Welcome to Philosophy Friday! This is a concept which I stumbled across when discussing the deeper nature of existence with a friend via Live Messenger…which isn’t exactly a medium designed for in-depth analyses of the meaning of life. Still at least it’s better than Twitter – try chatting about topics which are deeply rooted in the human psyche when you’re limited to 140 characters per go 
On an aside, “Philosophy Friday” can be loosely shortened to “FiloFry” which conjures nice images of savoury pastry dishes – so while you’re digesting important ideas you can also speculate about gourmet pies. Everyone’s a winner.
Why Philosophy Friday? Well, the end of the working week strikes me as a good time to ruminate on the nature of ideas bigger than “Where shall I get trashed tonight?”. Of course, if that’s your concept of a big idea then you’ve either inadvertently stumbled across a simple path to enlightenment and inner peace, or you really think that this article is about gourmet pies.
And this offers a neat segue into today’s topic – evangelism. It’s a concept which carries a lot of baggage, as it is almost completely associated with religious evangelism: ardent believers heading out to preach and attempting to convert the heathen (defined as anyone who doesn’t believe what they do), or whacky tele-evangelists, spruiking faith with one hand and counting the donations with the other. And indeed, if you do any sort of online search around the phrase the results all reinforce that particular usage bias.
But another way of looking at evangelism is simply as the act of spreading ideas. I first encountered this when I started working with some evangelists, who didn’t promote religion but technology. Microsoft have people employed specifically to be Evangelists (it’s in their job titles) in all sorts of areas, and while these guys have to spend part of their job explaining what it is they actually do, the rest of the time is spent spreading ideas and concepts, showing off technology and answering questions. Disseminating information, in other words.
Of course in their case there’s a capitalistic aspect – Microsoft wouldn’t support such a scheme if it didn’t make good business sense – but the concept is an important one and scales out to encompass a wide array of ideas and initiatives.
I’ve just watched a video by Seth Godin on the TED website, where he talks about leadership and spreading ideas. The message is that to instigate change you don’t need to convert everyone to your way of thinking, you just need to offer leadership to those who already think like you and are ready to be led. Yes, on the face of it that sounds a bit creepy and cult-like, but the examples he offers up are solid, such as fighting climate change and niche commercial opportunities. Think of it more in terms of offering inspiration to like-minded freethinkers than offering a tazer to sheep.
The point is that if you have a good idea, talk about it, read about it, write about it and find other people who are also interested in it. There are plenty of good ideas out there (and plenty of terrible ones too), but an idea which only lives inside your head will never realise its full potential unless you give it the means to get out. You’ll also certainly have a more interesting and fulfilling life into the bargain.
