From the moment you start dreaming as a teenager, start delving into philosophy and following artists, sense a first hint of awe at your existence and wonder if life has any meaning at all.

Riddles wrapped in enigmas wrapped in mysteries. What the hell happened before the Big Bang? Does AI totally vanquish the idea of a human soul? And who is this "I" asking all these things, anyway?

You'll keep asking questions like that ... again and again and again.

In my late teens I thought I'd found some answers in Wittgenstein . . . and then in Sartre & Heidegger . . . and later in Shinto's mystical embrace of nature . . . and in the films of Ozu and the nothingness of Zen. The artist Agnes Martin once hit me hard with: "I am staying unsettled and trying not to talk for three years. I want to do it very much."

Many decades later, strolling through a graveyard in Australia, I came across John Molloy, a Lieutenant Colonel in Her Majesty's army, who fought under Wellington at Rolica, Salamanca and the Pyrenees, and died on 8th of October 1867 aged 87 years. His epitaph read:

I HAVE FOUGHT THE GOOD FIGHT

I HAVE FINISHED MY COURSE

I HAVE KEPT THE FAITH

Yes, Yes, you too will have breakthrough moments that will leave their imprint on you forever. You'll get hints, little shifts and subplots that make you feel like you're creeping up on something big and true, like finally you have it, you're almost there . . .

Yes, yes, like in a dream, your search will go on.

And when you hit 80, maybe you'll hear an old Dylan song and feel something stirring deep inside you. And one morning you'll wander out on your veranda and see hummingbirds playing jazz around your flower plots, and your heart will soar and you'll feel a giddy sense of oneness with the world.

But then slowly, you'll lose your mind. Or at least that's what it'll feel like as you're lying there staring at the ceiling, in the company of dead sages whose words have meant so much to you, speaking to you all at once now:

ONE SHOT, ONE LIFE. Sesshu

BACK TO THE ROUGH GROUND! Wittgenstein

I AM BECAUSE WE ARE. African Ubuntu saying

EXISTENCE IS A FREE GIFT FROM THE SUN. Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen

KALLE, BE A MAN. My mother on my 13th birthday.

STOP TRYING. Lao Tsu

Get into the holiday spirit with a good spank . . .

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If we can hit 1 trillion spanks, we'll bury MAGA in the midterms and turn the national vibe against Trump.

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Ideas & Voting
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How to Spark a Real Revolution

Our editor in chief Kalle Lasn sat down with Daniel Pinchbeck to talk about the big ideas from Manifesto for World Revolution, the history of Adbusters, BUMs, Gen Z uprisings . . . how to save the world . . . and how to wobble.

Check it out. Share widely. Grab a copy of Manifesto.

Simplify, simplify, simplify!

Swear off clocks.

Instead, tune in to the rhythms of the turning world. Locate yourself in space and time by the feeling you get when you look up at the sky, by the sound of birdsong in the morning. And, later in the day, by the mood of the people around you.

Then slow down. Whenever you're even a little overextended, insert a sacred pause, a micro-Sabbath, right there in your day.

Then declutter. Get rid of your car, your dishwasher, your air conditioner, your electric can opener. Not all at once: take your time. Do it bit by bit when it feels right to make those edits to your life.

Then stop visiting supermarkets and go radically local instead.

Then wean yourself off your phone till you're only on it for a tiny fraction of every day — be more present than ever.

Sounds crazy I know. But is it any crazier than what's happening to us right now — most of us half-assing our way through life with weak stabs at change that don't cut the sadness and anxiety one bit?

Think of the all-in as Plan B — because Plan A isn't working so well — a last-ditch attempt to yank yourself out of the corpo-consumer-capitalist death machine before it totally engulfs you.

Adbusters #182 is out now on newsstands worldwide!

Big plays and revolutionary ideas to fight the good fight

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Become a founding member of the BUMs party

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We know it's a long shot but as soon as we have fifty thousand members signed up, we will hold a communal brainstorm and decide what the next step in our evolution should be.

Dare differently . . .

Western WEIRDness

Hot off the press is the newest report of the Global Flourishing Study — an ongoing project managed by Harvard and Baylor which checks in with hundreds of thousands of folks in 22 countries to see how they're doing. "Flourishing" might best be described as truly crushing this thing called life. You're happy, you're healthy, you're at peace. Once again this year, the Scandinavian countries came out on top.

The big surprise was who came out on the bottom: Japan, the UK, and the United States. Countries with among the highest GDP in the world.

WTF?

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