“David and Goliath” is not just another book. It is ‘the’-book. Why and how was it humanly possible that the small are not always small, and the ones which may seem to be disadvantaged could actually be on the winning side. Just like the biblical David, described as young and ruddy, who fought against and defeated Goliath (the Philistine’s giant and warrior), with a single sling shot. The truth that we do not observe is that there was nothing incidental about the whole event. Goliath, the one who everyone thinks was at more advantage actually was greatly disadvantaged.
David was a slinger, and slingers were so accurate within a hair’s breadth. He was a projectile warrior. But Goliath assumed David was going to fight him the way he fights; hand to hand, but he was wrong. Goliath could be diagnosed to have Acromegaly. A prominent dysfunction in very tall people. Therefore, he had a bad sight. David on the other hand didn’t have the intention of fighting as Goliath expected. He was a projectile warrior and remained undefeated against the infantry.
Besides, it was observed that David’s sling could have hit Goliath a little more than one second, such a short time for the giant to protect himself, not to talk of fighting back. Everybody, including King Saul expected Goliath to be more powerful than David, but that was one-sided. They failed to see David’s power in; breaking rules, substituting speed and surprise for strength.
Vivek Ranadive’s story is also one to pay attention to. He decided to coach his daughter’s basketball team. Not easy, yes, but impossible, no. There were only two members that could play the game well, so he invited people who could teach them the game, since he was not familiar with the game. The rest of the team were not tall, they couldn’t shoot, and couldn’t dribble well. But they came up with a strategy, meeting the two deadlines all basketball players have to meet to advance the game. This way, the team played hard on defence and each player knew their roles. They developed more aggressive and maniacal players that were difficult to take down at any game. They excelled well at hiding their weaknesses.
Ordinarily we would think that children will perform better if they are taught in a class with fewer students than if the class size was more than 30. Most people think the fewer the children, the more the attention from the teacher, and the better they perform. But contrary to this, less is not always better. We also are likely to think that if a child is raised by wealthy parents, has the best condition for a child to be raised a successful person. But this is wrong.
Wealthy parents find it difficult to give their children the kind of life that will force them to thrive and find that formulae for living only they can find for themselves. Wealthy parents do not know what to say when the excuse of, ‘We can’t afford it’, is gone. The same principle works in this case again, and more is not always better in parenting.
The story of Caroline sacks teaches us that sometimes, going to a bigger ivy league school may not always be the best. Sometimes staying in your little pond and making a name is better than being lost in a bigger pond. It is hard to feel great in a sea of great people.
Dyslexics are people with less of something they refer to as gray matter in the brain, preventing some functioning. In a brain scan, the part of their brains responsible for reading does not light up when they read. And use more of the right side of their brains than others without dyslexia. Therefore, they end up very slow in reading, which affects their fluency and in turn affects their comprehension.
This may not actually be a disadvantage generally. Since doing things slowly, involves longer periods of time. Researchers found that it could actually be better, because it enables people to think more deeply and use more resources than they would to arrive at the best results. So, what is seen as a disadvantage may not really be one after all. Because of this disease, David Boies became an extraordinary listener.
Jay Freireich’s parent were Hungarian but migrated to the US. His father was found dead, while his mother struggled to feed and cater for them. Due to this, she did not have a lot of time for Freireich and his sister. And had to be in the care of a maid, who he saw as ‘his mother’. ‘His mother’, was finally fired when his mother married a Hungarian, because they couldn’t afford her. Freireich could not forgive his mother for this. He was not close to his sister either, she was more of a disciplinarian than friend, he didn’t like his step father or his half-brother, and he hated his mom, who was always angry. Due to this, Freireich turned out an aggressive doctor who defied all odds in ways that normal people wouldn’t to find the world first successful treatment of childhood leukemia.
In the days of Martin Luther King, one of the most famous photographs was taken in Birmingham on May 3,1963. The photo was of a teenage boy being brutally attacked by a police dog. The next day, that photograph was published in every paper throughout the country. King had been leading the civil right movement against racist laws that made it impossible for blacks to vote, go to the same schools as white, or use the same public infrastructures as whites. Then, suddenly, a year later, the landmarks Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. The real story about the photograph in Birmingham that made news was found to be one of outsmarting the Goliath by not playing by the rules. A story of people who were disadvantaged but had nothing to lose, so they just gave it all they’ve got.
When people in authority wants the rest to behave, it matters first and foremost how they behave. In the seventh chapter,
Malcolm Gladwell explains that besides authority being a response to disobedience; disobedience is also a response to authority. During the 1969 war between the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland, the British army were sent to curb this, but ended up on the side of the Protestants since England was predominantly a Protestant country. The British army led by General Ian Freeland wanted to appear tough, they thought it was going to wear the people out and stop the riots. But it was not so, they were causing more harm especially to the Catholics than they could imagine.
The J-Rip program is also a practical example that toughness on the side of authorities is not always the remedy against a rebellious people. Joanne Jaffe who started this program in Brownsville in 2003, did because he observed crime rates in Brownsville. It was the teenagers mugging and stealing from people in the streets. Jaffe made a list of juveniles who had been arrested at least once in the previous year, monitored them closely and promised them everything; jobs, educational opportunities, medicals, etc., if they do not commit any more crime, but if they did, they would be locked up in prison for as long as they could. Jaffe’s team came closer to these juveniles and their families than these teenagers have ever felt from law enforcement officers. They even provided Thanksgiving and Christmas gifts. The aftermath effect was that crime reduced drastically for that period and even more in the subsequent years.
The Three strikes law which was enacted in California, when Kimber, Mike Reynold’s daughter was murdered in cold blood outside an eatery in Fresno. Mike could not save his daughter from dying, but he made a promise to her that he would do his best to prevent his from happening to anyone else. The Three Strikes law meant that a convicted criminal who has been released from prison will be forgiven for just three crimes before he was incarcerated for about twenty-five years. The downside of this law was that the relationship between the punishment and crime was like an inverted U-curve. It instead increased the rate of crime, so much that the law had to be reversed. Wilma Derksen’s daughter, Candace, aged 13, was also murdered at Winnipeg, Canada. Her abductor hog tied her and left her to die. Her parents were devastated; the whole city was devastated, but her parents did something unusual to her abductor, they forgave him. This responds to the truth that, there comes a time when the best-intentioned application of power and authority begins to backfire.
Andre Trocme was a Huguenot pacifist, who pastored at Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, during those years that Germany tried to gain control of France. There were massive killings of French Jews, others were put in internment camps. Trocme and his assistant pastor had started a school and made sure the laws they termed,” obedience, contrary to the orders of the Gospel” were disregarded. The Germans controlled France by Marshal Phillipe Petain, and one of the things, Petain required of every pupil to do was to honor the French regime by a fascist salute. Trocme preached obedience and forgiveness, but he would not stand for anything that was contrary to the Gospel. Trocme was dissident to such laws of Petain, as this, and even ended up housing over a hundred Jewish people who had fled from Europe. Trocme like other Huguenots were so fearless because they had a history of the French Government trying to wipe them out severally. They were protestants and had broken away from the Catholic Church. Therefore, the excessive use of forced cause legitimacy problems, which leads to defiance instead of submission.
There is a similarity in all these stories; that there's always more to a story than what we hear most times. There are uneasy lessons about the limits of power. It is not always in a linear curve with respect to reactions as a result of that power. Power could cause one to behave and another rebellious. It is an inverted U-curve, and when the peak is reached whatever happens is the reverse of our expectations. A disability could be desirable, and we are often mislead about the nature of advantages.
About the author
Malcolm Gladwell is a bestselling author and works with The New Yorker. He is also a former business and science reporter at the Washington Post.
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