The Manifesto

[Yarco]

Lately I'm starting to wonder how much value I'm really providing by responding to posts on the forum. A thread stays up for a week or two, then it's gone forever into obscurity. Maybe a couple of people will find the stuff I've written again through the search feature over the years. But the posts are pretty much lost to time.

It seems like a waste to offer timeless advice that just fades away.

So I'm thinking about writing a manifesto.

That's kind of a controversial word, but I like it.

The word manifesto gets a bad reputation from people who have released them in the past and then done violent or unlawful things. But there doesn't necessarily need to be anything extreme about one. That's not my intention.

Wikipedia defines a manifesto as:

"A published declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government. A manifesto usually accepts a previously published opinion or public consensus or promotes a new idea with prescriptive notions for carrying out changes the author believes should be made. It often is political, social or artistic in nature, sometimes revolutionary, but may present an individual's life stance."

Look at The Communist Manifesto for example. Even the athletic apparel company lululemon has their own manifesto.

My manifesto will attempt to contain the sum of my knowledge, experience, and opinions. As well as the direction that I think the world should move in.

It's largely going to be a stage orange self-help instructional document on business, making money, etc. As well as philosophical points and a general overview of my political beliefs and thoughts about how the world works. Plus mistakes and pitfalls I've made (and continue to make) that should be avoided. I'm going to try to account for future events 20+ years from now and write it in a way that it'll still be useful to people in a generation as well, or just make it fairly timeless information.

The Lindy Effect: The idea that the older something is, the longer it’s likely to be around in the future.

If writing forum posts are like Twitch livestreams that disappear a week or two after they're broadcasted, a manifesto would be more like making Youtube videos that people can come back to years or perhaps decades into the future. Maybe I'll even create an NFT domain for it so it can live on the blockchain forever.

My writing is simply too valuable to let it be so ephemeral.

That sounds extremely egotistical and narcissistic, but it's true. What you think has value, and you should probably make your own manifesto too.

It also seems like a good journaling exercise. At the end, I'll have everything that sums up who I am as a person in a single neat little package.

I write for a living, so I know the value of my writing. Each of my words are worth $0.15+ each and if I'm honest, I'm really undervaluing myself.

When I make a well-thought-out 300-word forum post, I'm basically donating something worth $50 to you. 

My manifesto is going to be a free gift to the world. If it ends up being 100,000 words long, then I value it at around $15,000 USD. It means a lot to me, my soul is going to go into it.

A lot of work, thought, and effort goes into something that big. And right now my plate is already pretty full.

Realistically I probably won't start substantially working on the manifesto until next year. Maybe just laying out general sections of what I want to include and taking notes for now. It's definitely going on my list of goals for 2023 though. If I write it for 4 hours a week, then it can probably be done by the end of 2023 (not including editing and formatting.)

I'm hoping to cut back on posting on the forum a bit in the meantime. Unless it's to provide someone with time-sensitive information that I think will help improve their life, and that they'll actually take to heart. Or posts that I've consciously structured in a way that I can save them to re-use in the manifesto, as part of something that I would've wanted to explain anyway. (This shit's addictive though, as evidenced by all the people "quitting" and coming back the next day. So don't be surprised if I'm still around either and try to hold me to it LOL. This is not an "I'm quitting" post, it's a re-evaluating priorities post. Sometimes I'm still going to make dumb choices and resort to mud-slinging for my own entertainment.)

I need to start valuing my time and writing more highly though. I'm throwing away thousands of dollars in words every week and they largely fall on deaf ears or only get a passing glance.

The manifesto will serve as a tool for my grandchildren and great grandchildren to get a window into my life, what I thought and felt, and the time period that I lived in. Hopefully educating them and saving them from having to learn a few things the hard way themselves. Especially on topics that we aren't going to be allowed to talk about in another decade, which will only be passed down and kept alive family member to family member, the silencing is already starting now.

Strangers will be free to use my manifesto if they think for some reason I'm worthy of being a mentor, or have something insightful to share.

I want to let the information flow into this document completely freely in a totally unfiltered and even in a slightly unhinged way. I think a tinge of insanity with a whole bunch of truth is what makes a good manifesto. It'll also be therapy for me to put it all to paper. So it may be very offensive and sacrilegious in some sections. I may need to make a SFW version that I can publish within the next few years. And then have an uncensored version on a dead man's switch that will only be released upon my death. Some of the stuff I want to say might not be allowed in a couple years, so I might have to wait to say it until after I'm dead to avoid consequences. Or maybe that's cowardly and I should just speak my truth regardless of the consequences... we'll see.

It's incredibly egotistical of me to think anybody out there cares, or will really be looking forward to reading such a thing. I could've just not said anything for the next 2 years and then released it when it was done. But idk, it feels like the right thing to put the idea out there for now.

I will try to update and post some little sneak peaks of the manifesto here as chapters are completed.