A letter to our supporters for the upcoming year.
LEAH MCINNIS
All of us here at Adbusters want to thank you for being a supporter of our foundation. It has been a pleasure to fight the good fight with you … sharing the highs and lows, the defeats and victories, the cultural campaigns and the tantalizing glimpses of a new way of being.
Today, with 2014 on the horizon, we thought we’d send you this year-end round up, give you a rousing pep talk and keep you in the loop on what we have in mind for the upcoming year of the horse.
REVOLUTION IS A RHIZOME
The conditions which spurred on the Greek anarchists, the Arab Spring, the Spanish indignados, #OccupyWallStreet, the Chilean student revolt, Pussy Riot, the Quebec uprising, #idlenomore, Yo Soy 132 in Mexico, and the insurrections in Istanbul, Lima, Sofia and São Paulo have only become more endemic. Inequality is reaching obscene proportions. There is an ever-greater concentration of wealth, ever-bigger banks, a steady increase of high frequency trading, derivative confusion and outbursts of rogue financial algorithms that send markets dipping and soaring beyond any human control.
$1.3 trillion in speculative financial transactions swirl around the planet every day. The stage is now set for a catastrophic market crash bigger than 2008 or even 1929 … one that, combined with apocalyptic climate change, could spell the end of civilization as we know it. People everywhere, especially the youth, are waking up to the fact that if they don’t stand up and fight for a different kind of future, they won’t have one.
In the wake of this huge, existential, planetary problem, a new mode of activism, a “new architecture of protest,” is emerging. What begins as a simple demand — don’t cut the trees, don’t raise the transit fare, don’t build that pipeline — suddenly erupts into an all-encompassing desire to reboot the entire machine. Out of this new insurrectionary design we see three metamemes that could change the game for good.
THREE METAMEMES FOR THE FUTURE
• Economics students and heterodox economists rise up and demand a paradigm shift in economic science. They move to abandon almost everything we thought we knew about progress, happiness and growth. They then re-imagine industry, nutrition, communication, transportation, housing and money, and pioneer a new kind of bionomics, a psychonomics, an ecological economics, a barefoot economics that is up to the job of managing our planetary household. This fight for a shift in the theoretical foundations of economic science is now well underway on dozens of campuses worldwide.
• In the aftermath of Wikileaks and the Edward Snowden revelations, we feel that the global mood is ripe for the birth of a mental environmental movement. More than ever we can see that in the same way we need to clean the physical landscape, so too do we need to brush clean the psychic one. Infotoxins, commercial seduction, 3000+ ads beamed into your head everyday and state & corporate misinformation have become ubiquitous. A potential elixir to reclaim the global mind is a new era of radical transparency … to add the right to live in a transparent world as a new human right in the constitution of every nation and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• The internet has reversed a centuries-old power dynamic. The street has a renewed fire. Through hacking, rhizomatic organizing and viral memes, mass swarm-like protest can still paralyze cities, bring whole countries to a standstill, send a chill through stock markets and force our leaders to open their ears. Harnessing this new revolution algorithm, in the 21st century, democracy could look like this: a dynamic never-ending feedback loop between entrenched power structures and the street. In this new model, corporate power will be blunted by sustained and clearly articulated demands for new economic, political and environmental policies; capitals will be open for visceral debates and referendums on critical issues, for the revocation of the charters of corporations that break the public trust and for new laws and constitutional amendments on democratic fundamentals like secrecy, corporate personhood and the rules by which nations go to war.
ADBUSTERS IN 2014
Here at Culture Jammers HQ we just put the finishing touches on our first-ever five-part series, The Epic Human Journey. This collection captured our creative and political imaginations like never before, pushing Adbusters into exciting, uncharted, waters. In the new year, we’re launching another series, this one titled The Blueprint for a New World. It promises to deliver a futuristic, anarchic, aesthetic and mental road-map with one goal: catalyzing another global moment . . . one that this time plays for keeps.
The biggest project in 2014 for the Media Foundation is our international Global Warning campaign. We’re creating the most visceral and challenging climate change meme yet, one that will shake the world out of collective denial. Imagine a 15 second, 30 second and 60 second mind-bomb airing on every major news and television station across the world, a wake up call that leaves everyone who sees it transformed, unable to return to a life of ecological amnesia.
We’re also looking to put hard copies of our electronic Spanish edition on newsstands across Latin America and Spain, as well as producing our first ever Adbusters edition in Mandarin! And – if the Gods of publishing show their favor – a book to follow-up Meme Wars, a full-size blast on the New Aesthetic . . . the look that awaits humanity beyond the capitalist horizon.
This human journey of ours is about to enter a 10,000 year dark age . . . without respite, without a new wave of spirited resistance . . . prognosis is terminal. Everywhere there is talk but real action is nowhere to be seen. Every year there are myriad conferences, accords, declarations and commitments . . . all a dramatic ruse. The moment is ripe. The global consciousness needs a shake-up. And we here at Culture Jammers HQ know that we have the serum, the dose, the shot to break through the bullshit . . . so will you continue to help us do it?
Hold on tight, here it comes . . .
the Year of the Horse!
From all of us here at Adbusters
Read more on Adbusters.org
Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
