But we all exclude people.

Sometimes we have to – we just cannot connect to everyone – even Facebook knows this.*

Sometimes we could connect and choose not to.

We tend to connect with people like us, excluding others, although the future will be increasingly about connecting with people who are not like us,** and seeing just what kind of world we can shape together.  There will be rules which will need to be followed – developed from those of the infinite game – but all kinds of people will come together around the things which matters to them, or around a person who matters to them.

When others exclude, we can create our own places for including.

Yesterday I mentioned the story of the Impressionists; marginalised by the Ecole national superieure des Beaux-Arts, they created their own community of artists – Societe Anonyme Cooperative des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, et Graveurs – making it possible for all those who wished to pursue their art without compromise to do so, as equals.

Seth Godin’s We Are All Weird is an important reminder for us of how we now live in a world without normal people – even those who count themselves as normal are weird, and this is okay.

I find myself pondering why might happen with the founding of many groups devoted to including people, identifying with, and developing them in, their weirdness – and their weird art.  These places would be filled with mind-openers and people-builders and connectors and energisers and collaborators and champions and navigators and companions.^

There’s nothing to stop us from beginning such a place for ourselves and others, exploring and developing our weird art.

(*Facebook limits the number of feeds we see from our “friends.”  It also recognises how most of us connect to only four or five people regularly; we connect to the same numbers of groups.  Check out Grouped by Paul Adams for how Facebook sees small groups of friends as critical to social networking.)
(**Many are looking into the developing second renaissance with different people and different domains coming together in exciting new ways.)
(^These eight types of people are described in Vital Friends from Tom Rath.  Rath suggests we need different kinds of friend to accompany us through life – no one is all of this kinds of friend to us and we cannot be all of these things to others.  We could call the book Weird Friends because we’re all different and that’s healthy and fine.)