Introduction to The New Now / Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations / Updated & Expanded

Several of these pieces were first published in The Huffington Post, in an incredibly different form. The first version of these essays was reinvented, reimagined, and re-envisioned during the winter/spring of 2019/2020, and during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. Speaking with other writers and creatives of every type, we discovered that the initial “put yourself on pause” mode, gave those who already practiced being in the creative flow state—and always had a book, painting series, album, or screenplay underway—used this global reset historical moment to have at it, and to dig into our creative projects as far as we could go. We saw how the whole planet on pause was a major worldwide event.

Why the name change, to The New Now / Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations / Updated & Expanded? One of the themes we put into the first version of this book is the idea of The New Now, since it clearly describes what had just happened to humanity, on a global scale. Countless pundits, newscasters, heads of corporations, and politicians were quick to call an end to the pandemic, and stress that we’re living with a New Normal. So much so that the phrase became annoying quite quickly.

Dear Everyone, there’s never going to be a New Normal, and who’d even wish for such a thing. It’s not going to happen. There is no New Normal to go back to, or move toward. There’s nothing normal about accepting “that’s the way we’ve always done it” since so many actions, behaviors, and modes of being that were casually accepted just weren’t good for millions of people, and certainly not for everyone.  Goodbye forever “New Normal” and don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out. You’re not welcome here in the New Now.

We see this nearly post-pandemic world (keep your masks handy) as a new start, after an honest to goodness cultural and social reset. It felt like, wow, it’s really happening. An event on par with an alien invasion. Every post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie we’ve watched over the course of our lives, was disrupting all human life on the planet, in real-time and on a visceral level. Why would a “New Normal” that’s just a glossed-over longing for the same old normal so many had been trying every day to escape from, be even remotely acceptable? Clearly, the power-grabbing, murderous, authoritarian dictators in every corner of the world don’t feel this way. They are in love with what they could get away with in the old normal, and wanted a New Normal that meant more of the same for them. They decided to wage war and commit genocide while the world was doing its best to survive. Constant senseless killing is considered normal. It’s time for a New Now, not a New Normal.

The rest of humanity that wants to live caring, peaceful, creative, and fun lives, went in the other direction. We’re living in the New Now. Doing our best to continue to alter society by helping to bring about more tolerance, diversity, compassion, intelligence, free-thinking—and everything that goes with it, including supporting commonsense politicians who truly believe their own senses and understand that the Climate Crisis is real.

For some of us, knowing how to shelter in place seemed to be inherent to who we were. Next came assessing what we could/couldn’t safely do in our immediate neighborhood and city. In the early weeks of pandemic lockdown, crucial information was shifting daily. What the current scientific guidance was telling us is what mattered. At that point, if you were lucky enough to have had a smart and rational state governor who made daily addresses to the citizens, they were updating safety measures with as much new/useful information as possible. The global pandemic shift gradually made some degree of sense, even when one had to parse through daily “news” transmissions from national political “leaders” broadcasting a steady stream of daily deadly misinformation and lies about the pandemic. What happened during year one of the pandemic, pre-vaccines, was that each person figured out for themselves what they needed to do to navigate and survive our own personal slice of history in the making.

The elongated momentary pause was felt across our country and the entire interconnected globe of humanity. Here was a reset, and a chance for humanity to become the better, more heroic versions of ourselves that’s been talked about for our entire lifetimes (the story told and retold in books and movies), and for centuries upon centuries long before we came along.

Recent history has already told us both what happened and what didn’t happen. In actuality, both the best and worst sides of humanity stepped forward, each jostling for center stage. As the history of humanity on this round ball floating in space always seems to do, and is still doing in this historical New Now—it asks us to be better, and step up to face massive challenges. At this Hinge of History, humans are not just asked, but required to solve bigger challenges and crises than we’ve ever had to.

When we first published our book in 2020, we touched upon the Climate Crisis, freedom of thought, the pandemic, lowering the voting age and voting online, and how interdependence and working together must happen. The first version of this book was uplifting, and several sections of the book felt like they could’ve been a collaboration between Alan Watts and Jack Kerouac written on Alan’s houseboat in Sausalito in the mid-1950s. For this updated and revised version, we’ve changed the tone by letting in the temper of these times to reflect the current state of the world. In 2020 the world seemed like it could hold itself together, and that enough people wanted peace and kindness to win out over authoritarianism and destruction. Fast forward to the first few months of 2023. We now find ourselves on the razor’s edge of history. Our world is in greater peril with more at stake than a mere two years ago. History is being made at an accelerated pace, and we’re all together in a new world that’s often shifting daily and weekly.

How we act, speak up, vote, communicate locally and globally matters more than ever before. Clear choices are on the table. Freedom vs. Authoritarianism. Democracy vs. Theocracy. Freedom of Thought vs. Book Banning. Women’s Healthcare and Reproductive Rights vs. Taking Away Hard-Won Victories. With these eight new and updated manifestos and essays, both subject matter and tone reflects the gravity of where we are in the New Now, and just how much the world has shifted under our feet in such a short amount of time.

In the 2023 edition of The New Now / Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations / Updated & Expanded, we now dig into these topics in a more direct way.

• The Climate Crisis has worsened and sped up, and it’s clear we’ve reached the tipping point that was predicted, quite clearly in Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. In 2022, Superstorms were upgraded to Storms of the Century, and rainfall totals of a decade’s worth of rain happened over a four-day nonstop deluge. After superstorm hurricane Ian pummeled Cuba, it smashed into Florida’s Gulf Coast midsection, flooding and destroying whole cities and communities. Climate Emergency deniers continued not to believe their own eyes as a superstorm of this magnitude engulfed an entire state. How is it even possible to hate/fear/deny reality that much?

• An authoritarian, murderous dictator invaded Ukraine and committed mass genocide and torture, targeting civilians and children. The horrors have been documented; the brutal genocide has continued by a terrorist state. They’ve threatened the world with nuclear warfare—while a pandemic still raged in the background.

• In Iran, a 22-year-old woman was murdered by the (morality?) police for not covering up her head with a piece of cloth in the exact way an extremist authoritarian theocratic regime tells her she should. Brutalized and murdered for a piece of cloth? Nothing remotely moral about that. Murdering protesters by public hanging has nothing to do with morality. It has to do with a murderous theocratic government that’s lost its grip on several generations of its citizens. When no one believes you anymore, your theocracy has reached a dead end.

• Gun violence, in the form of weekly mass shootings with easily purchased AR-15 rifles. These weapons of war have become so devastatingly destructive in the United States that many of us are one person removed from knowing someone who has moved to Europe to escape the ongoing epidemic of gun violence.

• It’s time to expand voting rights and lower the voting age, using technology so more people will participate in democracy, especially for the youth of America. Taking the current Climate Crisis and the future of the world into account, we believe the voting age should be lowered to 16 years old. Our voting system should be a countrywide vote by mail, and as soon as possible a vote online system. Then we’ll see a youth voter turnout! Smartphone voting anyone?

• Healthcare and reproductive rights were taken away by an extremist far-right Supreme Court, stripping women of a fundamental (which the newly appointed supreme court justices agreed they wouldn’t do, in their televised job interviews woman’s healthcare right that had been a legal precedent since 1973. Women’s right to autonomy over their own reproductive rights must be expanded and protected, so they can’t be taken away by judicial extremism. To that point, the Respect for Marriage Act is passed by Congress, in December 2022, protecting same-sex and interracial marriages, preemptively putting up a barrier around loving hearts and blocking further judicial extremism. Love is love, has been codified into federal law and one political party can’t prevent two human beings from loving each other as they see fit. A strong message was sent to the authoritarians of the United States.

• When book banning and book burning steps out of the pages of a dystopian science fiction novel and rears its extremist fascist face in states like Florida and Texas, the future of Freedom of Thought/Freethinking is on the line. And this is exactly where we have to draw the line—if the words freedom and democracy still possess any meaning.

• Authoritarianism, in the form of a violent insurrection, nearly overthrew the United States government on January 6, 2021, and one political party took it seriously and the other shrugged it off. Democracy itself is at a crossroads. On Dec 19, 2022, The January 6 Committee made four criminal referrals to the Justice Department, recommending the former President be investigated. At the top of the list is inciting, assisting, or aiding and comforting an insurrection. In late February 2022 at the start of the War in Ukraine, President Zelensky stood up for his country and made the historic statement: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” On December 21, 2022, President Zelensky flew into the United States, met with President Biden, and delivered a historic speech to a joint meeting of Congress. In the speech he thanked every American for helping Ukraine defend itself against the brutal terrorist invasion committed by Russia. In the early morning hours of January 7, 2023, after the longest battle for House Speaker since the Civil War, Republicans begrudgingly let their guy get in, and speaker Hakeem Jeffries praised Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by saying “She will go down in history as the greatest speaker of all time. Calling her a “legendary legislator, a fabulous facilitator and a no-nonsense negotiator.” Then, Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the first Black man elected to be Minority Leader of the House, gave a preview of how Democrats will govern during these historically divided times in the Divided States of America. Here’s a section of it: “I also want to make clear that we will never compromise our principles. House Democrats will always put: American values over autocracy. Benevolence over bigotry. The Constitution over the cult. Democracy over demagogues. Economic opportunity over extremism. Freedom over fascism. Governing over gaslighting. Hopefulness over hatred. Inclusion over isolation. Justice over judicial overreach. Knowledge over kangaroo courts. Liberty over limitation. Maturity over Mar-a-Lago. Normalcy over negativity. Opportunity over obstruction.” Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant. Meanwhile in Brazil, on January 8, 2023, Bolsonaro’s violent insurrectionists stormed the presidential palace, congress, and supreme court in a failed Deja-coup. In America, while the Cold Civil War heats up on the front burner of daily life, we keep looking for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Many of us are always on the lookout for the Truth. And sometimes it shines through in the unlikeliest of places, like the floor of Congress. We must remember that Election Deniers don’t believe in a peaceful transition of power. Many of the far-right extremist Election Deniers were elected to Congress, so staying vigilant against the authoritarian mindset is an essential fact of living through these times. Authoritarianism and those who prefer it over Democracy are on the wrong side of history.

Way back in the long-ago digital world of 2012, we emailed Arianna Huffington via a Facebook message and asked if we could blog on the online news and opinion paper that she founded. Arianna wrote back with the name of an editor who set us up with a password and we were in. We published just over 70 blog posts on The Huffington Post platform.

We began blogging on The Huffington Post (now The HuffPost) with the overarching theme of reinvention, which we moved away from and gravitated back to over the years we wrote and posted our writing there. Along with reinventing and reimagining several of our favorite Huffington Post pieces for The New Now / Manifestos, Reinventions & Declarations / Updated & Expanded, we created several new pieces, and the thematically connected book you’re now reading. All this was already underway before the pandemic lockdown happened. As with many citizens in the United States, we began being aware in early March 2020, that the global pandemic had come to the United States, so we began sheltering in place as many other citizens did. Into the springtime of 2020, the newer pieces kept coming, and we fit them all together into this book.

In 2023, these eight new pieces: The End of Authoritarianism, Living in the New Now (There’s Never Going to Be a New Normal), Looking for the Good, A Manifesto on Manifestos, America has a book banning problem, From Seattle to Brooklyn, public libraries have stood up against book banning, and Living in the Divided States of America (It’s now unmistakable. We’re living in two separate countries.). and A Declaration of Interdependence #4. Along with the gun violence epidemic, and the Climate Crisis ramping up, we highlight what’s being done to push back against banning, burning, and censorship in this revised and updated version of our book. Fast forward, several years past 2020, and our world is in more turmoil with more at stake as far as building the future we want to live in, and we have a clarity that probably wasn’t possible even a mere two years ago. History is being made at an accelerated pace, and we’re all in a new world, often shifting daily and weekly.

A word about manifestos: Once upon a time, manifestos were written by creatives, artists, writers, and cultural provocateurs of every type. Along with many other contemporary writers, we’re taking back the word “manifesto” and we’ve put our flag in the sand about how and why you can and should write your own manifesto. In the meantime, welcome to: The New Now / Manifestos, Declarations, & Declarations / Updated & Expanded.

The New Now is available in paperback or eBook format, on Amazon.