The Helping Friendly Manifesto

Our Mission is to help elevate the public conversation and connect people through books in convivial ways. We are advocating for a well-read public because a well-informed populace is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy.

Ironically, in the age of the “smartphone”, the threat of Idiocracy is becoming real. We want to help stem that tide by helping changing the way people feel about reading.  We want people to remember how it felt the first time they read a book that changed their life and bring mystique back to Knowledge.

We recognize the universal truth that relationships and communities are formed through shared experiences, and valuable shared experiences form valuable relationships and communities. When a society stops sharing valuable experiences, it begins to decay. Without shared Vision, the people will perish.

The Helping Friendly Initiatives - Helping Friendly Book Club, Helping Friendly Book Stands, and SEJ Talks - are all designed to be engines for valuable shared experiences. They all contribute to our overall mission of elevating the public conversation and connecting people through books in convivial ways.  Our purpose is to make reading more attractive, accessible, and communal.  

We believe in a Great Instauration of the Arts and Sciences, and we believe that renewal starts quite simply, with everybody reading more. Values determine behavior, so if we want people to change their behavior to read more, we need to help them see the value in doing so. We need to make reading cool again.  

Literacy is a pathway to Knowledge, but without Curiosity, the willingness to learn anything is nonexistent. Curiosity is a prerequisite to Insight, and every time a person has an Insight, they make a discovery, and one discovery leads to the next, thus creating forward motion.

All meaningful growth begins with first believing in possibilities beyond what is.

Illuminate curiosity for the purpose of forward motion.