What a man is Kalle
Lasn, born in Tallinn in 1942, his family fled Soviet troops in 1944
to a German refugee camp for five year; moved to Australia and Japan
for twenty years (1949-69), followed by visits to Japan and Canada ,
where for twenty years of he made films for PBS and CBC, finetuning
his critique of our advertising culture, if can call it that. He
founded “Adbusters” in 1989, where he devised shrewd mocks like
the TV Turnoff Week, when enticed millions to ignore their bad TV
habits for seven days, kind of a shortened Lent.
Adbusters became
most renowned for culture-jamming, or “subvertising” or creating
spoofs of well-known adverts. Out of such quirky maneuver was born
the Occupy Wall Street movement, for which Lasn was the first to
register a movement website.Never solemn, always searching for
strategies which will enable the masses to understand how often
advertising offends while pretending to please them.
What really
thrills Lasn is a minirevolt like the one that took place in
November, 2011 when 70 Harvard economics students walk out of a
lecture by their faculty head, Greg Mankiv—to end up joining the
march of Occupy Boston. They want to know why all those Harvard
faculty brains couldn’t predict the 2008 collapse. Worse, why the
brass doesn’t complain that no guilty bankers don’t go to jail!
(I was always nervous about how President Obama surrounded himself
with such errant brass!)
Lasn is no born
again Marxist. “For the past 15-20 years, we at Adbusters have
been saying we have to jump over the dead body of the old left. I’m
not all that interested in the political left, unless it’s the new
horizontal left that’s coming out of Occupy.” And he assumes that
Harvard students—and faculty!—should be meliorists: guarding
against abuse of the common 99 by the rampant 1 %! Maybe there is a
bad Harvard gene that blinds the best minds of the next generation to
improving the ethics of the system.
In his latest book,
“Meme Wars—The Creative Destruction of Neo-Classical Economics,”
“I want,” Lasn asserts,”to light a fire under the economic
students around the world. I can imagine a few of them asking: how
come we are still being taught the old economics? Why did not even
one in a hundred of you professors see the meltdown coming? It’s an
invitation to the students who get wind of the book to create a bit
of ruckus within the university.” Remember his ploy of subverting
ads? In this fresh, cheeky textbook, he teaches you at sneer at
economic nonsense. “Darling! Reads a subverted image of two 50s
lovers.” Let’s get deeply in debt.”
Lasn finds three
weaknesses in conventional economics textbooks: Orthodox economics
has brought to the brink of Economic ruin. They foster a consumer
culture that has turned humanity into a selfish, anxious race .It
fetishes economic growth even though it is evident that such growth
is ultimately destructive, since it not only makes us unhappy but it
places unsustainable pressures on natural resources. “This is one
of the most fatal flaws in neo-classical economics.” Lasn
concludes,” We cannot keep selling off our natural capital and
calling it income. It’s the most stupid mistake of all. . . When
they measure growth, they don’t measure real progress.”(Patrick
Kingsley, The Guardian, 11/5/2012.)
Heh, get ready for the next
Occupy march nearest. And bug your professors for fresher takes on
our shakey global economy! Remember, you’re the generation that
will suffer the most from their smug blindness. Don’t be afraid of
Big Names. The bigger they are, the faster and farther they can
fall—on you and yours! Life is a Lottery only for fools who don’t
think! Kalle Lasn never stops thinking. Bust Ads!! They’re aimed
at you—and yours.
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