Personal Manifesto

Objective:  To live a long, happy and fulfilled life.

Primary areas to help achieve objective. 

1.  Health:            

The fact that I'm alive is the only thing I know for certain, so staying alive as long as possible is of primary importance to achieving my life objective.  I believe that maintaining good health is a controllable key to longevity.  Good health is also important because it directly affects my feelings of happiness and my ability to accomplish goals that create a fulfilled life.

2.  Relationships:

The human condition is inherently lonely.  Left unaddressed those feelings of loneliness will lead to unhappiness and depression.  These feelings are in direct conflict with my life objective so preventing them is important.  I believe that building strong relationships with other people is a key activity that can reduce loneliness and increase happiness.  Since the presence of other people in my life is inherently uncontrollable, building relationships with a large number of people is the best strategy for ensuring a constant supply of strong relationships. 

However, building relationships requires an investment of time and attention (limited resources) so the number of truly strong relationships must be limited.  I believe the best relationship strategy is to focus most efforts on developing one truly strong relationship.  The rest of my relationship effort should be spent on developing a small number of moderately strong relationships and a large number of good (and potentially strong) relationships.  I believe this strategy provides the best chance for relationship success and thus staving off loneliness.

3.  Personal Development:

The desired state of human existence is one of happiness and contentment.  But time and life experiences naturally erode this state into one of unhappiness and anxiety.  I believe that achieving the primary life objective requires a constant effort to combat these negative forces.  Since I am most happy when I am acquiring new skills, knowledge or experiences, I believe that a significant amount of effort should be dedicated to doing these things.  This is the best strategy for maintaining a happy and fulfilled life.

4.  Service to others:

Our world is one of great wealth that is unequally divided.  While I accept this inequality, I believe that all people in this world deserve a minimally acceptable standard of living.  This means a life that includes clean drinking water, food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education and hope.  I believe it is the obligation of the fortunate people in this world to do what they can to help improve the living conditions of people in need.  I believe that the problems of our world can only be solved by us.  Doing my part to help achieve the world envisioned here will directly help increase my happiness and sense of fulfillment.

5.  Money:

Living in our world requires certain basic necessities including food and shelter to be satisfied.  Money is the currency by which those basic necessities are fulfilled and this reason alone makes acquiring money a worthwhile activity.  However, money has additional benefits.  Money makes it possible to purchase things that can help make me happy and healthy.  Money also allows for freedom to control how my time is spent and thus directly affects the amount of things that I can accomplish.  Since the amount of freedom and purchasing power is directly related to the amount of money I have, I believe the best strategy in this area is to maximize the amount of money that I can generate in my lifetime.