Outliers Response

I have always wondered why there are so many Asians in my AP classes. It couldn't be coincidence. Plus I learned in Psychology that there is 0 correlation between race and a higher intelligence level. What could it be?!
Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers gave me the obvious answer. psst... CONDITIONS. 

When I first started reading I was weirdly shocked. Then everything he said began to seem obvious; how could I not have realized all of this before? psst.... CONDITIONS AGAIN. 

This is the argument of Outliers: conditions shape our lives. We are not formed by our natural intelligence or the color of our skin, but by the context we were born into. 

Gladwell's tone is usually relatively strait-forward; it has a gentle air of "duh" about it. This clarity reflects the obviousness of the topic, and makes the reader feel slightly stupid that she has not completely noticed it before. Gladwell gets really pumped about his subject, which comes along with a very excited, occasionally dramatic tone. The drama aspect, the attempts to send shivers down the readers spine, can be an effective method for average rube. It keeps the reader engrossed and absorbed. But it also detracts from the solid logic. I loved the book so much that I gave it to my Grandpa for Christmas; a curious, religious, tanned and wrinkly Armenian. He was interested, but was annoyed by the drama, which is understandable. Drama today is associated with the Kardashians and other like-shit. So when it is intertwined with a factual book, the reader could become irritated or on-guard, like Bompa Apkarian. 

Gladwell supports his argument with a variety of detailed examples and statistical data. Like the Korean pilots, and Chinese rice paddy mathematicians. This effectively personalized the text and persuaded the reader that conditions shape our lives. That is the overarching argument, it encompasses all types of conditions like our cultures and our birth year and our socioeconomic classes and our parents' parenting style. Gladwell addresses so many different subsets of the argument and in such detail (both personal and factual) that the reader cannot help but wholeheartedly buy into the obviousness of conditions. 

Some people think Gladwell's book is too obvious. Roger Gatham said "it's high time for Gladwell to produce something more challenging than his beautifully executed tomb robberies of old sociology papers." Boyd Tonkin asked why he "does not yet hold a tenured professorship at the University of the Bleedin' Obvious." (Wikipedia). So yes, his argument is obvious. But how often do we really SEE it? How often are we aware of it? Especially in America, a country that still believes in such idealistic utopian musings as "The American Dream?" Outliers is not supposed to be some grand illumination of a complicated theorem. It is supposed to show us fish that "This is Water." Once we see it, we see it. We are given awareness that the roots of our cultures definition of success, the ideology that we have been molded into adhering to, are fundamentally flawed. Bill Gates did not magically become the richest man; it was a combination of 10,000 hours, class, birth year, and luck. 

Outliers made some people in my BLA group uncomfortable. "B b but, if conditions shape our lives, then I'm not in control! That's sad. I don't believe it." 
A. Clearly it is proven fact that conditions shape our lives. You are in denial if you can read the book and not believe any aspect of that argument. 
B. That does not mean we need to lie down in the middle of the street, and let the universe zap us to death as we sing Wild World by Cat Stevens. 

It is total liberation to accept that my life is not just the result of my own doing.

I like to procrastinate, eat sugar, watch Sherlock and idiotic romantic comedies. I am super judgmental and come across "intimidating" (wtf... why do all my friends say that?) I am awkward and introverted.

I have been successful in school, I am accepted to college, I have won more than a few art awards.

None of this is fully my fault. It the manifestation of thousands of years of cultural traditions, my parents parenting, and crapton of coincidences and lucky chances that I cannot control. I cannot take anything that happens to me personally. Again, I am not going to shed my clothes, and go all Rousseau in the woods.

There is a balance between having awareness about the fact that we are swirling through the universe, as it flings us around like a pinball, and the knowledge that we have the power to "disturb the universe," grab that fucking flipper, and work to achieve whatever it is we want to achieve.