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The Meme Machine

Ecologist, The, April, 2000 by Kalle Lasn

KALLE LASN THINKS WE ARE ON THE VERGE OF A GREAT GLOBAL MINDSHIFT.

WHEN I SHOWED up in Seattle last November to watch the WTO circus unfold, I wasn't expecting much from the protesters. I thought they would be the usual rabble-rousing lefty crowd, charged up but not particularly focused, thoughtful or effective.

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But as the waves of protesters moved through the downtown core, I changed my mind. These people were passionate, they were having fun, and the signs they carried were sharper than anything I could have thought up. One big placard simply said 'WTO' -- except the letters were corporate logos (the golden arches upside down for 'W', the Texaco 'T' and the 'O'- shaped eye of CBS). It became clear that most of the protesters understood what was fundamentally at stake and what the summit really boiled down to: civic culture vs corporate culture. More than that, they had found a way to distil this message into potent 'memes'. It's with memes, not bombs, bullets or tear gas, that the real geopolitical battle of the next century will be fought; and with ground troops like those folks in Seattle, 'the people' may just win.

A meme (rhymes with 'dream') is a unit of information -- a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a notion of fashion, philosophy or politics. Memes compete with one another and are passed through a population in much the same way as genes pass through a species. Good strong memes can change minds, alter behaviour, catalyse collective mindshifts and transform cultures. In our information age, whoever has the memes has the power.

For about forty years corporations have had the power. They've been beaming their memes into our brains at the rate of about 3,000 marketing messages per day (that includes all the ads, brands and logos you see and hear on TV, on computer screens, magazines, radio, billboards, buildings, T-shirts, appliances, etc). This onslaught -- arguably the biggest psychological experiment ever carried out on the human race -- has changed us profoundly. The food we eat, the cars we drive, the way we feel about our bodies, our sexuality, what music we think is 'cool', have all been shaped by the billions of pro-consumption memes dumped into our collective subconscious daily.

But lately, counter-memes -- of the sort seen in Seattle -- have appeared more frequently in the mindscape: fashion billboards 'liberated' by creative editors with spraycans; 'No Shop' days; a bumper sticker that asks: 'Is Economic Progress Killing the Planet?'.

I believe the next few years will see an intensification of meme warfare throughout our mental environment. Which is to say, not in the sky or on the streets, and not in the forests, as in earlier eras, but in newspapers and magazines, on the radio, on TV and in cyberspace. This global guerrilla information war will be a no-holds-barred propaganda battle of competing world views and alternative visions of the future.

The most critical areas of contest will involve the sovereignty of individual citizens and of nations against the sovereignty of corporations. Here are what I find to be the three most potent 'metamemes' currently in the social activist's arsenal.

METAMEME 1: NO CORPORATE 'I'

'Corporations are not "persons" with constitutional rights and freedoms of their own, but legal fictions that we created and must control.'

Are corporations legitimate agents of progress or merely generators of shareholder profit at the planet's expense? Should transnationals have the power to challenge the laws of sovereign nations? In this century, will a handful of giant corporations dominate every industry? Will corporations rule the world? Or is this just a clever lefty pseudo-meme? That's the mind-field we must negotiate.

Now, if my reading of the 'Seattle Rebellion' is correct, the next 10 years will be a period of intense corporate-bashing. Corporate criminals like Philip Morris will be pushed to the wall and beyond. Aggressive megacorps like Monsanto, which thinks it can 'SLAPP' (prevent criticism via libel laws) the world into its agenda will suffer. All upcoming MAI or WTO trade initiatives are doomed. A visceral and intensely political and internet-centred reaction against corporate bigness is under way.

At stake is the very legitimacy of corporations, their 'person-hood' under the law, If enough people pick up on the No Corporate 'I' meme and start relating to corporations in new, more rambunctious ways, then our business culture will change profoundly.

For one, there will be harsh, new corporate criminal liability laws. Corporate lawbreakers will not be allowed to bid for government contracts or hold television broadcast licences; they will be barred from lobbying activities and financing political campaigns. Companies that dump toxic wastes, damage watersheds, fix prices, exploit employees, or keep vital information secret from customers, will pay huge penalties. Rogue corporations that wilfully break the law will have their charters revoked, their assets sold and the money funnelled into superfunds for their victims.

The Meme Machine

Ecologist, The, April, 2000 by Kalle Lasn

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