Summer Reading

Talking to Strangers - by Malcolm Gladwell

The central question is how do we make sense of strangers, people we don’t know?  Using examples from real life, well-known author Gladwell exposes some of our common fallacies about figuring out others.  First, we tend to default to the truth in spite of evidence to the contrary.  Generally, our bent to believe what people say serves us well but does not help us determine scammers.  Second, we believe people are transparent; i.e. that their responses match their feelings or even their guilt/innocence.  Thus we build a world that systematically discriminates against those who don’t fit our ideas of transparency.  

Dealing with the issue of sexual assault and drunkenness, especially on campuses, he shows the myopia often caused by alcohol. which transforms us into someone else.  Our field of emotional and mental vision changes; we are not our true selves.  Similarly torture, especially sleep deprivation, like traumatic events, often produces untrue results.  In these cases the harder we work at getting strangers to reveal themselves, the more elusive they become.

Central to his book is the concept of coupling where things coincide to produce certain results or the idea context is a large influencing factor.  One example he uses is the huge increase in suicides when Great Britain switched their home heating to an inexpensive gas that could be toxic.  As soon as the gas was changed, the numbers of suicide returned to normal.  Thus, to even begin to ‘see’ a stranger we need to look at the stranger’s world.  When we look at strangers without our assumptions and within their context where they appear coupled with other factors, we begin to appreciate the complexity and ambiguity of strangers.  He concludes that because we do not know how to talk to strangers when things go awry we often blame the stranger. 

I found this latest book by Gladwell as fascinating as his previous ones.

-Jackie Potters, csj Associate

Only a Stone’s Throw Away From a New Perspective

Most of us are very familiar with the epic, biblical, tale of David and Goliath. The bestselling author, Malcolm Gladwell, in his most recently released book, David and Goliath, provides a new perspective on this well-known encounter which was first recorded in the Old Testament. Gladwell maintains that we’ve got it all wrong. It was David, not Goliath, who had the upper hand from the onset in this power struggle. The author insists the mighty Goliath, weighed down by his heavy protective gear was ill prepared to meet the less encumbered David. 

Malcolm Gladwell uses this erroneous held belief about Goliath’s strength and David’s weakness, as a spring board to point out other examples of the unrecognized strengths and capabilities possessed by those considered unlikely winners. Gladwell illustrates other circumstances where apparent weakness proves to be an unsuspected strength.

Perhaps the essence of this tale and book might provide wisdom on our Lenten journey to Easter. Might there be instances in our own lives where personal limitation opens us to be supported by our higher power.

“At first I didn’t think of it as a gift,
and begged God to remove it.
Three times I did that, and then he told me,
My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.“
2 Cor.12:7 (MSG translation)

Listen to Malcolm Gladwell on Ted Talks.

Nancy Wales, CSJ