The year is 1517. A fat, quarrelsome monk faces the door of the the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Saxony.
In one hand he holds a hammer and a nail. In the other hand, a handwritten screed condemning the church for its corruption.
He raises paper to door, pins it in place with the nail, and – with one blow – begins a revolution that will split Christendom in half. His words will lead to the downfall of kings and the collapse of empires. They will launch new dynasties and create the modern world.
That’s the power of a manifesto.
Before there were manifestos, there were creeds. You might be familiar with some Christian creeds like the Apostles Creed or the Nicene Creed.
A creed is a statement of beliefs. It is a series of bullet-points that begins with “we believe…” and then describes each belief.
Creeds are good for articulating what a person or group believes. But creeds – almost by design – lack emotional power.
A manifesto though is different.
Manifestos are like creeds on crack.
The first great manifesto – for our purposes anyway – was the United States Declaration of Independence. It laid out the basic format of a manifesto.
MANIFESTO: a published verbal declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party or government.
The term manifesto is from the latin phrase manu festus: “struck by hand”. It implies a sense of urgency, and a bias toward action rather than contemplation.
When Martin Luther struck by hand his 95 theses, he drew a line in the sand. He declared war on the status quo. He proclaimed a vision of how much better the world could be. And he issued a clarion call to join him in the revolution.
Was he right about everything?
We have no way to know. But we do know one thing for certain. His inflammatory words and his bias for action were lit the fuse that created the modern world.
We know two things about people with a bias towards action:
- They make a lot of silly, preventable mistakes and
- They get a lot done really fast.
A great manifesto will have a particular feel to it. It’s not carefully thought out. It should feel like the writer scribbled it down in the heat of the moment. Probably at 1:30 in the morning. Probably with lipstick on the back of a cocktail napkin. And after writing it, he probably danced the night away in a naked beach bacchanal that ended only when the sun rose over the embers of the bonfire.
In other words, a manifesto is an utterly unreasonable document.
Why the Manifesto Has Power
A manifesto is intentionally provocative. Any manifesto worth reading should issue impossible demands. It is not an appeal to reason so much as a provocation to action.
In other words, a manifesto is not a white paper. It is not a vision statement. It is not list of core values.
Those sorts of documents are carefully constructed, thoroughly reasoned and utterly passionless. They are the bloodless, heartless and emotionless work of a committee of accountants.
A manifesto by contrast is the verbal equivalent of a Molotov cocktail.
If you want to make an appeal to reason, you draft a white paper. But if you want to provoke someone to action and fanatical loyalty, you strike a manifesto.
A manifesto challenges the status quo, casts a vision for a glorious new future and calls true believers to rally around the cause. A manifesto is neither reasonable nor restrained. It is breathless, idealistic and bursting with the energy and – dare I say it – recklessness of youth.
A proper manifesto will generate one of two responses. Either (1) “you’re out of your mind” or (2) “that is amazing and I’m with you.”
This is your line in the sand. It is a declaration of what you believe, why you believe it and – most importantly – what you are going to do about it.
Deconstructing the Manifesto
The essential elements of a manifesto are Problem, Vision, Action.
- The Problem with the Status Quo
- The Vision of a Glorious Future When the Status Quo Problem is Resolved
- The Actions You Are Taking to Resolve the Problem and Create the Future
In other words, “Things right now Suck. But things could be Awesome. And here’s what we’re doing to turn Suck into Awesome.”
1. The Problem with the Status Quo
What is the exact problem with your world right now? Highlight that problem. Amplify it. Shine a searing light on it. Expose every crack and wrinkle, every ugly scar.
In other words, even if the problem is a molehill, it is your job to turn it into a mountain.
The status quo is an intolerable situation.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared that the colonists’ rights as Englishmen had been denied by the King. He painted the King in the darkest terms possible. Anyone who read that declaration would have to take a side either for or against. He framed the King and the British government as evil villains bent on denying the colonists their rights.
Of course, that was an intolerable situation!
In Apple’s 1984 ad, a giant multinational corporation has robbed every worker of their individuality. They can’t think. They can’t be themselves. All they ca do is be a cog in the giant, soulless machine.
A truly inhuman and intolerable situation.
2. The Vision of the Glorious Future
Once you have declared the intolerable situation of the present, you must paint a vision of the glorious future that awaits us once the problem is resolved.
In the Declaration of Independence, if your rights as Englishmen are being denied, then you will have your rights back once you are governing yourselves.
In Apple’s 1984 ad, your own thoughts and beliefs will have power. You will be able to express your own individuality.
3. The Actions You Are Taking
You’ve named the problem and described the future state once the problem is solved. Now you must declare the action you are taking to create that future vision. And you must call others to join you.
This part does not have to be detailed, specific or even rational. But it must be action oriented.
In the Declaration of Independence, the action was to declare that the colonists no longer owed allegiance to Great Britain and were immediately taking back their own sovereignty. They would rule themselves, thank you very much.
In Apple’s 1984 ad, they created a new kind of computer, “for the rest of us.” Do your thing, your way, thank you very much.
The Tone of Your Manifesto
In our era of hyper-political correctness, you will be tempted to couch everything in bland terms designed to soothe, comfort and – above all – not give offense.
You must resist that temptation.
You will offend. You must offend. If you do not offend then you are doing it wrong.
Proclaim your passionate convictions without apology and without compromise. You are not writing a creed.
Declare your high-minded motivations and your divine intentions with determination, grit and steely-eyed resolve.
Be unreasonable.
Accept the fact that – for now anyway – some people are going to think you mad, some will think you’re a little extreme, some will simply hate you.
Yet some will rush to embrace you as The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness. You’re the voice they’ve been longing to hear.
Any of these responses is great.
The one response you do not want to hear in regard to your manifesto is this: “Well, isn’t that nice?”
Your manifesto must serve to inspire both your followers and your enemies.
It will serve as a rallying cry for your followers. It will be proof to your enemies that you don’t deserve to exist.
Either response is perfect.
Do not for one second be afraid that you may make people upset, angry or annoyed.
Anger, annoyance, upset. These are all indications that – at the very least – your manifesto is pointed in the right direction.
The sign that you are doing it wrong will be if you create only enemies. Or only friends.
You need both.
Your manifesto will be the anvil upon which friends are forged and enemies are broken.
The One Thing Your Manifesto Must Never Include
Your manifesto must never include any statement that can be proven to be false.
It is fine to proclaim things that are fantastic, incredible, even unbelievable by ordinary people.
But you cannot declare things factually true which can be proven to be factually false.
What’s the difference?
If you claim that the earth is flat, that statement can be proven to be false.
If you claim that the earth is being used as a way-station by trans-dimensional beings sent to help us achieve a greater level of consciousness, you may be insane.
That doesn’t really matter though. Why? Because that particular belief cannot be proven false.
Do you see the difference?
I like to think about the claims of various religions to help remind me of “false” versus “falsifiable” beliefs.
Christians attribute all sorts of supernatural miracles to Christ, including that he rose from the dead.
Everything we know about physics and chemistry and biology tells us these things could not have happened the way Christians say. Nevertheless, we cannot prove they did not happen that way.
Now, if we could find the dead body of the man Jesus, then we could falsify the claim that he rose from the dead.
But we can’t. There is no body.
Likewise, Scientologists claim that no human progress is possible without Scientologists doing their thing.
We can say they are crazy, but we cannot prove it isn’t true.
The only way we could prove it would be to kill all the Scientologists and then see if the world still improved.
And we’re not gonna do that.
A final word about your manifesto
You must structure your manifesto in such a way that it creates a passionate response in both your friends and your enemies.
Remember, the end goal is to pull those “loyalty triggers” in the people who hear you speak, read your emails and website and watch your videos.
Once again, I will remind you that the techniques I am teaching you are timeless. As such, they can be used for good or for evil.
I trust you to use them for good.
Offer a good product or service at a fair price, exercise these loyalty techniques with care, and you will create fanatically loyal fans.
And if you’re lucky – if you develop these elements to a razor sharpness – you will also create fanatically loyal enemies.
And that’s the very best thing that could happen to you.
Recent Comments