(26): Review of Outliers

Name: Outliers; The Story of Success

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Genre: Non-fiction

Year of publishing: 2008

Reviewer: MA Iliasu

When the review of a book arrives thirteen years after it was published, the sluggishness of the reader has to be wondered. Nevertheless, the captivity of profound pieces of literature like Gladwell's Outliers warrants any extended discussion, far beyond the scrutiny of timing and elongation.

Like Yuval Harari with his brief histories, Gladwell unlocks the book by introducing the reader into "The story of success" with a brilliant analogy base on the ground-breaking discovery of Stewart Wolf, what he calls "Roseto Mystery”. The analogy pondered upon how Mr. Wolf proved the strong correlation between social companionship and resistance to heart attack among a group of Italian immigrants in America, called Rosetans. The work, as has been recognized, presents the field of medicine with a distinguished approach towards the understanding of health. Gladwell, to deliver his analogy home, promised to use “Outliers” to do to our understanding of success what Stewart Wolf did to the understanding of health.

The analogy is scintillating in the way it signifies that the reader is about to learn something new. The same way one could anticipate relentless usage of stories and empirical research. The divergence, accuracy and range with which they were picked merits the definition of amazing. In which case Malcom Gladwell resembles Yanis Varoufakis from the way they bend research and relevant story or mythology to deliver their points home. Nevertheless, what caught my attention about the whole introduction is how it subtly answer the moral question often encountered in the practical world that asks: “are deeds forbidden because they're evil or are they evil because they're forbidden?” with breathtaking clarity.

Having learnt how and why Stewart Wolf prove why Rosetans resist heart-attack, which is an exhaustive methodology beyond the ruining of doubt, we can all agree that social companionship shields Rosetans from heart attack despite not engaging with fancy nutrition or physical exercise, along the line exposing it's wrath to the other populace who do not engage the lifestyle in spite of being careful with nutrition and engaging with physical exercise. The way I see it, enough has been understood from the work of Stewart Wolf to establish an inference around the encouragement by the religious scriptures which immensely encourages the culture of kinship beyond the restriction of blood-line lineage or neighborhood among the believers. For it's a ploy to boost, among others, the health of the brethren. While being cutting off the wire being discouraged due to it's damaging consequences. Cutting off the wire of kinship is bad because it's forbidden. The statement of fact here is that deeds are forbidden because they're evil in the same logical vein they're evil because they're forbidden. Is God not good?

Outliers is further divided into two parts; “Opportunity" and “Legacy”. Opportunity proves the making of an outlier by tracing the fine margins, in which Gladwell delivered a coherent analysis of success under different subheadings, namely: "Matthew Effect", "10,000 Hour Rule", "Trouble with Geniuses" and "Three Lessons of Joe Flom".

The Matthew Effect proves how the social constructions that informs and influences the dynamics of our development policies form the basic step in the making of an outlier. The effect was largely informed by statistical data of Canadian criteria for training Hockey players. The chapter exposes how the reasonable bias of our policies is swindling the talent pool and destroying the rare opportunity to make more people successful.

The "10,000 hour rule" rule proves how opportunity can only becomes success when it blends with preparation. Success, as Gladwell reiterates under the hour rule, doesn't occur by accident, it's the product of influential chains of events, both conscious and subconscious. Geniuses like Bill Gates, Bill Joy and Steve Jobs required the right year to be born, the right time to train, the right time to venture, etc. to become who they're. Likewise billionaires like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Frederick Weyerhaeuser and Jay Gould required the right year to be born, the right time to leave school, the right time to venture, etc.

The Trouble with Geniuses is for me the most profound. A deep insight on how geniuses who lack the appropriate cultural, educational and behavioral background in spite of possessing high IQ, like Christopher Langan, travels long distance to tell the reader how it requires more than high intelligence quotient to become successful. Dissecting with respect to IQ, the remarkable distinction between analytical and practical intelligence, and how they prove to be orthogonal, is one of the best efforts showcased in the book. Analytical intelligence, as Gladwell explained, is genetic. While practical intelligence, or in other words, social savvy, is a knowledge anybody can learn - “It has to come from somewhere, and the place where we seem to get these kinds of attitudes and skills is from our families."

How an individual can have an overwhelming analytical intelligence (IQ) but lack practical intelligence (Social Savvy), like Chris Langan, and how an individual can have practical intelligence in spite of lacking analytical intelligence, like the bunch of opportune rich kids, and how an individual can have both (IQ and Social Savvy), like Robert Oppenheimer, was gladly traced and explained by Malcolm Gladwell. The economic structure of the family in the society, the distinguishable conducts of parenthood and the corresponding performance of the children determines whether an individual can achieve success or not. The wealthier parents raised their kids one way, and the poorer parents raised their kids another way. Lareau calls the middle-class parenting style "concerted cultivation", which is an attempt to actively "foster and assess a child's talents, opinions and skills." Poor parents tend to fol­low, by contrast, a strategy of "accomplishment of natural growth", which they see as their responsibility to care for their children but to let them grow and develop on their own.

The "Three Lessons of Joe Flom" informs about the paradox of disadvantage and the formidability of the Jews - which is more or less traced with their cultural obsession towards learning handcrafts, artisanship and general mastery of trade. Hence creating Outliers in big quantities, as opined by Gladwell, not in spite of their social and political disadvantages but because of it. For in identifying their political disadvantage they become relentless, just like a mindful soccer team that gets red card which then raises it's work rate. When compared with Italian and Mexican immigrants, the Jews sit naturally ahead, according to Malcolm Gladwell.

Legacy and Brief History of Plane Crashes vindicate the famous Hausa proverb: "Gado girman ɗa". Which could translate as: "Heritage grows the child". The analysis of how they both play important roles in how individuals conduct themselves in the society is beyond spot on. Learning that an individual may be doing what he does due to the attitude of his ancestors proves both educative than entertaining. Likewise learning the import of our instinctive or rather, distinguished, subconscious attitudes towards an authority.

Rice Paddies and Math Tests is a heading that tells the story of Asian societies which cultural hard work and language flexibility boost them ahead of any other society in the world. Rice Paddies are trying fields of physical labor which along the line engrave indescribable perseverance in farmers beyond the affording of anyone other than the farmer himself. In cultivating Rice peddles, as explained by Gladwell, the Chinese, Japanese and Korean societies trained their willpower beyond the breaking of frustration. And in their language flexibility, they learn through reading and writing faster than any race, especially in the field of mathematics. Gladwell prove that by showing how it takes only four years for a toddler in China to count to 40, unlike the American toddler who needs six years to count to 40 and can only count to 17 at the age of four. The final heading is called "Jamaican Story", in which Gladwell narrated the history of his birth and how lucks and accidents bring his fate together, which is further enlightening the veracity of his analysis.

Finally, as a born and breed Hausa-Muslim northern Nigerian inhabitant, reading Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers occurs to me like a communication between myself and my then unexplainable feelings, aspirations, experiences and ideals, which has now been put in a context. The magic of the book is that the deeper one goes into it the more one make sense of every single sentence from a practical point of view. And not in a way through which a reader feels his ego is being massaged. Because the veracity of the facts used is undoubtful. Rather the humane approach employed. The astuteness of the analysis is revolutionary. It indeed is a story of success. Which to me says nothing but being a product of pre-ordained destiny as much as it's of free-will effort. I say pre-ordained because the number of chains that need to come to together for the world to have one more Bill Gates or Bill Joy could barely happen through an informed human consciousness. Only the will of God. And I say free-will because of how much success is influenced by the purity of preparation, even though the process of preparation itself defies so much of popular consciousness. Equally astonishing is the number of unfortunate events that could hinder the path of people. Which sometimes it feel so loosening to be true. In my opinion, that's destiny at work.

In a closing remark, it has to be said that more people need to understand that the highest a genius can reach without economic, cultural, generational and environmental opportunity is Christopher Langan, who lacks practical intelligence despite having 192 IQ - (at least 42 more than Albert Einstein). But if opportunity meets high IQ and practical intelligence, the peak is Robert Oppenheimer. So it's absolutely necessary to create an environment for future success while submitting to the Power from above. That way the world could pave the way for more non-geniuses, who have economic and generational opportunity, like Joe Flom (arguably the greatest takeover attorney ever seen in the US). And if luck arrives in the process, when opportunity, practical intelligence and high IQ come together, we'll have more Bill Gates and Bill Joys. More important is the society's need to acknowledge practical intelligence like it does innate intelligence, and grant equal chance to both. Being divergence is as much critical as being analytical, if only the social actors can understand. More has to be established between accumulative effect of culture and sustainability. Same way the threshold of intelligence need to be respected. Surely there's minimum to what any individual needs to thrive in whichever human endeavor, so the system shouldn't be too sensitive on who has the highest amount of it. Nevertheless, all that happens pends the approval of the Almighty, to Whom all our aspirations are deposited, and the Will of Whom makes it all happen.

Thank you for reading!