The Existential Divide
by Kalle Lasn

a passionate struggle for freedom is deeply embedded in the history of the western world. it still inspires us today. and it inspires oppressed people everywhere. freedom is our great metameme, the crowning jewel of our civilization … but lately, in our own backyard, freedom has taken a perverse, hyper-individualistic turn.

we now drink more, do more drugs, live more promiscuously, spend more money, use up more resources, create more waste, ad deliberately flaunt our wealth, power and sexuality more than any other culture on earth.

when a modest, pious man living in a poor village a world away looks at us, what does he see?

while 79% of university entrants in 1970 said their goal in life was to develop “a meaningful philosophy of life,” by 2005, 75% defined their life’s objective as “being very well off financially.”

what happened?

have we found total freedom or absolute disconnect? Are we becoming more liberated, or just increasingly self-centered and alienated?

what, really, are our moral, cultural and spiritual foundations now?

baby drought … we in the affluent West are now experiencing negative population growth and precipitously dropping fertility (across the European Union, fertility rates have dropped well below the level that maintains population: 2.1 children per woman). could it be the by-product of our increasing social breakdown? or perhaps an unconscious, collective suicide … ?

freedom … why are we trying to impose our freedom around the world at the point of a gun? oh perverse irony … now there’s a growing movement around the world—a new kind of freedom fight—to be free of our brand of me-first freedom.

fat teens … two-thirds of teenagers too fat to be soldiers … the latest opponents of fast food and junk food may be Britain’s own national army. As if it weren’t hard enough for the beleaguered military to sign up young recruits, research suggests that an increasing number of teens in the UK are too fat to be soldiers. Last year, the BMI for male army recruits had to be dropped from 28 to 32 because of increasing obesity rates among teenagers.

we kill ourselves slowly, by eating too much or too little, becoming fat, or anorexic, or diabetic. physically and psychologically we wither away in our culture of collective self-absorption and material sloth. and our boundless, insatiable greed now threatens to drag the entire planet down with us.

meanwhile, in our eyes, the islamist suicide bomber has come to epitomize “the terrorist”, a modern savage, a psychopathic degenerate utterly disconnected from any redeeming social or moral values. yet, in fact, this “other” is a man whose life revolves around the mosque, daily prayer, restrained dress, moderate fasting, a tight-knit family and community. when pushed to the limit, a committed muslim may decide to sacrifice his own life, his own body, for what he sees as a greater social and spiritual good. which one of us in the west will do this now?

this is the existential divide.

after years of taking a trouncing in many parts of the world, we on the progressive left now seem poised for a major comeback. we’ve certainly been helped by the spectacular bungling of the neocon-led, anglo-american axis of aggression. the question is, are we ready to step up to the plate? can we fill the political void with new ideas and fresh perspectives, or are we still the whiny, complaint-based defeatists of the past?

there’s a vigorous resurgence of the left going on in latin america and other parts of the world, but here in the affluent West, i think we are still, by and large, lost at sea. try as we may, we have not been able to zero in on a narrative, a storyline, a compelling way of framing our agenda. in canada and the us especially, we’re still afraid, scared in fact, rattled … we remain a dry cerebral bunch—too cold and nihilistic to engage the fundamentalist right on hot moral and spiritual issues …

but what hurst us most is our timidity. while the neocons have any number of fired-up “thrashers” who delight in mocking and lambasting us, we don’t seem to be able to muster a single spokesperson with … assurance and intellectual clarity. where is our ability to kick ass?

in order to become the dreamers, the visionaries, the risk-takers, the kind of people who galvinize campuses, sway elections and command respect in the media every day, we must be born again. here are a few ways to dip your head in the water:

• stop hiding—get back in the public eye—do something a little wild every day
• go to Kenya, Brazil, India—rub shoulders with the activists there
• explore visionary ideas—then embrace one of them
• join a third party—then put up the fight of your life
• work on your morals—admit that whichever way you look at it, abortion is a tradgedy
• meditate on what happened before the big bang
• live without dead time

for the wild,
Kalle