A Manifesto on Manifestos
Manifestos can be written about anything under the sun, and to the far ends of the universe.
Andre Breton published The Surrealist Manifesto in 1924.
Frank O’Hara published Personism: A Manifesto in 1959.
George Maciunas published the Fluxus Manifesto in 1963.
Donna Haraway published A Cyborg Manifesto in 1985.
SARK published How to Be an Artist in 1989.
Bruce Mau published An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth in 1998.
Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger published The Cluetrain Manifesto in 2000.
Lawrence Lessig published The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World in 2001.
Stephen Pressfield published The War of Art in 2002.
Brene Brown published Daring Greatly Leadership Manifesto in 2012.
Mark Hatch published The Maker Movement Manifesto in 2013.
Brendon Burchard published The Motivation Manifesto: 9 Declarations to Claim Your Personal Power in 2014.
Tricia Hersey published Rest is Resistance: A Manifesto in 2022.
Manifestos about art, creativity, and all the different ways of being human have changed the world. They’ve showed us creative visions—poetic, surreal, and otherwise.
Fast forward to 2023: For years, domestic terrorists have written manifestos on typewriters with broken keys, and given manifestos a bad rap.
To that, we stick our fingers in our ears and say, la la la la.
Now, manifestos are for and by everyone.
Creative and quirky manifestos outnumber unhinged humans with murder in their heart’s manifestos—by a large margin. Which is why you should write your own manifesto.
Write your manifesto on whatever you deeply believe in, and what you strongly care about.
By performing a quick Google search, you can find countless Manifestos.
In recent years, people have written book-length manifestos on: Motivation, Being a Lightmaker, Everyday Heroes, Menopause, Intuition, Being a Misfit, Against Ageism, Abundance, On Never Giving Up, Eating, Being Weird, Women & Politics, Gardening, Talent, Wisdom, and much more.
If there’s a format of writing down what you care about that’s more malleable and all-inclusive, then show us what it is.
You could write it down in a notebook (digital or paper) in 2023, and lo and behold a decade later, in 2033, you’ll either want to add more life experience to it or change it entirely.
Write a manifesto to claim your place in culture, history, or even your neighborhood.
Write a manifesto in your journal and show just one person. (Even if that person is yourself.)
Write a manifesto on courage, breathing, walking, facing down your fears.
Make your mind, your heart, your body a living manifesto.
Carry around a journal that’ll fit in your pocket, and collect all your powerful thoughts in it, and turn those thoughts into a manifesto for these times we’re living in, surviving in, making a difference in, being uplifting when you can be, making things anew, and ultimately transforming this world for future generations.
A manifesto can be one page or hundreds of pages.
Make each day of your life a manifesto.
Write down what it’s like being alive in this moment in world history—living life in this now as a student, a truck driver, a yoga instructor, a farmer, a picture framer, a teacher, a singer, a baker, a truck driver, a traveler, an artist, a philosopher—in this expanding time of continuously evolving global changes.
Put in the uniqueness of how your mind feels on the page.
This is a moment in history where everything seems possible and impossible, the end or the beginning. Each day we possess the capability of nudging the life of everyone on this planet into a better version of themselves.
We think everyone can write a manifesto. Starting as young as possible. What if kids in elementary schools were taught to write open-hearted and open-minded manifestos to counterattack the closed-minded social conditioning being heaped upon their impressionable young minds? Wouldn’t that be wonderful? They could get to the saving the world part of their life story a lot quicker, with fewer mental and emotional hindrances holding them back.
The way you write your manifesto is the only way you could. It’s the perfectly imperfect living document only you can make.
Words, ideas, knowledge. These things are transmitted through books. Books are mind food.
Every open-hearted manifesto written in this moment in time is transmitting ideas, life, art, culture. And pointing toward a freer, more loving society.
Manifestos are the antithesis of random cleverness or street vomit. Wild words not put into a throwaway notion or random thought; manifestos are handcrafted and built upon transformative ideas and liberating visions.
A manifesto is a tool for opening minds, not a careless concept that tastes like flavorless fast food. Not made for a day news bites we consume like a lukewarm cup of take-out coffee. Manifestos are interconnected life altering ideas and visions pulled down from the sky, ideas you want to keep coming back to.
Remember to pack a journal to write your manifesto in your overnight bag.
Write a manifesto about the power of a memory you can’t let go that makes you smile uncontrollably, while drinking an espresso in Sacramento.
The key to writing your manifesto is to use a good pen, one that doesn’t run out of ink and writes with a flowing motion. One wonders how many brilliant ideas have been lost in time because the ink ran dry just as the ideas were flowing. If you’re more of a futurist, the talk-to-text function on your phone is ideal for capturing ideas in a pinch. When you listen to them later, they’ll touch your heart and grow into more expansive ideas.
Manifestos can be subversive, uplifting, funny, and as personal or global as you want them to be.
Let’s pick a day, and everyone will write at least one page of a manifesto.
Write a manifesto on sensuality, musicality, and on the joy of being alive in a world where our senses interact so perfectly with it.
Create a manifesto about walking in the woods while out walking in the woods.
Each manifesto written down is a spit in the eye against mediocrity and dull sameness.
Write a manifesto from your warmly beating open heart.
How about a manifesto on loving awareness, and caring for others, and smiling when you see people holding hands and walking down the street?
Manifestos about curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness are more necessary now than ever before.
Write a manifesto about why, how, who, and what.
When you write a manifesto on paper, your thoughts are transmitted in a different way than if you’d written it on a laptop.
Write down every thought and sensation going through your mind. Edit it the next day, and turn it into a culture-shifting manifesto the day after that.
Words are powerful enough to break through horrible toxic lies and restrictive thought patterns.
Manifestos open minds to what we can become, and how we can transform life for everyone on our planet—in ways no other paper or digital thought transmission tools can.
Manifestos come directly from our life experiences, and they become a record of the historical moment we’re living in.
Your words and your breath are a way to change the world. Keep a journal, and within weeks your themes present themselves to you. Your manifesto will be hidden in plain sight in the journal pages you write.
Write a manifesto about how words can touch peoples’ hearts and save lives.
Write a manifesto about how self-censoring, by yourself or your culture is a form of senseless and cruel control. Self-censoring is lying to oneself, which must be nipped in the bud as early as possible.
Write a manifesto about the freedom to read anything, at any time, about any subject matter, written by anyone in the world.
Write a manifesto against book banning and book burning.
Never forget that words connected to ideas, minds, imaginations, and interconnected hearts can shift the culture in ways that’ll make everyone on the planet sit up and take notice.
Set your alarm for 4:00 a.m. and pick up a pad of paper and a pen, then make the first word at the top of the page be: Manifesto.
Ask yourself what your deepest core message would be if you were to begin writing your manifesto here and now.
Write a manifesto on scraps of paper you find in your apartment, or on park benches.
Begin a manifesto that’ll take you a year, a decade, half a century to write.
Write a manifesto on the kind of world you want to live in.
The New Now
Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations
Revised & Updated
by
Russell C. Smith
Michael Foster
The WAR of ART by Steven Pressfield is a must read.
You hit all the right chords here! Appreciate the list of manifestos. I think as you say, it is a great exercise for one's soul and "structure" - to make visible your fundamental beliefs and aspirations. I also think a manifesto is a tool, a method for creating a community of belief. Something you stand for with others and a flag to rally the cause. It's an important feature. I remember the Dogme 95 manifesto and its impact on film. We even took it into education and it is now a well known approach to language teaching, believe it or not.