The Manifesto Toast

I’m not really a religious man, and I don’t have a problem with that. One problem with not being religious is it gives you more decisions to make. Let’s say your a devout Catholic, and your out and about and run into two beautiful women, and they both make it clear that they would like to sleep with you. Being Catholic, you’d believe that the passionate and adventurous sex being offered was wrong, so you’d tip your cap, tell them what dirty sinners they are and walk away. Without the belief system you have a tough choice to make.

Or suppose your a Bhuddist, and you get two phone calls shortly before leaving work on friday. One is from a friend who invites you to come to his house party were you will attempt to drink a keg of beer with four other people. It would be clear that this type of behavior is not what the Buddha would have called the middle path. The next call is another friend who is headed to hot dog eating contest. Sure it would be fun, but you’re following the eight-fold path, so you pass. Tough decision avoided.

I read a book a while back called the The Paradox of Choice about how the many choices are super-modern-fantastic-capitalist-society can force us into making decisions that make us consumers less happy than we would be without all these choices.

It’d be nice to have some kind of belief system to narrow all these decisions down, but church is too early in the morning, I can’t afford Scientology and I’m not nice enough to be a Mormen. I wouldn’t even know where to find a Hindu temple. The best viable option seems to be to come up with my own system, possibly for later publication. But then I’m either a waco writing a manifesto or a sleezy self help guru, I’m not sure I’m prepared for either. So I guess I’m stuck with all those choices.

So lets all raise a glass to anyone brave/crazy enough to write a manifesto. It’s a group that doesn’t get much love.