Don Polk Vision for Agressive Change
Don Polk, the founder and director of Don Polk & Companies, sees a need for aggressive change in our nation and our communities. Don Polk is using his organization to focus on advising and advocating for privately held companies, communities and nonprofit organizations such as health, civil and economic equity groups. This has put him in a special position to inspire the kind of aggressive change that he is talking about.
The difference between perception, reality and actuality is what Don Polk sees a need for aggressive change in. When people see other groups of people that they do not immediately identify with, they create beliefs and myths around those people to bridge their own gap of knowledge. Don Polk quotes Camille Paglia on this subject, in a statement she made about stereotypes. “The moment there is imagination, there is myth,” said Paglia. Don Polk believes that people create stories to fill in the missing pieces in their knowledge about other people and groups that are different from themselves.
The change that Don Polk is setting forth to instigate has to do with cultural mythology that we create to explain the unexplained. Don Polk has seen the way we as human beings treat that which we believe to be foreign. We even label other human beings from ?foreign? countries as aliens, the same term we use to describe the strange green men that we have conjured up in our collective imagination to encompass our fears of the unknown space world. In this way, human beings can justify our intolerance of one another, because it seems perfectly justifiable to be suspicious of that which we see as “alien.” Don Polk believes it is time to make an aggressive change in our understanding of one another, though.
An advisory and advocacy group like Don Polk & Co. has the ability, resources and influence to affect that kind of change discussed here. Mr. Polk is planning to use his resources to do just that.