How many people believe that you can do anything you want? Raise your hand. You're wrong because Malcolm Gladwell said so. Now, of those of you who said in your own mind 'To Hell with Gladwell', you are right, and your stubborn mindset makes the difference. But it doesn't make *all* the difference because Gladwell, *is* right.
What is he right about? He's right about the fact that extraordinary individuals, those who are the best of the best, do not, in their Herculean efforts, make themselves successful. They stand on complex and overlapping waves of society. There are accidents of time, and place and culture, of opportunity and desire, that make the best that way, not merely extraordinary innate talent. Many times we think of our world, and especially American competition, as literally a running race. We overuse the metaphor of 'a level playing field' precisely because we view what's going on at game day as a competition of the best - that the fastest person is the best because he *is*. We don't often think about what good luck means for people who are already talented. We think about the right place, the right time, the right combination for our own opportunity - but these things apply to the gifted too. When there's a new beauty creme on the shelves, the already beautiful use it too. And so all of the complexities of success + all of the unique opportunities are what make superstars from the talented.
From a longer view of history, what Gladwell says is almost common sense. We understand that certain things happen in history, the discovery of America, of radiation, of the earth's rotation, of the structure of DNA, of the making of steel. It could have been anybody, and sooner or later it would be somebody. America couldn't stay undiscovered forever given what ships could do and what kings and queens wanted. But somehow in our storytelling of success in America, we tend to behave as if only people possessed of extraordinary stuff rise to the top and that they do so strictly based upon their own will to power.
Most importantly, Gladwell illustrates how it is that people must wrestle with their social circumstances in order to achieve. He's not advocating a social determinism so much as he's saying that a certain view of individualism is not useful. In other words, he's putting the possibility of a comparitive work ethics out there. Start with the stereotype 'Asians are good at math' and you get beyond simplistic IQ arguments and deal with what Bryan Hirota was saying back in the day when we were bound up in that particular Affirmative Action debate.There's are reasons they are good at math but it's a social reason which has almost nothing to do with ambition. One of the reasons is language. Have you ever wondered why we use the term 'eleven' instead of 'oneteen', or 'twelve' instead of 'twoteen'. And if we ever did use 'oneteen' why not use it like 'twenty one' with the tens place first? It would be more logical and regular - like it is in Chinese. Gladwell demonstrated how the irregularity of the English language cripples our kids relatively speaking - that little difference is enough to make a difference, and it is something that might falsely be attributed to individuality.
Gladwell's book, now not so fresh in mind, since I read it in December, has one prominent lesson. That is that success has many parents, but that there are deep structural ones that we don't often consider because we are accustomed to using cliched arguments about success. We must therefore be a bit more honest about considering the circumstances and the arbitrary constraints on those border conditions between good and great, recognizing how many things make up the background for the winners in society. It's more than you think.
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