I was going to skip writing about this at it was dull but if nothing else it's worth putting in a supporting link to Chloe's excellent assessment of the phenomenon of Malcom Gladwell. I do not use the word lightly. Anyone who can fill Brighton Dome with paying punters and say absolutely nothing for an hour is a phenomenon. Something is going on here that evokes curiosity; possibly leading to a Gladwell-esque observation about the human condition.  I think that it isn't that he tells anyone anything they don't know, it's that he tells them things they already know but makes a certain kind of person feel cleverer for having been told that they know them; in this case through the medium of a spurious and unengaging story.

That said, Gladwell did try and distract us by saying he was going to tell us about something we didn't know anything about which I thought was a tad presumptuous. Even moreso when he launched into a description of the battle of Chancellorsville in which the Yankees and Confederates faced each other led by General Hooker "... and General Lee" said Matt from the seat next to me. It turns out Matt knows a lot about military history. Gladwell's subsequent asides on the most recent Iraq War based his conclusion on the official reasons for the conflict and his sprinkling of commentary on the financial crisis felt like no more than a nod to keeping up with current events.

I wanted drama, intrigue, a performance! What I got was flat. No fizz. No sparkle. Judging from the queue waiting for the book signing at the end a lot of other people there would disagree. No fuss no muss I guess, except for the fact this kind of pop sociology can lead one to trite conclusions about behaviours that are vastly more complex and do require one to look a little deeper into one's own motivations.  Ultimately his talk lacked depth and was not about provoking new ideas; it was about flattering the audience's credulity and his ego just a little more than that. What we all really need is to have our ideas challenged, critically and frequently, but then I suspect that wouldn't fill so many seats.

Further reading:
Is the Tipping Point Toast?
How your friends' friends can affect your mood
The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell

1 original comment:

Mark, agree strongly “tick”.
Thanks for the link to the register article. Weird Wogan antiques kid and Napoleon Dynamite pictures hilarious.
Comment by Chloe — 27 June, 2009 @ 10:29 am