The Manifesto of Dreams - Year 20

What is this?

About the Manifesto.

In the week leading up to my 19th Birthday (the advent of my 20th year amongst the living) I spent a lot of time contemplating, reflecting and preparing. For one reason or another, I realised that this was going to be my significant birthday (rather than the stereotypical 18th birthday). The result of my meditations was the conclusion that I was going to start living my life fully, rather than the observational role I've played - go from a passive student to a learner by teaching. So I've created this document and placed it on my blog, as an anchored reminder of who I was on this day, Sunday 31 August 2008 when I've made this decision.

Consider this a gift to both myself and to the world.

How this document shall be used.

Although this is very similar to "New Years Resolutions", it must not be thought of like that. Resolutions implies that I am committed to anything, which goes completely against my aesthetic life philosophy. To commit to an action means that I'm using the action as a means to the end of having done that action to satisfy my resolution.

I call it the Manifesto of Dreams because it is a comprehensive list of things that I would like to do and have done with my life. And despite having the target timeframe of the course of the next year, I have no obligation to fulfil them and nor will I use it as a standard with which to judge my success of the year. It is simply a list of things I would have liked to have achieved; things which I feel in my pleasure seeking I will satisfy these dreams epiphenomenally.

On the nature of the dreams.

Some of them might come across as superficial, while other may not. That's just the way that my mind works. These are things that today, I should like to see happen in the future, without me having to make an active effort to pursue them. Rather these dreams are to happen coincidentally (ie: epiphenomenally) to the seeking of pleasure and beauty.

I'll try and encapsulate the essence of the dream in a line or two, and I will give a brief description of what it would entail, if necessary.

Why allow the public to view this?

I've always felt that you can get to know a person very well by getting to know their dreams, their aspirations. In articulating our dreams, hopes, purpose, we present a side of us that is in many ways vulnerable. We show the world that we can think further than the now and we can see beyond the realm of what is to the planes of what can be.

In conjunction to that, by placing it on the internet and in the public eye, I am externalising the thoughts within my head. I'm contextualising those psychic memes of information. If anything, the translation will never be as pure as the thought in my mind and yet by making it inter-subjectively communicable, I make it easier for me to grasp.

This also allows a place for people to come see what my life is and will be about. I'm a strong believer in making the dreams of others come true, so should there ever be people who can help me on my quest, they are more than welcome to do so.

The Manifesto of Dreams - Year 20

#1 Consolidation of my life philosophy with my life.
I have many specific views that I tell people if they ever come to advice. However, in many ways, I have high ideals of how I ought to act, and often I do not. My view is split between the negative and the positive, but I am content with living in the twilight void between the two. But I must go seek the positive and avoid the negative.

#2 Write a book which systematically explores my life philosophy and can be critically viewed by other philosophers.
People who know me will know that I have many, many, many facets which make up my life philosophy. My outlook on life and on people and on how human nature acts ... It's all linked. I have epistemelogical and metaphysical theories and ideas, and they all interwine together and give the result of me. In many ways, the views are very premature still, but like this manifesto it can mature if I manage to articulate it into communicable form.

#3 Publish (in some form or another) my thesis on the Death of Logic.
This will involve me looking through the literature to see if this has been discussed before. It will also involve me talking to different professors at the ANU to garner their views. I should like to see this happen over the course of the next year - for this thesis could pose a revolutionary problem in the philosophical world. I would be very pleased if I managed at the tender age of 19 to have posed a question that shal be debated forever.

#4 Become an active participant in life.
A lot of my life is based on sitting back, aloof and observing of others. Little shards of knowledge conglomerate together to give me a fair understanding on the intricacies of how the world works. It's about time I evolved into the mover and shaker I've always thought myself to be.

#5 Make use of my collaborators on my projects.
I've cultivated a small handful of collaborateurs with whom I ought to be able to achieve really great things. Why do I think working on "projects" is good? Because it doesn't imply part of an integrated whole. That is to say, I have no obligation in life or any other area to complete projects. If I complete them, then it will be out of pleasure and wanting to do it for its own sake. The idea of collaboration was to get more people who would be just as motivated. So far that hasn't really been the case. But if I can show a much stronger thirst for them, then I have the feeling we could have so much fun.

#6 Live the aesthetic lifestyle I espouse.
This is linked with dream #1, except more specific. Beauty is the highest form of pleasure one can derive. My whole life, I've always been a passive appreciate and observer of beauty. I've never striven hard to uncover beauty. I've lived my life content with just not experiencing the ugly - the highest form of pain. But my life cannot be the negation of the negative, it must be the affirmation of the positive. Truly then, I can life an aesthetic life.

#7 Strive for the creation of beauty.
I know I haved tried in the past, and there is a strong form of pleasure when one is creating beauty. I'm certain that if I life my life the way I should, the creation of beauty is inevitable. But can I create beauty and appreciate it for what it is?

#8 Have a passive income that I can live off come next August.
I've never been one for the active seeking of money (or at least I've never thought like that since I became me). My parents know this, too. I will never get a job just for the sake of trying to earn money. Money must be epiphenomenal to the pleasure I get from doing whatever it is I love. Actively seeking money is not what I call a life. Scott H Young mentioned this point: In today's world, one doesn't marry a person and spend one's life with a person that one doesn't love. Why should it be different for jobs? Why is it that people are willing to spend their day doing something they hate and do not love? You rob life of joy when you do that. So by the end of the year, I want to have established a passive income (that is, an income where I do not actively seek it) that I can successfully live off of. If it can come in the form of monetizing web-content, like the ads you see placed around this blog, great.

#9 Establish a strong readership for this blog.
This dream presupposes an important notion - that people have an active interest in my life. I'm sure there are many ways one can go about achieving this, and I'm certain I'll stumble across it over the next year. I thought I had a dedicated, albeit small, readership, but I think the fun of reading about my life has worn off rather quickly.

#10 Begin my youtube career.
I'm not sure what has held me back from completely throwing myself into the youtube community, but it has. But I'll know when the time is right to make my first tenuous step into that arena, and when it comes, I shall. I mean a lotta stuff I have planned comes as a "web series", which will probably be placed on my channel. I might make a subsidiary channel for it, I'm not 100% sure yet. To be honest, I haven't even actually planned anything.

#11 Turn the stories in my head into reality.
This one is simple. Writing, videos, movies, graphic novels, whatever. I need to change them from merely ideas and transmute them into reality. This is related to #7, the creation of beauty.

#12 Completely self-teach myself the piano, giving myself proper musical sensibilities.
Given the issue of my mother's eye and the finances and time consumed by that, I wasn't able to get the piano I wanted on this day. However, I will. As soon as I can figure out what to get and where to get it. Once I do, I really suspect I will completely understand the learn it as a system. And thereby, through the piano, introduce myself into the realm of music.

#13 Be able to help other people achieve their dreams.
There is some pure beauty in helping other people achieve their dreams, there really is. If I could make my life revolve around helping people reach their deepest, darkest dreams, I think I will live forever a happy man.

#14 Gain professional recognition for my endeavours.
This is one of those "obvious" things that would come with my practicing my creative pleasures. If I write, then I expect to be published; if I compose, then I expect to perform etc. But I want to be able to create a name for myself.

#15 Become a modern day polymath/Renaissance Man.
Again, another "obvious" thing that really should follow if I do what I love. My pleasures and interests are so wide and varied ... If I do spend my life seeking them and creating beauty in all those mediums, and if I gain professional recognition, then it is inevitable that I will have become a name in many fields. This would then conclude in my being a polymath.

#16 Learn to see the opportunities presented to be in every day life.
People always talk about their "one big break", and to be honest, I think that's complete and utter bollocks. Every day, every person you interact with, is an opportunity. It just takes a certain type of person to see them, and not only that, to use it to their advantage. Contacts, friends, social relations, these can all help me find avenues through which to explore my creative passions.

#17 Properly refine my voice.
This is not only limited to my everyday articulation of speech. I mean singing. That's right, I said it, singing. I enjoy doing it too much to be denied the opportunity of using it as a creative medium. As it stands right now, it's an impossibility - I need lessons. I will have to look into it. But singing gives me so much pleasure, to not do it professionally would be abominable.

#18 Further develop my relationships.
If anything, I spent my whole Year 11 + 12 doing this at the boarding house. Many of those relationships I made there and refined, I still feel are very strong. There may've been rocky waters with several people and whatnot, the majority of the relationships are still stable. I ought to be able to further them. I should spend my time also forging deep friendships with new people I meet at Uni.

#19 Travel to New York next year.
I want to convince everyone to have the AW Reunion '09 in New York. I really want to go to New York, if not for the feeling of being utterly enclosed with everyone else. But to see what it's life and if my thoughts of living their eventually have any merit. But I also want to make a Reunion. Knowing these people for such a large part of my life ... It'd be probably 10 years next year ... I should like to meet them. Plus, in Broadway, I can see Phantom and all the other musicals I want to see.

#20 Make do with anything on this list.
It's all good and well to philosophise and write about all this. But the whole point of this Manifesto is to no longer just be a thinker, but to externalise the inner mind and psyche of Shanan Kan.

Thus concludes The Manifest of Dreams - Year 20.