Recently I’ve discovered audio books on YouTube by Malcolm Gladwell, specifically Talking to Strangers and Outliers. I really enjoyed the books and Gladwell’s different perspective and felt like I learned some things, but I had not been familiar with his writing before the algorithm brought his books to me.
It matters to me who I am listening to, so I looked up Gladwell’s reputation … on Twitter. Not surprisingly, there was a spectrum of opinions stretching all the way from “brilliant” to “idiotic”.
This disturbed me. I don’t want to waste time listening to an idiot.
One tweet linked to a Daily Beast article about the Beatles (whom Gladwell discussed briefly in Outliers). In that article, the Daily Beast author describes Gladwell as “ the halo-haired New Yorker pop intellectual whose simplistic, feel-good summaries of contemporary research on trends (The Tipping Point) and decision-making (Blink) have transformed him into a corner-office icon who can command $80,000 per speech on the corporate lecture circuit”.
He’s a “pop” intellectual? His insights are “simplistic” and “feel-good”? What’s wrong with me that I didn’t recognize this for myself?
When I stopped to reflect, though, I recalled one of my major lessons from 2020: You can’t necessarily believe any individual’s take on any other person’s reputation. Because fallen people LOVE to run other people’s reputations into the ground, given half a chance.
(And YES, I did this myself a few days ago when I wrote about Craig Groeschel – whom I have never met and know precious little about. I am one of those fallen people.)
So I concluded that I could continue to listen to Gladwell in good conscience, especially since I certainly do not believe everything I see or read or hear anymore anyway. And this morning I was especially heartened to hear an interview of Gladwell which contained the following exchange:
Interviewer: You really enjoy contradicting yourself. (This was a friendly jab.)
Gladwell: I do, yeah.
Interviewer: Why?
Gladwell: Well, I’m more worried about not contradicting myself. I would be very concerned if I were still saying the same things today as I was saying ten years ago. That would strike me as being deeply problematic.
Interviewer: Why?
Gladwell: I would like to think that my current self is a good deal more interesting and thoughtful than my ten-years-before self. I’ve never attached any stigma whatsoever to contradiction. Consistency is surely the lamest of all human virtues.
That is profound. (Especially for a “pop intellectual”!)
Gladwell is giving himself an opening for changing his mind. And he is extending the same courtesy to everyone else.
Today’s American culture … and America’s Christian culture … could use a strong shot of Gladwell’s recognition of people’s ability to grow and change and think differently over time.
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