You may know me. You may know me well. You may only think you know me well.

But I bet you don’t know this:

I’m a manifesto junkie.

It’s true. I’m not ashamed. It’s just a healthy, natural enthusiasm and nothing at which to look askance or akimbo. Manifestos are compelling. They’re energetic. They’re Manifestificent: they’ve got a bit of the word “festival” right there in their netherfesto-region.

How can you resist?

Late at night, presuming I’m not up blogging, I lie in bed and wonder if the Fascists had had a Manifesto half as good as the Communist Manifesto, where would my politics be right now?

Of course, if I were a Fascist I could just roll over in bed and ask my chauffeur.

In any case, there comes a time when there’s nothing in the world that will fill the aching hole within like a good Manifesto. When the rest of the world turns to mood-altering chemicals, inappropriate sexual liasons, and old movies, I turn instead to Manifestos.

My mother would be so proud; thirty years after grade school and I’m still a drudge.

Actually, my mother told me to loosen up and you may judge the extent to which I have succeeded by the rest of this blog. Start with “Beaver Shots” and end with “Daniel Radcliffe nekkid“.

In any case, I was staggering around the web in my usual random and time-consuming fashion when I found this. It’s a manifesto for those in the startup phase of a company. As I am hoping to form a company and be in the startup phase rather soon, and as it seems to be actually quite good, and as it seems to happen to actually put its finger on the absolute heart of what makes an investor-corporate relations work, I thought it was worth putting in the ol’ raincoaster blog, and no, I haven’t suddenly gone all Tony Robbins on you. Like I said, I’ve been this freaky all along.

The Secret to Winning at Anything

Begin Manifesto:

1. Big dreams don’t succeed without support from others.
2. That support is most often manifested as faith, advice, or money.
3. There are many ways to get support, but the easiest way is to ask.
4. When you ask, make sure – more than anything – that you open your eyes.
5. You want people who support you for the fire in your eyes.
6. Where you’re at now will change… but that fire will likely endure.
7. People who support where you’re at today may not be there tomorrow.
8. But people who support the fire likely will be there forever.
9. This is the secret of support. But it isn’t a one-way street.
10. If you take it… if you get it… you must give it using the same criteria.
11. Whether or not you believe in karma, it’s always better to act as if you do!

End Manifesto

Just because the Manifesto part of their post is over, doesn’t mean your reading assignment is. Read the rest of what they have to say, and veddy interesting reading it is, too. I want to draw your particular attention to points numbers 5, 7, and 8.

This is what Steve Jobs has always had. This is what Hitler had; hmmmm, perhaps not the best example. This is what Joan of Arc and Pierre Trudeau and yes, Tony Robbins and Nelson Mandela and John Dillinger and Thomas Jefferson and Rousseau and Rasputin and Dave Eggers had.

I’ve been poking around the blogosphere for quite some time, and have become aware that the intentionality behind a post has a significant impact on the ultimate fate of that post. I know that when I’ve done things purely to draw traffic, that they have failed. And when I’ve done things purely out of negativity, they have not only failed to meet their goals, but they have failed as actions in and of themselves. I’ve seen it repeatedly and it’s given me a firm belief that the combination of authenticity and passion has a huge, but so far unquantified, role in the success of any endeavor. This manifesto has expressed that as well as anything I’ve ever seen.

But then, as you know, I only read Manifestos, Gawker and Fark.

Does anyone out there have any examples of something that also gets to the heart of this? This is a capitalist document, but we can examine the same phenomenon in politics, in entertainment, in philosophy, in science, or in any other human pursuit. I’m trying to build a Grand Unified Theory of that very fire: so far I’ve connected the idea of Quality from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance; mathematical elegance, from The Divine Proportion, and the philosophical concept of Truth. I think that this kind of passion is also connected, and that, in touching it we are connected to something numinous, which is actually a long way to go from a venture capital-baiting blog post, but there you are.

You go some strange places on the starship raincoaster, particularly under a full moon.

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