Pat Thomas
I should have loved the Wayseer Manifesto video – which aims to unite those of us who stand outside the mainstream into a powerful, creative movement. But it left me cold and I think I know why. This is what happens when a 'gathering of the tribe' becomes a dysfunctional marketing exercise...
Once, in a former incarnation, I sat in a room full of pregnant women. I was facilitating a workshop on the practical, emotional and spiritual aspects of home birth. During the course of the afternoon it became apparent that many of the women felt keenly just how outside the system their thinking and their actions were and how disapproving so many of the people around them were. I asked, half joking, “How does it feel to be a freak?”. As we began to explore the F-word in more detail half the women in the room burst into tears.
I saw my own life experience being mirrored back to me. “Don’t be such a dreamer”. “You’re being impractical”. “You romanticise everything”. “What do you mean you ‘just know’?”. “That’s not the way we do things”. "You've got to learn to fit in”. “Don’t be so sensitive”. “You just have to develop a thicker skin”. My mother told me, repeatedly, that I would never have a husband because I was too clever.
I’ve lived with it all my life. I know, as these women did, that the very traits that society says are my weaknesses are actually my strengths. In fact, I sometimes think that women, living in what is still such a macho society, know this best of all. We either believe in ourselves, love ourselves, or we die a slow, agonising pseudo-death which leaves us walking around in the world with nothing holding us up but that thicker skin so highly prized by the patriarchy.
So why did I feel so mad when I watched the new video, Wayseer Manifesto by author Garret John LoPorto?
This ‘manifesto’, aiming to unite the freaks of the world into a powerful creative movement, was posted without comment on one of my favourite websites just to see what everyone’s reaction would be. It’s an alternative web community so most of the reactions were from the same dozen people who always react in the same old way “Fucking brilliant” “Just what I needed” “WOW!”.
One newbie waded in saying it seemed more like Bono-like proselytising, reminding everyone that the main purpose of the video was to sell the book and that the video would probably end up being the template for the next Apple or Nike advertising campaign.
In fact, it has already been an Apple ad.
Said newbie was given short shrift by the ‘community’. So was I when I made a small joke about the length of the video being incongruent with holding the attention of a community of people with ADD/ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia, OCD, dyslexia, narcissism, Asperger’s, anxiety, depression, risk-taking and sensation seeking tendencies and addictive personalities. Some of them may well watch it 20 times in a row and decide that LoPorto is their new guru, but some may lose interest or feel overwhelmed or decide to go off and make their own video after the first couple of minutes.
Garret LoPorto, it turns out, is an advertising exec/inventor whiz kid who, like many of us outsiders, has come to the conclusion that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. So he has chosen to focus on the strengths of his own Attention Deficit Disorder rather than its weaknesses, and encourages others to do the same. It’s a good plan. I like that he advocates dealing with mental illness through something creative, something other than drugs. But at the same time I’m not sure a high-octane, fast-cut video is the best way to sell the message to what is a very specific crowd with very specific needs.
What is more, not all outsiders have a mental illness. Not all are unable to function in the world. Some of us simply choose not to participate. Some of us just think – and therefore act – differently.
The kind of upheaval we are seeing in the Middle East and in parts of the US where workers are fighting for a basic right to join unions and organise, makes us all ache for change – a change of thinking, a change of direction, a change of scenery, of values, patterns and narratives in our lives. We want it and we want it now, with the ease of a mobile phone upgrade.
Not only that, but the way this upheaval has been framed in the media makes us think that change is fast – and linear and lasting. It isn’t. Anyone can throw a stone or hold up a banner. Anyone can make a video about how crap their life is and how misunderstood they are and post it on your tube, anyone can tweet about revolution. Real changemakers are, by their nature, a rare thing. They are often very insular and their influence like water on stone; drip-drip-drip until the shape of a thing begins to change.
As influenced as we are by media it is all too easy to be sucked into an uncritical assumption that if someone says something loud enough and long enough and makes a flashy video where his own face is intercut with iconic footage of John Lennon, Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Mohammed Ali et al, he must be saying something profound. Time will tell.
Meanwhile the clock ticks and the water drips...I’m still trying to figure out what made me so mad.
I think it was the idea that 90% of society is wrong and we – the 10% of the population who for whatever reason see things differently and have to endure being called crazy for it – are right. The truth is creative, crazy geniuses need some sort of anchor or structure for their great ideas to take form, otherwise all you get is the crazy without the creative. Every crazy fucker who ever had a crazy idea for change, had a wife or a mother or mentor or an agent who held the rest of their life together – who did the dishes and paid the rent and reminded them to eat and bathe once in a while – so they could be totally free to think big thoughts and buck the system.
I think also it was the way that the Wayseer Manifesto – underneath the feel good message and the glamorous presentation – was promoting EXACTLY the kind of exclusion behaviour and derision of others that has caused so much damage and pain to those of us who stand outside the mainstream. Is this the new tribe, the new generation, the leading edge? Or is it just “Meet the new boss...same as the old boss”?
If the continual environmental disasters and political upheaval we’ve been witnessing over the last few years tells us anything it’s that none of us is immune, that the personal is political and vice versa and that we are all in this together. When the next nuclear meltdown happens, when the next wave (real or symbolic) sweeps over us, it’s not going to care who is a ‘freak’ and who is ‘straight’. Screwed is screwed. Dead is dead. We have to find a way to stand together or we fall alone. And to be part of the group whilst maintaining personal integrity and resilience – and the confidence to be whomever you might be – requires tough inner work and feminine receptivity, not slick superficial sloganeering and macho posturing.
This post was originally featured on Pat's wbesite, Howl at the Moon. See here.
