I have had an urge to write my manifesto. Let me explain:
I am 59 next birthday, retired from normal employment after a chequered career, but left with a feeling I have a little more to offer the world. I think I am good at gathering diverse thoughts and ideas and making sense of them, have a good understanding of people, the ability to listen (although my wife would argue with that) and the ability to speak. I am often struck by current issues and have passionate reactions to them, and certainly opinions about lots of things. I have had brushes with ‘authority’, in my career and elsewhere and have found myself being chosen to speak on behalf of groups and others, and am drawn towards politics (note small p!), and wonder if what I might offer might be in the political arena.
If that’s the case I need a manifesto (“A public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions.”), a statement of what I believe, what my principles are. I am not sure of my intentions and don’t particularly have any policies, or maybe I do with regard to the environment etc., so perhaps more of that later.
There are many areas where I have opinions, but are they beliefs? What underpins these opinions? How do they fit together? I am kind of imagining I might stand for election and people might want to know what I think about stuff. So this is the first page of that – the general what’s going on here statement. I plan to blog this. #manifesto.
So I’m going to talk about what I believe. I may or may not reference other people – there are many people I admire, who have influenced what I have come to believe, but I don’t intend to explain everything. I expect to rapidly get fed up of typing ‘I believe’ or ‘I feel’ or ‘in my opinion’, so I will probably make statements as though they are true, absolutes, but the whole of what I write is what I believe. My other caveat is that as I develop these thoughts and documents, what I believe may change, but my intention is to work towards a coherent whole.
Finally I need to say that although I have claimed to have opinions about lots of things, many of these opinions have not seen the light of day, may not have any structure or form as yet, and may not be coherent. They certainly won’t be presented in any order, and although I have a short list of topics I may write about, I don’t plan to cover everything, and have no idea how new topics may emerge.
I am crap at proff-readng, so don’t expect miracles …
Maybe it’s a bit of a life story too …