This week I've been wrestling with these talks from Malcolm Gladwell.
His ideas, as well as the article he references, "Thresholds of Violence : How School Shootings Catch On", have bothered me because what he is dealing with is at the heart of most all of mankind’s issues: social conformity vs. social responsibility.
Why do bad people do bad things? And why do good people let them do it?
Why do we bully, shoot up schools and neighborhoods, and so quickly and easily destroy? And why do so many seem to sit by and watch, doing nothing and saying very little?
These are hard questions. Impossible questions. But they’re also essential questions.
And I like the way Gladwell approaches them.
"You're not insisting on it,” he states, “You're asking us to consider it."
With that, here’s something else for us to consider, that we, according to Gladwell, are responsible for school shootings.
I don’t disagree, but I definitely don’t fully agree. I just haven’t figured out why. Not yet (the chapter is coming. I promise).
But first, let Gladwell explain.
"Forty years ago he would be playing with his chemistry set in the basement and dreaming of being an astronaut because that was the available cultural narrative of that moment. That would be the cultural narrative appropriate for someone with his interests.”
These ideas are pretty provocative with much to consider, which is pretty typical Gladwell, so if you have any thoughts or questions of your own, I’d be curious to hear.
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