The war against too much of everything

Photo of Kalle Lasn by Grant Harder

I wish I'd read this New York Times article BEFORE I did all my Christmas shopping this year. I've spent the past month agonizing over what to buy - or not buy - for friends and family and so this article struck a chord! http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/business/adbusters-war-against-too-much-of-everything.html?_r=0&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1356200187-nBgjASbsjqsEm4tDhvxbfQ

So says Kalle Lasn, 70, maestro of the proudly radical magazine Adbusters, published in Vancouver, British Columbia. Mr. Lasn takes gleeful pleasure in lobbing provocations at global corporations — and his latest salvo is “Buy Nothing Christmas.” “As our planet gets warmer, as animals go extinct, as the humans get sicker, as our economies bail and our politicians grow ever more twisted, Americans just go shopping", Adbusters says on its Web site. Overconsumption is destroying us, yet shopping is “our solace, our sedative: consumerism is the opiate of the masses.We’ve got to break the habit,” Mr. Lasn said in a telephone interview. “It will be a shock, but we’ve got to shift to a new paradigm. Otherwise, I’m afraid we will be facing a new Dark Age.”