We are all weird | Doris’ book review

This book by Seth Godin – he calls it a manifesto – is a call to action for anyone who ever cared a lot about something.

Seth argues that the choice to push all of us towards a universal normal merely to help sell more junk to the masses is both inefficient and wrong.

What does it mean to be weird?

Who would join a santa club, or spend every spare penny on scuba equipment or surf well past the age most guys give up golf?

The thing is, these people have a life. They’ve chosen one. They pursue their passions. They embrace their dreams instead of following the path laid down by a mass marketer or a clever, controlling politician or tribal leader.

Sure, they’re weird. So are you. So are all of us. A good thing too!

The opportunity of our time is to support the weird, to sell to the weird and,
if you wish, to become weird.

Seth puts forward the idea that the interconnected nature of the Internet ends up influencing everything that’s made and sold and distributed and discussed.

We’re no longer limited by geography. Today, it all comes to us with a click. You can go on a raw food diet without living near a health food store or join a home grown yoga class without living in India. It also means you can support a political party with no activist in your neighbourhood.

As soon as we remove physical proximity as a gating factor, the only barrier to weirdness is choice.

This in turn spells the end of a one-size-fits-all factory-oriented world. On the contrary, we’re witnessing the rise of mini-communities and people obsessed with causes, hobbies and passions which is changing politics, economics, marketing, manufacturing and everything else.

Seth’s sometimes provocative and non-conventional views are manifold in this book. I retain 2 key points:

	About society and education: “Seen up close, normal disappears” – The simple alternative to our system of education is to embrace the weird. To abandon normal. To acknowledge that our factories don’t need so many cogs, so many compliant workers, so many people willing to work cheap.
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	The challenges of the education system are driven by our distance from the problem, not by money. The disconnect is caused by our fervent desire for a return to ‘normal’, a normal we actually never had.
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	About the business or any other passionate venture you’re in or about to start: rather than to a mass market, cater to the weird instead. The challenge of your future is to do productive and useful work for and by and with the tribe that cares about you and you care about. Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, a community and a mission.

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This single shift in our culture has opened the door for a huge outpouring of creativity, innovation and art.

At SoYouWantAChange, I encourage you to make a difference by
starting your own weirdness today 🙂

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