a project to edit these late notebooks of Marx. And I saw this deep investigation of natural sciences: biology, agriculture, chemistry, geology. Marx dove into so many different topics, from soil erosion to deforestation to extinction of species at the hands of humans. I was like: wow. Because we think of Marx as basically focused on the exploitation of workers. But looking at these notebooks, another concept emerges: metabolism.
Hamas, at heart, are freedom fighters.
There, I said it. And now I'll probably pay for it.
Because there are boundaries around how we can talk about Oct 7. You can support the Palestinians: yes. But showing any sympathy at all for Hamas, is beyond the pale — you'll get doxxed, cancelled, vilified as an antisemite and worse.
But fuck it, I'll say it anyway: They're freedom fighters!
What these young men actually did on Oct 7 was brutal and barbaric and in many cases impossible to defend. But why they did it, that's easier to understand. When you put a certain kind of person in a chokehold for long enough, they go off in ways you're not going to like. Imagine you — and your people — are fenced in, caged up in an open-air prison for sixteen years. You have no hope, no dignity, no future. You're mowed down by remote-control machine guns if you wander too close to the razor-wire fence. Your daily caloric intake is restricted to near-starvation levels. Your children routinely have suicidal thoughts. And there's no light at the end of this — you're trapped like an animal.
So what do you do? You burst out of your cage with feral ferocity — you're a barbaric terrorist yes, yes, yes — but fuck it, you're a freedom fighter too.
— Kalle Lasn
When consumer culture collided with the digital environment, something new emerged. Something new but ancient: a plague. Only this one isn’t attacking bodies. It’s attacking minds.
We are all addicts now, with devastating mental-health effects. The only way to break the cycle is by voluntarily taking on the pain of doing without.
Welcome to the New Asceticism.
[PSYCHO]
Smooth apes with brains still wired for scarcity are lurching around in a world of plenty.
[selfie-click]
And by plenty, we’re talking overabundance. Wishes instantly fulfilled. More calories within reach than our ancestors could have chased down in a month.
See, life is paradox, and the paradox of plenty is this: You’d think that instantly gratified desires would be a recipe for happiness. But the opposite is true.
Adbusters is looking for people to fight the good fight.
Social Media Manager
Adbusters Media Foundation is looking for a seasoned, politically charged Webslinger who can place our most powerful ideas, campaigns and visual memes strategically on social media.
Full-time, Part-time, Permanent, Casual, Freelance
Hours: 10-35 per week
Salary: up to $50.00 per hour
Please send your resume and cover letter to [email protected]
Journalist / Writer
Adbusters Media Foundation is looking for a seasoned, politically savvy writer with a poetic sensibility to help us with our magazine, website, listservs and campaigns.
Full-time, Part-time, Permanent, Freelance
Hours: 10-35 per week
Salary: up to $50.00 per hour
Please send your resume and cover letter to [email protected]