Malcolm Gladwell has written, for me, another incredible read. I really can follow everything he says and it all makes perfect sense. This time he is looking how we interact with each other. he focuses on strangers, but I can see how it also works between friends and acquaintances because do we really ever know each other that well?
Talking to Strangers uses a few very.well known legal cases to make his points. He starts back with Hitler and the beginning of World War II. Neville Chamberlain went to see Hitler to negotiate with him about Germany not invading Czechoslovakia. He met with Hitler on two occasions and came back to England reporting that hitler was not going to attack and that he was trustworthy. This was even though many other leaders who had never met Hitler face to face were skeptical and did not trust him.
There are many other cases in the book to illustrate the same idea that people go to a trust default when they meet someone. They want to believe that the person who is looking them in the face and saying something is believable. Another example is the Bernie Madoff situation. Madoff was able to convince so many people that he was trustworthy. That even if you asked him directly if he was lying he would answer no and you would believe him. There was one man who saw through to the reality of the corruption and was not fooled. Gladwell refers to a person like this as a Holy Fool. He sees the truth and is not swayed by the doubt from his position.
Gladwell tells a very convincing story about each of the cases he uses as examples through out the book. As with all his previous books I find them fascinating reading and come away feeling that Gladwell has really unearthed some very interesting information about humans work and respond.
No comments:
Post a Comment