Ideological Alignment

This is an interview of Malcom Gladwell given by the liberal arts director at High Point University in North Carolina. He's funny, witty, humble, and incredibly insightful.

When I first encountered the book a couple of years ago, The Tipping Point, I had scoffed at the idea of reading a book that tells you how to be successful. Recently, I was given to read The Outliers and I was extremely impressed with how observant and insightful Malcom Gladwell is on social interactions and their meanings. I then obtained that copy of The Tipping Point that I had refused earlier and rather enjoyed reading it as well.

I don't believe in learning how to become "successful" by reading, whether financially or socially, but what I do believe in is reading avoid dogmatism, and this books do exactly that.

There are several key reasons why I enjoy Malcom Gladwell's analysis on social bearings:

1. He's an environmentalist like me. Not environmentalist like I'm hugging the trees, but the belief that we are shaped by our environments. It's the age-old nature vs nurture debate where although it's never one or the other, I do agree with him that a large part of our "personality" are shaped by their social environment.
2. He doesn't preach or push his insights on you. Rather, he presents you with an alternative world view that you can either take or leave. He takes what the general public view is the "norm" and gives you a completely different perspective, and therefore a new concept, of how the world works.
3. He is a great writer. His writing is clear, logical, and well-presented. A+ on rhetoric. 

You are not supposed to walk away from his book with a new hard-fast rules of how to conduct your life, but rather with possibilities of new ideologies that make the world a better place.

Some highlights on this interview:

• "I was privileged to be underprivileged" Outsiders are able to see things differently because they are not acclimated and desensitized to a culture and what people think is the way things should be the outsiders don't see it the same way.
• "If you take care of the little things then it will instill the mindset that makes the big things easier" Steve Jobs is successful because he is a perfectionist with a purpose (not a perfectionist because he's got a disorder). He insists on perfecting the little things around him to fit his overall purpose--he understands that meaning doesn't just come from words or things, but also from all types of seemingly insignificatn actions and inactions around us.
• "Do not, by the way, listen to your ipod when you work...this is insane! I'm sorry, you can't do work, it just can't be done [...] Here is the two findings: number one is that everyone thinks they're great at multi-tasking; finding number two is, no one is." (I feel validated because I cannot work with music) He also mentioned that if you are doing brain-work and working efficiently, you can't work 8 hours a day.
• Wealth is not what it's cracked up to be...a cycle of discovery on your way to being wealthy, money is a conduit, and that's why people work hard all their lives who end up just giving it all away. This is the most profound part of the interview and worth watching.
• "[Leaders] have less in common than what I thought they would. Leadership comes in an astonishing number of forms" The only thing they have in common is energy. Energy can come from passion, from purpose, from drive, or from innate (some people just don't need to sleep as much) but the only thing that help them become leaders is that they never stop.
• "Your personality is a function of what is going around you" <-- environmentalist
• "The idea..that Social Power, which is to say, to be distinguished from economic power, which is the power that comes from money...or political power from institutions, or even institutional power, the power comes from your title. There is a different if not equally more important thing, a power called Social power, an informal way which influence is mediated in the world. Social power is not held equally by all of us; it's held by a small number of us with gifts. Some people have a capacity of social interaction that's way out here...they are enormously important in the functioning of this institution...the people with social power get really good stuff done...a high functioning organization depends on these people...people go to work, school because of the environment and it's these people who create functional environments. Understand where social power lies. Well-functioning societies reward those that do that." I'm not quoting his exact words because the section was so long and so in-depth, but this is one of the ideas that he tries to make us see that we don't usually understand, the idea that social interactions can have just as much, if not more, power, than money, institutions, title.