\u00a0Recently I’ve discovered audio books on YouTube by Malcolm Gladwell, specifically Talking to Strangers<\/i> and Outliers<\/i>. 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
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”.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
This disturbed me. I don’t want to waste time listening to an idiot.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
One tweet linked to a Daily Beast article about the Beatles (whom Gladwell discussed briefly in Outliers<\/i>). In that article, the Daily Beast author describes Gladwell as “\u00a0the halo-haired New Yorker\u00a0<\/i>pop intellectual whose simplistic, feel-good summaries of contemporary research on trends (<\/span>The Tipping Point<\/i>) and decision-making (<\/span>Blink<\/i>) have transformed him into a corner-office icon who can command $80,000 per speech on the corporate lecture circuit”.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n 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?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n (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.)\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n 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:<\/p>\n\n\n Interviewer: You really enjoy contradicting yourself. (This was a friendly jab.)<\/p>\n\n\n Gladwell: I do, yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n Interviewer: Why?<\/p>\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n Interviewer: Why?<\/p>\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n That is profound. (Especially for a “pop intellectual”!)<\/p>\n\n\n Gladwell is giving himself an opening for changing his mind. And he is extending the same courtesy to everyone else.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0Recently 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.\u00a0 It matters to me who I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7069"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7070,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7069\/revisions\/7070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}