The ultimate diversity is not about external attributes, but internal ones. Many people can get around one’s look and background, but it is the different perspectives and attitudes that really cause the conflicts. Today’s UN sponsored “World Day for Cultural Diversity” captures that spirit with ‘Culture” planted right in the heart of it.
In the spirit of embracing the failure to conform, I’ve written a number of posts extolling the world of weird. Michael Lazerow elaborates articulately with a number of further perspectives of the wonder of weirdness in his own post “Why Weirdoes Outperform Normals”. He starts with mini-portraits of ‘weirdoes’ in his life…
- Gary Vaynerchuk.”Gary once offered to pay my kids to be Jets fans. He texts me just to tell me that he loves me. That’s weird. And I love it.”
- James Altucher.”We had breakfast at the Red Flame diner in New York. He ordered French Fries and a vanilla milkshake. That’s weird.
- Peter Thiel. “Peter pays kids not to go to college, invested in a company that bioprints meat for human consumption and thinks death is a problem that can be solved”
- Cindy Gallops.”And she has turned her love of having sex with younger men into one of the most talked about TEDtalks and a new business to reinvent the porn industry, one crowd-sourced video at a time.”
Lazerow goes on with both strong advocacy for weirdness and a catalogue of their strengths…
- Weird is good, I tell them. Normal is blah. You don’t want to be blah. Blah is boring. Boring people are forgettable. I like weirdos. They are interesting. They have crazy ideas. They have passion. Weirdos separate from the pack. Weirdos change the world. Weirdos lead. Weirdos make us think. When did weird become so weird? Why does the Merriam-Webster dictionary define the word so negatively? (“a person who is extraordinarily strange or eccentric.”)… The world would suck if it weren’t for weirdos. Instead of trying to get our kids to fit in, we should help them celebrate why they are different. Let’s start to teach kids to embrace weird. Weird is good. And let’s not stop until weird is normal.
- Weirdos see the world as a blank slate for them to paint their masterpiece. Forget marching to their own drums. They make up their own instruments. Forget thinking outside the box. They don’t see boxes. They see circles and horizons and trapazoids.
- Weirdos don’t see anything as impossible. Anything is possible. Just give us enough time.
- Weirdos are contrarians. They think differently and act even more differently. Normals try to fit in. Weirdos stick out without really trying.
- Weirdos aren’t driven by money. Money is a destination. Weirdos are all about the journey.
- Weirdos don’t care what others think. They only care THAT they think and want to change HOW they think.
- Weirdos come in all shapes and sizes, colors and countries. And they’re not new to the tech industry, or industry in general.