It is undeniably one of the best December days we've ever had. It's a slow Sunday, we have a week of vacation with B ahead of us, and it snowed six inches last night. I think there's about 8" on the ground, more in the snowdrifts. It snowed all night--we stayed up late last night and just watched the flurry buzz around our house and swiftly cover everything in white. We just got back from a hike around our neighborhood. We walked over to our park two blocks away, where the Seattle skyline looks so sleepy behind the ballfields filled with kids and parents. There's a big hill there where the kids sled and snowboard all day. We saw a few neighbors and sledded for awhile, jumped around with some of the dogs, and stopped by our packed coffee shop for a cup of coffee. Cora just ate an enormous lunch and is sleeping soundly while B works on a video of her first year for our families.
Have you read, or are you thinking of reading Malcolm Gladwell's new book, Outliers? There's a post on his blog about an article by David Brooks in the New York Times that critiques the premise of the book. (Gladwell wrote Blink and The Tipping Point.) Anyway, a book group I'm thinking of joining plans to read it for our next meeting. When I first read about the book on Amazon.com, I sort of grimaced. It seemed, from the Amazon review, to paint a bleak picture of someone's ability to be successful:
"Now that he's gotten us talking about the viral life of ideas and the power of gut reactions, Malcolm Gladwell poses a more provocative question in Outliers: why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential? Challenging our cherished belief of the "self-made man," he makes the democratic assertion that superstars don't arise out of nowhere, propelled by genius and talent: "they are invariably the beneficiaries of hidden advantages and extraordinary opportunities and cultural legacies that allow them to learn and work hard and make sense of the world in ways others cannot." Examining the lives of outliers from Mozart to Bill Gates, he builds a convincing case for how successful people rise on a tide of advantages, 'some deserved, some not, some earned, some just plain lucky.'"
It's not that I entirely disagree with the assertion--it just seems rather unexciting, is all. It doesn't inspire a great sense of discovery. Why would I want to read an entire book about predestiny? Maybe because it all seems a bit too obvious. It slaps against so much of the stuff that I want to believe, or maybe it's just the idea that there is a formula for everything. I shudder at the thought--regardless of how true--that somehow we can break down everything--our entire life's work--into a series of equations and arrive at a common conclusion every time. And yet, if that's the case, the book smells a bit like the snow on our ground right now, a bit more wet and fluffy than the stuff of dense research and data mining--though perhaps much more fun to read because of that. That said, when I looked at his various blog posts, and a page on his site containing excerpts from Outliers, I thought maybe I'll check it out. It seems that his book analyzes the path to success from a variety of perspectives, definitely not just from upper crust beginnings. Like Brooks, though, I have this feeling I'll read it and feel that the premise "'slight(s) the centrality of individual character and individual creativity' by focusing so much on the cultural and contextual determinants of success. Successful people, [says Brooks], must begin with two beliefs--"that the future can be better than the present, and I have the power to make it so.'"
So if I believe that desire and dreams have actual mass, can together create their own trajectory, what does that mean? Do I need to decide if my beliefs have weight, or do I just need to believe and do? It means, certainly, that I am more of a follower of quantum physics than hard reasoning; despite how soft I realize it may sound to more data-driven sorts, that's where I'm at.
Where does the belief in dreams place me in Gladwell's world, or in the everyday bustle of the life that's happening right now while I sit and write? What I mean is, what role does belief play in our destiny, versus where we come from? It's a wormhole if you think about it too much, a chicken or egg dilemma.
Basically, a huge part of me just wants to say that it's not my job to be concerned about it; that's the role of people who measure and debate. I am not trying to be a scientist, I didn't choose that path. Gladwell didn't train as one, either. It goes back to my obsession with fragility; the existence of this book is one more thing that feeds my desire for escape, is like a little needle of (someone's definition of) proof that pokes at this bubble I want to believe in. Of course many people think dreamers are naive. But where would we be without them? It would certainly be an interesting exercise to set myself up in a library surrounded by all the research that defines success and how it is achieved. I could do a bunch of tests to determine my emotional and practical intelligence and my Mensa-ability. I could fill a desk with this research and all the things that point to a certain fate, whatever it is, and then I could sit in the midst of it and try to write a story. The thing is, would I ever set Cora down in front of me and show her a diagram of where she is coming from and the various projections of where she will be by adulthood, based on a variety of factors (how much she wants it, hard work, the number of hours of practice, when she started doing the thing she wants to do, etc.)? Uh-uh. That's the thing about analysis. It's one thing to look at historical trends. It's another to stop someone in the middle of their day and say, Based on where you are coming from, you are headed here.
I want to be more protective of ideas than that.
I haven't even read his book--ha! and I'm writing a post about it, how flimsy is that?--but it's the premise of it that makes me bridle--both because of a defensive fascination, and because I don't buy it. I'm not the only one, of course--the world is always full of critics. See, for example, this post: A Tipping Point for Gladwell?
I read an article recently debating political dynasties in America, looking, for example, at the Kennedy, Bush, and Biden families, noting the possibility that Beau Biden will run for his father's senate seat when he returns from Iraq. The article calls into question America's notion of democracy, and whether or not these legacies fit within that schema.
Is there an equation for success, and is it a permanent line? I should read Gladwell's book to find out what he discovered. Even if his thesis might an obvious one, I do think it's cool that Gladwell follows his obsessions and writes about the kinds of topics that get people arguing. I just wonder if I'm going to read his latest book, or whether I'm going to hold on to my candle in the dark.
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