INGBIGS Manifesto

manifesto(n.): a statement of principles and intentions; for example, The Declaration of Independence (1776), The Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789), The Communist  Manifesto (1848), The Anarchist Manifesto (1850), Mien Kamph (1924),  The Rockland School Mission (2010),

INGBIGS MANIFESTO

The INGBIGS Party aims to create a society built around this single conviction: Reading & Writing are our Moral Obligations.  Our glorious, Literary Revolution ensures that humanity's natural connection to literature will be cultivated.


We live and die by Irony! Symbolism! Characterization! Conflict! & Theme!

The INGBIGS Party serves its subjects by providing them with regular and rigorous reading, disciplined debate & discussion, martial analysis & comprehension, intensive & exhaustive writing, and free eyeglasses.


Literature is nourishment. We feed the masses!

THE INGBIGS Party believes that once society rids itself of those who will not do the Party's assigned reading & writing, then a purified Utopian nation of book nerds can rise up to  rule and Enlighten the entire world!

INGBIGS Forever.

Party Insignia: The Bulldog Skull



INGBIGS was founded by a revolutionary, enlightened individual known only as Master Bigsby. Master Bigsby was both a student and teacher at a prestigious, elite academy before the glorious Literary Revolution.


The mascot at this pre-revolutionary academy was the bulldog, a breed famous for its power and strength. Bigsby believed that all members of his Utopian Society must think of themselves as students from the moment they enter school until the day they die. The Bulldog Skull reminds us that Death looms and that we have a lot of reading to get done before then.


 Read or Die!

INBIGS SOCIETY



Read or Die!

INGBIGS is centered around the principle that literature is life. From an early age, citizens of Bigsbania are daily directed to and guided through the complex study of classic works of literature.

Those who refuse are dealt with in austere manners.








CLASS SYSTEM: INGBIGS society does not ignore the historical hierarchical imperative. The citizens of Bigsbania are arranged in traditional high, middle, and lower stratas. 

The upper-class, or Literati, consists of upper-level officials and inner party members who dictate all aspects of citizen's lives.

The middle-class, or Bibliophiles, consist primarily of librarians, teachers, and book store owners. This class is the backbone of Bigsbanian culture.

The lower-class, or Pro-literate, are trained in industrial arts, such as the printing presses, bookbinding, and newspaper delivery. They are further employed in all the conventional positions necessary in a social infrastructure.

                         

EDUCATION: Daily life for all high & middle class citizens under INGBIGS-rule consists of morning physical exercise followed by provocative journal prompts; compulsory, rigorous schooling, 8 hours a day for six days a week;  evening Book Club meetings;  and assigned readings and study guides.   
Lower-class citizens are rigorously trained in their respective technical and vocational discipline at an early age. Their literary education consists primarily of movies based on books and Movie Clubs, which mirror the upper-class Book Clubs. 



UNIFORM: INGBIGS uniforms are worn by the high & middles classes. The Black & Red aesthetic of the Party symbolizes the endless search for enlightenment and the noble blood shed in our glorious Literary Revolution. 

 

ENTERTAINMENT: Social life revolves primarily around Book Club meetings, with weekend opportunities to appreciate provocative cinema, experimental theater arts, avant-garde musical performances, or interpretive dance recitals. Regular beatnik-style poetry readings flourish in the city and country alike, complete with bop-jazz, mad dancing, and existential conversation. 





Groovy!

MARRIAGE/FAMILY: Relationships are based  on similar interests in authors and artists, and are generally formed in order to share and pass on the love of literature. Families exist solely to facilitate the function of fiction. The center of every household is its library. Parents' sole hope is that their children will read more and better than they did; children  live to one day recite by rote long passages of literary masterpieces to their elderly parents.

  

Love is Literature is Love...

ARMED FORCES: Mandatory military service from age 18-21  involves immersion in war literature, including notable war novels. There is also disciplined training and lots of guns. 

The INGBIGS military is primarily a defensive organization; INGBIGS has no wish to attack other superpowers. However, the people of INGBIGS take up the moral obligation to capture and convert, or conquer and destroy, nations who do not value literature as we do.

"POETIC JUSTICE."

RELIGION: Religion has been replaced with the worship of sainted authors & poets. Libraries serve in place of churches, temples, and mosques. The purpose of religion is to facilitate the spiritual, rather than intellectual,  connection to reading and writing.

St. Orwell
Whose prophetic 1984 showed us the horrors of a world which believes that
"the destruction of language is a beautiful thing."

St. Shakespeare
Whose philosophical, psychological, and sociological insight has proven timelessly relevant and whose rendering of the human heart is eternal and true.

St. Joyce
Whose Portrait of the Artist as  a Young man is achingly beautiful and 
Ulysses the single greatest achievement of modern literature.



St. Kafka
Whose prophetic The Metamorphosis warns us of the humanity-robbing hell of alienation through work.  



St. Faulkner
Who embedded in his narratives the universal moral code by which
all mankind might struggle 
against despair and live in hope.



                                           

 

                                                                 

GOVERNMENT: The Inner Ruling Party is comprised of highly intellectual, exceptionally well-read individuals who serve the vision of their founding father, Master Bigsby, with the utmost dedication. These Party members are selected for their reading and writing skills and are recruited from men & women, aged 16-66, from the upper-class population every 10 years. This recruitment is facilitated by the living brain of Master Bigsby, housed somewhere in the Capital Library, and is based on rigorous essay exams .

Master Bigsby.

"Do your reading! Or I'll crack your head open!"

LAW&ORDER: The Library Police patrol the lands of Bigsbania, administering righteous justice informed by philosophical and literary conditioning. Under INGBIGS authority, Police, Judges, and Lawyers are trained to enable the implementation and enforcement of St.Faulkner's "universal truths: love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice" (Nobel Prize in Literature 1949). 

Reading. You have no choice.