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Manifesto

"A personal manifesto is a set of statements that make up rules for your life. It's a touchstone that helps you reconnect with what's important, and it becomes a methodology for staying true to your values, goals, and intentions."

- Stephanie Vozza, Why you need a personal manifesto and how to write one


Here's my personal manifesto, divided into a number of themes:

Social Change / Impact​

  • Success is measured by the positive change we create, not the money we accumulate or the reputation we build.
  • Your impact as an individual is your counterfactual (not absolute) impact. Although doing good things deserves recognition, what ultimately counts is that you do the good things that nobody else would have otherwise done.
  • Everything operates within a system, whether it's a person, an institution, or celestial body. While we cannot change systems directly, we can influence the conditions under which they function.
  • To achieve lasting solutions, "design with, not for" - your stakeholders/constituents/customers/users ultimately determine your success.
  • There is no special reason you possess the privileges you do - some of your resources should be dedicated to repaying that debt.
  • Othering is the root of almost every global, national, and regional issue facing human and non-human animals today.

Living / Behavior​

  • Life is a positive-sum game - treat others accordingly.
  • No matter the situation, you have the power to choose how you think about and respond to your reality (sometimes, this isn't easy to do). Concentrate on what you can control, not what you can't.
  • Every random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own and they may be fighting a battle you know nothing about.
  • Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't, and every person is both an idiot and an expert - brilliant in some domains, ignorant in many others. How we perceive a person or group's intelligence is more a reflection of our own intellectual values and our ability (or willingness) to understand others, rather than the actual amount, depth, relevance, or usefulness of insights the other party can offer. When someone is labeled as "dumb," it rarely means they lack intelligence altogether - it just means the ways in which they are intelligent are overlooked, misunderstood, or undervalued. With this in mind, we should all strive to be more epistemically humble, acknowledging that our knowledge is always partial, and that valuable insight can come from the most unexpected places.
  • Your emotions are a feature, not a bug. Even the unpleasant ones have a purpose.
  • You are not your mind - you're not obligated to believe everything you think.
  • Reject the Golden Rule, embrace the Platinum Rule: Treat people as they want to be treated, not as you would want to be treated.

Ideology / Perception​

  • No one can say with certainty they would have acted differently in someone else's situation - we are a product of our inputs and circumstances more than we'd like to believe.
  • Our worldview is predominately shaped by the information we consume and the experiences we accumulate - given the right blend of information and right set of experiences, anyone can believe anything.
  • There is no evil - there are just people and systems with bad goals.

Meaning / Purpose​

  • Meaning, like happiness, is a verb, not a noun - people create meaning through their actions rather than achieving it as a state.
  • Everyone, whether they realize it or not, is playing one or more games. The default game is to be traditionally successful - to continually gain increasing money, power, and/or influence - but that's not the only game you can play. The question of your life, then, is - what game(s) do you want to play?

Innovation / Progress​