1%

Hey, been a while. How have you been? Keeping well I hope.

I haven't posted for a while for two reasons

1. I have been busy enough that I have been able to occupy myself with others thing besides writing for my blog
2. I really haven't been inspired to break out of my busyness to write. Nothing was compelling enough to get me to jot my thoughts down here, until now...

I read this post on the 1% of early adopters. This post introduces (for me) and explains the concept of 1% as applied to biker gangs from the late 40s onwards. Very briefly, the term was coined by a supposed quote made after a "riot" where a motorcycle club terrorised a small town in America. The quote stated that 99% of bikers were good people, like you and I, and it was just 1% who were trouble. Apparently this was actually staged (Read the blog post for more info) but it didn't stop bikers gangs taking on the 1% identity and wear it literally as a badge of pride.
The central idea of the 1%ers is this:

the One Percenter clubs are organized around the idea of a community, and their unconventional lives and motorcycle lifestyles are reinforced by the strong-as-steel bonds with other members. They revel, sometimes raucously in beer-soaked pandemonium, in a culture that conventional society frowns on. Forget seeking the approval of conventional governing bodies; the One Percenters revel in their minority status.

They are outlaws of culture.

The Church of the Customer blogging team have translated this 1% mentality to people who voluntarily create content for the web in order to communicate to unknown others, their passion for or dislike of products, services, experiences, media, or whatever.

I think that this term can be applied even wider than that, to those who choose to live as if in the 1%. Who willingly embrace not being accepted by mainstream conventions in order to lead the way, pave the path or whatever for a new paradigm to how we see life.

These are the people would live in a counterculture mindset yet whom look like you or I. I not taking about anarchist, but rather a group of people who believe in equality and do something about, who believe no one should live in poverty and do something about it, who believe that everyone deserves and needs to be connected with other people relationally in order for us as individuals and society as a whole to proposer.

I'm taking about people out there who refuse to live in anything other than optimism and hope the the whole and global society will one day its act together and start to realise the potential we were designed to have. I want to be in the 1% of individuals who though are small in number, a hugely influential in transforming the world, or using the idea diffusion curve, are the people who are capable of taking a radical idea as and early adopter and transitioning it to be palpable for the mainstream first and second majority.

I would like to leave you with some excerpts for the Church of the Customer post. I have tweaked it to suit my angle:

What they do is beyond the norm. Sometimes there is little recognition, but they are dedicated to and protective of their work and the community they're involved in. They excel on the edges of culture even if their percentage as [lifestyle innovators] is little more than a rounding error to some [people]. Numbers-wise, they are not huge, but the impact of their [lives] can be.