So you wanna write a manifesto. You know how to make the world a better place—everyone’s doing it.
Jordan Peterson has done one, and he’ll even read it to you.
Karl Marx wrote one.
Ted Kaczynski wrote one, and terrorized the nation for 20 years.
Valerie Solanas wrote one and shot Andy Warhol.
But why not write a manifesto?
Consider this my anti-manifesto manifesto.
1. Your message needs to hit
First, if nobody cared to write down what you’ve taught, then it probably wasn’t revolutionary enough, or memorable enough.
But if you’re booking large venues, you’re not so much reshaping society as much as you are contributing to some part of it. This is fine. Reshaping shouldn’t happen so frequently that you can expect it during your lifetime.
Imagine sticking out so much that 1) people follow you around, and 2) they just start quoting things you say. If you’re just on the edge of legibility / society you’ll have your small tribe.
2. You have to live it anyways
If you did come up with something revolutionary, you want to live it. This thing has to work for you and for at least some of the people around you. Praxis needs to be built right into the foundation.
Another reason to live it is that stories are a great way to encode ideas. And they’re a great way to remember facts anyways. For you, there’s skin in the game, etc.
Instead of preaching rules or a worldview, you play it out in real life. For Kaczynski and Solanas that meant violence. But if you want to build a better world, violence is an awful way to start.
3. Mystery
If there’s hardly any trace of your existence…
I originally had a Balenciaga cover image, but I got rid of it because the main idea I want to convey is not a tacit support of the company's flirtation with pedophilia, but the juxtaposition of fame and mystery