Kalle Lasn – Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics1

by Nicole Powers

“I believe that we are at the brink of a 1,000 year Dark Age and unless we stand up viscerally and powerfully and with civil disobedience and everything we’ve got, if we don’t start fighting for a different kind of future, then we’re not going to have a future.”

~ Kalle Lasn, Adbusters

Adbusters co-founder and Occupy Wall Street protagonist Kalle Lasn is hoping his new book, Meme Wars, will ultimately facilitate the occupation of the world’s financial institutions, corporations, and governments from within. It’s a lofty goal and a long game, but as Lasn so eloquently puts it: “If we don’t start fighting for a different kind of future then we’re not going to have a future.”

Over the course of Meme War’s 400+ pages, Lasn challenges students in the economics departments of learning institutions around the globe to rise up, reeducate their professors, and demand they cast aside the failed tenets of orthodox economics. He also sets forth a more holistic curriculum which takes into account the psychological and environmental costs of doing business and redefines the concept of wealth to include mental and ecological health.

We spoke with Lasn, who was born in Estonia but is Vancouver based, by phone.

Read our interview with Kalle Lasn on SuicideGirls.com.

Meme Wars: The Creative Destruction of Neoclassical Economics is published by Seven Stories.