I just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success” and very much enjoyed it. Gladwell looks at the best and brightest, the most successful – those who seem to be true outliers and super geniuses – and more or less concludes that there are no real outliers. That is, there is no one who is so extraordinarily gifted that they were destined for success. Rather, success comes from the confluence of a number of factors. Talent or giftedness helps, but extraordinary success also requires some of a variety of other key ingredients, such as the right opportunity, hard work, and beneficial cultural influences. Gladwell works through a variety of these factors and influences, and traces them fromm area to area, from sports to law and the high tech industry. It’s insightful, interesting, and challenging – in part because American culture attrbutes so much of success to individual effort.

To give just one example, Gladwell looks at some of the tech giants like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and others. While undoubtedly Gates and Jobs have special intellectual talents, they also benefitted from other key opportunities. First, to transform the tech industry, one had to be the right age when the first easily-programmable computers came about – young enough to not be stuck in a traditional job, but old enough to be ready to enter into the emerging industry. This basically means a birth date in 1954 or 1955, which both Jobs and Gates had – along with many other early tech giants. Second, one had to get enough programming experience early in order to take advantage of opportunity when it arose. Both Gates and Jobs had a shocking level of early access to computers even as early teens – both enjoying almost a perfect confluence of connections and networks that allowed them a level of access and experience unparalleled by almost anyone else their age in the world. Finally, they needed to be true experts (having put in their 10,000 hours of practice) by the right moment in history – which both had. So yes, they were intellectually special, but they also were born at the right time, had unusual opportunities, and put in the thousands of hours of hard work and practice to take advantage of a pivotal moment in history.

Why does this matter? In our time, we err in several ways. First, we may see people solely as the victim (or product) of their circumstances. Some of people’s success can be attributed to circumstance, but not all of it – if Jobs, Gates and the others examined here hadn’t put in the hard work or had certain innate abilities, they wouldn’t have been able to benefit from opportunities when they arose. Second, we may see people’s success as solely the product of their hard work – but that’s also false. Both errors cause their own problems and impede progress. As Gladwell argues, if we did a better job ensuring more people have opportunity, we could see far more people achieving extraordinary things.

Neither perspective serves us well. Blaming failures on circumstance and opportunity provides no motivation for hard work; attributing success solely to hard work misses the real opportunities we have to increase success rates by improving opportunities and re-thinking systems. (Gladwell’s sports analysis is immensely valuable in this regard; check it out.)

Connections to other books worth reading

In a way, Gladwell’s book reminds me of two of Thomas Sowell’s books, Black Rednecks and White Liberals and The Quest for Cosmic Justice, as well as Thaddeus Williams’ book Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth (I blogged about Cosmic Justice here and Williams’ book here). In “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, Sowell looks at cultural issues and how they impact success – in part, how a “redneck” culture which originated in parts of the British Isles ended up becoming a major force in the American south in the earliest days of our country and persists in certain communities to this day. Gladwell actually looks at this same culture, and how it caused certain clan wars in parts of the United States at a later date. Sowell’s work also looks at other cultures and how they shape people’s success in different fields and parts of the world over multiple generations – and these same issues are echoed in Gladwell’s work.

In Sowell’s “The Quest for Cosmic Justice”, he looks at the difference between trying to ensure we have a fair system and trying to ensure we have fair outcomes. We have to make a choice between one or the other, as these are two competing views of what “justice” means. Gladwell’s work doesn’t directly address this issue, but it’s easy to make connections. For example, Gladwell highlights how Jewish lawyers in a particular time period had a tremendous advantage precisely because they were discriminated against in the United States – which set them up in second-tier law practices where they learned a particular branch of law which was soon to boom and carry them into the pinnacle of the law profession. Jewish lawyers then ended up overrepresented in top law firms precisely because they had been discriminated against, rather than the other way around. But if we were judging based on outcomes, we would conclude there had been a vast pro-Jewish conspiracy at the time.

Williams’ work “Confronting Injustice Without Compromising Truth” tries to take an honest look injustice in a wide range of areas; he wants us to seek truth. Particularly, we need to ask when/where discrimination is really the best explanation of disparities we see – and when it results from other factors, like cultural differences leading different individuals and groups of people to make different career choices or prioritize different aspects of their lives. Again, this overlaps with Gladwell’s work in that Gladwell wants to know the reality of why people succeed, with all of its complexities, rather than reducing it to a single simple narrative.

Why should we care?

These books resonate with me as they take what seems to be an honest look at the complex factors contributing to people’s success and failure. Reality is complex. In our time, so much public discourse on justice issues seems oversimplified. We’re told that this group succeeds because of systematic injustice and discrimination, and that group fails because it’s discriminated against – and that’s the end of the story. It’s portrayed as just a big power struggle where the privileged succeed because they oppress and discriminate. Others tell us that there is no longer any discrimination, or any systematic problems we need to fix. These books together, though, take a far more honest look at reality. They give us a better view of the many different factors – individual, cultural, social, and in terms of opportunity – playing in to the success of individuals and groups. And for that I’m thankful.

One of the points Williams makes in his book is that Christians ought to care deeply about justice – but across political boundaries and ideologies. As I wrote before:

Christians ought to care deeply about injustice – but injustice of all types, flavors, and political parties. He highlights specific gaps or blind spots that are particularly common to each political party, which I think is especially valuable. All of us have certain injustices we notice right away, and others we tend to overlook (or are guilty of ourselves) because they don’t fit with our preferred political ideology or worldview. It’s important to recognize this and confront the injustice in our own hearts, not just in the world around us.

I appreciate these books because they help me have a less one-sided view of success or, I could say, a more just view of success. I’m far too prone to think (or, perhaps, “feel” is a better word, since theologically I know my success comes from God) I’ve been successful solely because of my own hard work and effort, neglecting the effects of the particular opportunities, talents, cultural legacy, and even financial benefits I’ve been given. As a Christian, I ought to acknowledge these advantages and thank God for them. I can reject the view that these are solely the result of my “privilege” or oppression of other groups, while still acknowledging my privileges. I can also recognize that there are other people who haven’t had the same opportunities, without concluding that all discrepancies result from systematic oppression.

In other words, these books are inspiring me to take a closer look at how at how God has blessed me, even through my cultural inheritance and particular circumstances. I can be thankful for these blessings, and certainly don’t need to feel guilty (which seems to be the goal of so much present-day discussion of “privilege”). But I also ought to see these blessings in light of the Biblical parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-29), which makes the point that each of us has been entrusted with resources or abilities of varying levels. What matters is not so much how many talents we have, but whether we use these in a way approved by our master. Or to put it another way (Luke 12:48):

From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.

If I’ve been given much, and I certainly have, I need to use it responsibly – to bring glory to God and good to others. And I ought to recognize that the good things I have come from God, rather than seeing them as the result of my own effort, so that I use them accordingly. As King David said as he gathered offerings for the temple (2 Chr. 29:14)

But who am I and who are my people that we should be able to offer as generously as this? For all things come from You, and from Your hand we have given to You.

These books are helping me have a better understanding of the ways God has blessed me and the particular gifts and talents he has entrusted to me – spurring me on to try and use these blessings more responsibility while also finding ways to better help others who might not have had the same opportunities.