This video has been making something of a stir on the web of late;

The Wayseer Manifesto

The author of the book that kicked all this off is a Garrett John LoPorto, an American with connections to the Occupy movement.

This from the Wayseer  website

All over the world there are Wayseers who struggle, who hide their gifts, because they don’t realize what they are. We are here to find Wayseers throughout the world and let them know how important they are to humanity. We are here to turn Wayseers on to their rare aptitude for leading transformation.

When the Wayseers of the world are awakened to their true calling on this planet, a massive shift in the human condition will occur.  Wayseers are the change agents of humanity – the innovators, the healers, the visionaries, the spiritual leaders, the entrepreneurs, the ones who are here to lead humanity into alignment with the Way.

I think I like it… or at least some of it.

I like the idea of the need for agitators, damaged malcontents who will not be defined by their limitations. I like the passion for something better, something other, something more creative and beautiful.

What I am not so sure about is the degree to which we exalt the ‘event’ over the ‘ordinary’, and the idea that we can all be ‘extra ordinary’ if we believe strongly enough. We can’t. And that is OK because there is also beauty in the ordinary, and in the long walk as well as the quick burn.

And perhaps the ‘out there’ charismatic presentation is just a bit too ‘God channel’ to sit easily with most of we Brits. The handsome bloke who comes and tells us that we are part of the special 10%. And he has product to shift.

There is also this strange feeling in both the Wayseer Manifesto, and the wider Occupy movement of activism as an end in itself – divorced from dogma, or from ideology, or cause. We want transformation, but we do not define what we are transforming to- this will work itself out if we follow ‘the way’.

‘The way’ is enough – the ‘calling’ we all carry. As I think of this, it seems to me to reflect a real shift in society – even a shift in me. Society is less interested in what you believe, more in what lights you up. And just about anything goes man, what ever turns you on.

Perhaps I should take up skateboarding.

What sets this apart from a million other self help books? Well, the Wayseer Manifesto seems to me to be an idea very much of its time. A time of fluidity and change in Western society.  A lot of this might be understood in reference to the P word – postmodernity. A time when a lot of the institutions, shared assumptions and cohesions that held our culture together have been fragmenting and called into question. Then there are the tensions inherent in our Capitalist economy which have been highlighted by recent events.

If there is to be a transition towards the new, then it will need ideas that form bridges from here to there. It will need people who are prepared to be pioneers in all sorts of areas – economics, politics, economics, spirituality.

It remains to be seen what will emerge.