SECOND THOUGHTS
The Italian phrase manifesto, derived from the Latin manifestus, that means “clear” or “conspicuous,” means to disclose (make clear), to declare (assert), and to exhibit (protest)
Manifestos might be addictive! That is my third one and it virtually dictated itself to me within the bosom of a busy schedule. My first manifesto, a name for calm deliberation earlier than motion, the Gradual thought manifesto printed in Aeon Journal,1 was featured in Julian Hanna’s The Manifesto Handbook within the part on “Acceleration and response.”2 It was translated into Italian and Portuguese and obtained loads of consideration from the French press in each Quebec and France, and only in the near past impressed an article by French psychiatrist Samuel Bouloudnine, MD, about cell psychological well being disaster groups, exhorting them take time to fulfill the affected person and to adapt to their rhythm and selections.3
As manifestos go, that first effort was overly lengthy. The spirit of the manifesto is one thing you devour on the run, quick meals for the fevered brains of militants who’re manning the barricades, storming the ramparts. My second manifesto was even longer, an in depth appraisal of the evolution of social psychiatry and a name for a twenty first century social psychiatry.4
It’s doable, in fact, to “announce that the second has come to make a declaration,” as my mentor Alain Badiou does in his Second Manifesto for Philosophy with a tightly reasoned however prolonged argument.5 That intense philosophical second took place in France in the course of the Nineteen Sixties and Eighties. Badiou’s introduction is an apology for his first manifesto stuffed with the bitterness and remorse of the late Eighties for the French left. He revisited the manifesto kind, judging that the second had really come for the concepts that had been elaborated in nice size in his masterwork, Being and Occasion,6 and wanted a compact expression. He took up that job once more quickly after in his Philosophy for Militants with its blood pink lettering and the picture of a pink computerized handgun splashed towards a jet-black cowl.7
For me, too, this second stab at a model of my gradual thought manifesto reheats the leftovers that didn’t make it into the primary one. This time, I take up the dialogue once more as I’ve performed in different work8 and name for narrative and nuance, dialogue and variety, slowness and subjectivity.
This Is Your Manifesto: Gradual Down, Stand Up, Communicate for Your self!
1. Communicate for your self. You don’t characterize anybody else.
Political corollary: We’re in a disaster of illustration, making consultant democracy inconceivable.
2. The try and be goal solely deepens your subjectivity and partisanship.
Neil Postman: “Technopoly is at conflict with subjectivity… Technopoly needs to resolve, as soon as and for all, the dilemma of subjectivity. In a tradition through which the machine, with its impersonal and endlessly repeatable operations, is a controlling metaphor and regarded to the instrument of progress, subjectivity turns into unacceptable.”9
3. Search for that means, not for reality.
Fact is a collective verdict within the gradual cooker of time, not a person alloy smelted within the crucible of the second.
William James: “Neither the entire of the reality nor the entire of excellent is revealed to any single observer though every observer beneficial properties a partial superiority of perception from the peculiar place through which he stands.”10
Neil Postman: “In contrast to science, social analysis by no means discovers something. It solely rediscovers what individuals as soon as had been advised and should be advised once more.”9
Social science corollary: We’re in a disaster of replication within the social sciences.11
4. Inform a narrative, don’t recite info.
Narratives are extra convincing than info.
Organic and scientific research succeed by telling compelling tales.
Biology can be a set of tales – organic mechanisms work greatest as metaphors. Freud’s biggest accomplishment was not as “a person of science” as he hoped, however as a author for which he gained the celebrated Goethe Prize.
The story you inform must be your personal story (see #1).
5. Perceive complexity, rejoice variety, tolerate ambiguity. Certitude is slippery.
At greatest, approach is a method, not an finish. Higher nonetheless to concentrate on that means (see #3) and tales (see #4).
Neil Postman: “Range, complexity, and ambiguity of human judgment are enemies of approach.”9
6. Activists, militants and partisans don’t write historical past. Gradual thinkers do.
“We’d like a philosophy of Gradual Thought to ease considering right into a extra playful and porous dialogue about what it means to dwell” – from my Gradual Thought Manifesto.1
Radical corollary: Not solely will the revolution not be televised, as Gil Scott-Heron warned, it won’t be deliberate both.12 It’s an occasion—contingent, unpredictable, uncontrollable.6
7. Resist ideology, embrace complexity.
Ideology appeals to purity and ideas however calls for blind obedience via the suspension of disbelief (see #5).
It creates 2 varieties of individuals: true believers—and people who don’t.
One of the best ways to keep away from binary considering and polarization is to get used to enthusiastic about connections, patterns, and relations.
Gregory Bateson exhorted us to search for “the sample that connects.”13
8. Communication is a dialogue, not a monologue.
Mikhail Bakhtin’s perception about narratives is that even in a soliloquy on stage or an inside monologue in a narrative, the protagonist is in a dialogue with a presumed viewers.14
St. Francis might have been speaking to the birds, however he made positive {that a} human was inside listening to distance of what he needed to say.
Even in his Confessions, St. Augustine’s religious autobiography, he addresses the reader as a possible convert. In right this moment’s parlance, he’s making a pitch to your morals.
Relational corollary: The best reward we can provide to one another is to hear, to witness, and to testify to one another’s tales.
9. Assume good will, however ask questions.
Put up-modern, post-whatever society, has turn out to be transactional.
Everyone is making a pitch. Watch out—you’re being recruited to a trigger (see #7).
Make certain it’s your personal.
10. Pitching your self—public relations is propaganda.
The dominant automobile of communication is now promoting.
Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew, actually wrote the books about public relations15 and propaganda.16
Politicians say that the one ballot that issues is the election. Don’t consider it—they don’t. Advertisements and polls, campaigns and platforms are a part of the political promoting machine.
Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky known as it “manufacturing consent.”17
The closest factor to an autobiography that thinker Peter Sloterdijk wrote known as Chosen Exaggerations.18
Norman Mailer known as his autobiographical assortment, Commercials for Myself.19
Mentoring corollary: Search for people who find themselves not making a pitch.
American cultural critic William Irwin Thompson20 and French anthropologist René Girard21 are 2 masterly thinkers who didn’t promote out.
Thompson refused to do speak reveals to promote his books and Girard rejected “the hordes of psychologists” to check his theories.
This alone endears them to me as mentors. Discover your personal.
Commentary by Claudia Gómez Robledo
I met Claudia Gómez Robledo final 12 months once I was invited to conduct a Grasp Class on the Worldwide Annual Practicum organized by the CRISOL Centro de Postgrado en Terapia Acquainted y de Pareja (CRISOL Postgraduate Centre for Household and Couple Remedy) in Mexico Metropolis, Mexico. We have now collaborated on numerous initiatives ever since and she or he interprets my articles into Spanish for the Boletín CRISOL, their systemic remedy publication. Once I despatched Claudia my manifesto, she replied with the next commentary:
You made me suppose. I understand in a crucial and coherent approach that the that means of the textual content lies in its rejection of the superficiality and manipulation of the digital period and politics, proposing a return to authenticity, complexity, and gradual dialogue.
It’s a reflective critique and a name to motion within the face of the dynamics of up to date society, marked by expertise, ideology, and mass communication, which ends up in a lack of authenticity.
It not solely invitations me but in addition affirms me in being the narrator of my very own life, to suppose past ideologies and to hear genuinely, resisting the equipment that reduces me to a product. It’s a manifesto for inside freedom in a world that pushes us to be commodities or mere passive spectators.
I maintain onto the concept of advocating for a extra human, complicated, and aware way of living, resisting the traps of simplification, propaganda, and uniformity imposed by trendy techniques like technopoly, social media, and political constructions. I couldn’t agree extra with the pursuit of a return to gradual considering, private narrative, and genuine relational connections as an antidote to alienation and superficiality.
Saludos,
Claudia
Sources
Listed here are some sources and sources for balancing the calm tempo of gradual thought and gradual psychiatry with the crucial temper of the manifesto:
On the opposite finish of the spectrum, the manifesto is fast, pressing and crucial, demanding that you just seize the second:
- Julian Hannah. The Manifesto Handbook: 95 Theses on an Incendiary Kind. Zero Books; 2019.
Dr Di Nicola is a baby psychiatrist, household psychotherapist, and thinker in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the place he’s professor of psychiatry & habit drugs on the College of Montreal. He’s additionally scientific professor of psychiatry & behavioral well being at The George Washington College and president of the World Affiliation of Social Psychiatry (WASP). Dr Di Nicola has obtained quite a few nationwide and worldwide awards, honorary professorships, and fellowships. Of observe, Dr Di Nicola was elected a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Well being Sciences (FCAHS), given the Distinguished Service Award of the American Psychiatric Affiliation (APA), and is a Fellow of the American Faculty of Psychiatrists (FACPsych). His work straddles psychiatry and psychotherapy on one aspect and philosophy and poetry on the opposite. Dr Di Nicola’s publications embody: A Stranger within the Household: Tradition, Households and Remedy (WW Norton, 1997), Letters to a Younger Therapist (Atropos Press, 2011, winner of a prize from the Quebec Psychiatric Affiliation), and Psychiatry in Disaster: On the Crossroads of Social Sciences, the Humanities, and Neuroscience (with D. Stoyanov; Springer Nature, 2021).
Claudia Goméz Robledo is a household therapist and group organizer in Mexico Metropolis, Mexico. She was born in Bogotá, Colombia and raised in Managua, Nicaragua. She has a Grasp’s in Systemic Remedy with a Specialization in {Couples} Remedy from the CRISOL Centro de Postgrado en Terapia Acquainted y de Pareja (Postgraduate Centre for Household and Couple Remedy) in Mexico Metropolis and is the Government Director of COLECTIVO 7 Psychological Well being, a therapeutic house devoted to psychological well being with an integrative mannequin, combining the experience of varied therapeutic instruments.
References
1. Di Nicola V. Take your time: seven pillars of a gradual thought manifesto. Aeon. February 27, 2018. Accessed April 9, 2025. https://aeon.co/essays/take-your-time-the-seven-pillars-of-a-slow-thought-manifesto
2. Hannah J. The Manifesto Handbook: 95 Theses on an Incendiary Kind. Zero Books; 2019.
3. Bouloudnine S. Équipes mobiles: Hâtez-vous lentement! Santé Mentale. 2025;294.
4. Di Nicola V. “An individual is an individual via different individuals”: a manifesto for twenty first century social psychiatry. In: RR Gogineni, AJ Pumariega, R Kallivayalil, et al, eds. The WASP Textbook on Social Psychiatry: Historic, Developmental, Cultural, and Medical Views. Oxford College Press; 2023:44-67.
5. Badiou A. Second Manifesto for Philosophy. Burchill L, trans. Polity; 2011.
6. Badiou A. Being and Occasion. Feltham L, trans. Continuum; 2005.
7. Badiou A. Philosophy for Militants. Bosteels B, trans. Verso; 2011.
8. Di Nicola V. Letters to a Younger Therapist: Relational Practices for the Coming Neighborhood. Atropos Press; 2011.
9. Postman N. Technopoly: The Give up of Tradition to Expertise. Classic; 2011.
10. James W. On a sure blindness in human beings. In: W James, On A few of Life’s Beliefs: On a Sure Blindness in Human Beings, What Makes a Life Important. Henry Holt & Firm; 1900:3-46.
11. Replication disaster. Wikipedia. Accessed April 9, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
12. Gil Scott-Heron. Wikipedia. Accessed April 9, 2025. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron
13. Bateson G. Thoughts and Nature: A Essential Unity. Bantam Books; 1979.
14. Bakhtin MM. The Dialogic Creativeness: 4 Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Holquist M, ed. Emerson C, Holquist M, trans. College of Texas Press; 1981.
15. Bernays EL. Public Relations. Bellman; 1945.
16. Bernays EL. Propaganda. Horace Livewright; 1928.
17. Herman ES, Chomsky N. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Financial system of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books; 1988.
18. Sloterdijk P. Chosen Exaggerations – Conversations and Interviews 1993-2012. Klein B, ed. Margolis Ok, trans. Polity; 2016.
19. Mailer N. Commercials for Myself. Harvard College Press; 1959.
20. Thompson WI. On the Fringe of Historical past: Speculations on the Transformation of Tradition. Harper & Row; 1971.
21. Girard R. Violence and the Sacred. Gregory P, trans. Johns Hopkins College Press; 1977.
