Friday, October 1, 2010

Names

Just read the comments on http://tallskinnykiwi.typepad.com/tallskinnykiwi/2010/09/pamela-hartigan-wants-to-dump-the-word-social-entrepreneur.html#comment-6a00d8341c5bb353ef013487d9e043970c and some of the responses.
The issue seems to be that names exclude people. That's fine with me. I don't want anyone else to be "Graham Vawser".  (I don't think my wife does either!)
And on the other hand I can't see that there's any way of encouraging people to consider changing from their long held positions if they don't see a hope of finding themselves in a place they've not been before - a better place.  Why move when there's nothing to be gained from it?
I've lived in the comfortable place, unaware of what was happening in other places.  It's much more exciting and challenging to discover that there are people doing things I'm not part of.  It makes me decide whether I want to continue to be out of it (=excluded) or learn new things to come in to the new place.
And so I want people to be able to see that there are some things that they're missing out on.  I'll keep naming these things, and explaining them, and showing the sign posts, and providing the maps, so that others will come in.

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