Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell's Story of Success
November 22nd, 2008Malcolm Gladwell’s goal is to adjust our understanding of how people get to where they are. It is a fascinating account of a question I have pondered myself as a journalist and academic. Instead of the Horatio Alger story of success – a gifted child who through heroic striving within a meritocratic system becomes a successful (rich, famous, fill in your life goal here) adult – Outliers tells a story about the context in which success takes place: family, culture, friendship, childhood, accidents of birth and history and geography.
Here’s Time magazine’s review:
Outliers: Malcolm Gladwell’s Success Story
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November 22nd, 2008 at 8:32 pm
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November 23rd, 2008 at 10:48 am
I haven’t read “Outliers” but the synopsis Glynn gave of the factors contributing to “success” ring true in my experience. What I call “family culture” may have more to do with it than anything else – the values, human network and experience passed along from one generation in a family to the next. Obviously, passing along wealth within a family is a factor as well, although history records many successful families who lose everything, then become successful again. Inherited values, human network and experience would help account for that.
Many thinkers have observed, since ancient times, that wealth and power are no guarantee of happiness. If “success” is defined solely as wealth and power, not many people are successful.
However, if “successful” is defined as being a decent and honorable person who has integrity and works for the happiness of self and others, in whatever ways possible, then many millions of people can be deemed “successful” regardless of their economic or social status.
These two types of success could be labeled “superficial success” and “true success.” Not coincidentally, many people who are superificially successful today are personally miserable. Any number of celebrities and rich people are living examples of that. Also not coincidentally, many people in modest circumstances are truly successful, with rewarding relationships and meaningful lives.
America’s history provides many examples of the latter, among whom Henry David Thoreau and Eric Hofer come to mind. Our collective attention should be refocused on what makes one a true success as a human being, and away from the consumerist, superficial status seeking that has become the norm.
Bottom line, I’d rather be like Thoreau than Trump.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:21 pm
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November 23rd, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Thoreau is certainly a major influence on what happens here. Now that the corporate Republicans are about be out of power, we can get back to one of my favorite specialties, science and environmental journalism. I had more success doing that than about anything I’ve done in my life. I still have fans along the Gulf Coast as a result of my work from those days. Sometimes they even send me money : )
November 30th, 2008 at 11:52 am
[...] and expect to change the world over night. But hey, you don’t have to believe me. Listen to Malcolm Gladwell talking about his book Outliers: The Story of Success. This is the second part of a series designed to show how experience [...]