Outliers - Understanding our potential

An outlying book

I would not offer further analysis to the fact that it took me 5 days to finish a 154-page book and soon after I finished reading that I thumbed through a 299-page book in less than two days.

I had heard of The Tipping Point [1] and Blink [2] but the hype surrounding the publication of the books and the ideas in it left me thinking they were quick-buck books given advertisement oxygen that would soon run out.

In fact, I did not know of the author Malcolm Gladwell [3] until just about 3 weeks ago when he appeared on a news programme to talk about his new book Outliers [4] and espoused the view that the prevalence of air crashes with Korean pilots was one of cultural significance rather than pilot expertise.

Power-Distance in the cockpit

That seemed an absurd generalisation to make but there was empirical data to buttress the points being made and this lead to the Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions Index [5] and the consequence of a high Power-Distance Index on communication in the cockpit.

Apparently, because of the paternalistic nature of Korean society the First Officer always deferred to the Captain and even in danger situations the conversation was always mitigated never direct, however the Captain in his position would just give an order and expect it to be obeyed.

The cockpit is hardly the place where honest and direct communication should be lacking, in fact, there are too many cases of where communication breakdown in the cockpit has been the cause of crashes and it suggests that where the First Officer is flying the plane there is probably a higher level of safety than the other way round.

Essential new thinking

Outliers was quite a good read and it covered a lot of ground as to how the subtext we read about successful people hardly reads like the reality behind their successes.

Obviously, there are many learned scholars who would view some of these analogies and allegories as over-simplification, but then, just because there are elaborate studies of certain human factors for success does not mean that the accepted norms are the embodiment of the complete truth.

I would hear Malcolm Gladwell out first because he breaks down complex characteristics and phenomena into manageable chunks and I can see where commonsense thrives over convoluted preserve of the elite.

The winners of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Medicine had to go against the accepted grain of knowledge in finding out that bacteria (helicobacter pylori [6]) can grow in the stomach and duodenum which causing ulcers and cancers – to think certain cancers could be cured by antibiotics – I am open to new thinking and Mr. Gladwell opens new avenues of interesting analysis, though one should not swallow it all.

Physical maturity over real ability

Malcolm Gladwell is not an anthropologist nor do I think he is a sociologist, but he gets you thinking and he puts together patterns and consequences from how the time of birth in the calendar and the selection processes based on the school calendar year is based on physical maturity rather than ability at childhood, going on to create sport professionals later on in life.

I could well agree that it was my higher physical development that allowed me to be a year below the class average age though it has not really perpetuated into great advantage for me, in areas like sport, that could make all the difference.

In my father’s generation you had to be able to pass your right arm over your head to touch the left ear to be admitted into the first year in primary school, just imagine how many age mates were unfortunately left behind because of that act of discrimination and separation, a few years down the line the ones left behind catch up and they are giants in a class of midgets along with the abuse that it could entail.

Work ethic and legacy

The real story of Bill Gates’ success is in having access to computers at the age of 13 and the thousands of hours spent learning programme and this was long before Microsoft in what he called the 10,000 hour rule.

Much as there are a combination of factors that made the Beatles a runaway success in the 1960s, he suggests that did all the graft work in Hamburg through long hours of practice and performance, I would suppose Tiger Woods and Lewis Hamilton come to mind as people who started very young honing the skills we now appreciate and celebrate – basically, there is no overnight success without the initial graft work.

He then covers the issue of background and generational influences that seem to endure even though we have moved on from those times, how the number systems of Far East Asian countries allows for them to be better at mathematics and how more time at school allows for children from seemingly poor backgrounds to perform well.

My early opportunities

Reading this book allowed me to understand even better why I still think my primary school education was the best gift from my parents and how having been in an very international setting albeit in Nigeria gave me a number of personality traits that allow me to be both respect authority and engage authority.

My father always said, I knew how to talk, I could make conversation with anyone if they are in the slightest interested in being engaged. No one could understand why I could sit for hours chatting to my great grandmother at the same time, I found I could walk into any office and feel comfortable without being enamoured by power or influence.

In secondary school, I found it strange that my other colleagues were scared of the teachers, what some might call disrespectful because of the very high Power-Distance Index meant that teachers never really got to interact in ways that allowed their passion for a subject to be infectious – in fact some teachers used their positions in sadistic domination of students.

Even in that kind of setting, I was able to make friends with teachers because there was no fear to engage them and what might have looked precocious was simply an inquisitive mind, it might have appeared smart but it was because I was not bound by the cultural encumbrances of obsequiousness and unnecessary genuflection – I think adults noticed it, engaged it and responded positively to it.

The gift of opportunity

There is much more in Outliers that gets you thinking about how our lives are shaped by circumstances that seemed to look like some destiny but the is fact we are gifted with all sorts of opportunities and where we have been able to grasp those opportunities we have been able to make radical difference to our lives.

It goes without saying that heaven still helps those who help themselves and as the Chinese saying goes – “Don’t depend on heaven for food, but on your own two hands carrying the load”. Outliers is a book that should have those who have suspended their intellect and God-given abilities for some system of false religion and fate to wake up and become Outliers too.

On the scale of Read – Skin – Toss, again, Outliers is a good Read.

Sources

[1] The Tipping Point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[2] Blink (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[3] Malcolm Gladwell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[4] Outliers (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[5] Geert Hofstede - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[6] Helicobacter pylori - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Who are the Yoruba?

Dinner with new friends

I have questions, many questions and wonder where this would lead to. On the day of our arrival, there was a couple on the table beside ours who appeared very friendly that we had a few pleasant exchanges.

Then, the second night at dinner we were invited to a themed evening featuring Brazilian cuisine and we all obliged at which point I asked if we could share a table and they found that quite agreeable.

We met up just at the appointed time after I had a slight bathroom mishap which had just under 1 centimetre squared of skin scraped off my scalp in the process of balding my head.

Blood but no guts, a bit of alcohol and I was close to cresting a banshee octave, well, not really, but it was quite a burning sensation and then it clotted and I was fine.

Dancing with anthropology

So, both professors, one in anthropology and the other with a speciality in dance and interpretation covering classical, contemporary and Spanish dance. However, the most important part of this was the Cuban heritage which had obvious affiliation to the great dance diva Alicia Alonso.

The incredible linkage between dance and anthropology comes down to a more intriguing history of the Cubans and the dominance of Yoruba types and traditions which apparently are more advanced in Cuba than in Salvador de Bahia in Brazil. However, a good deal of Yoruba culture is expressed in dance and music, but there is a whole area of academic study of crucial importance we native Yorubas need to explore.

These two men were quite versed in Yoruba history and mythology and more so exposed certain aspects of my ignorance of the culture of my forebears because of the way re-education and Western religious diktat have subsumed what essentially is our identity.

The dominance of the Yoruba

It would appear whilst lots of slaves were taken from the Slave Coast which was once the name of Southern Nigeria, that was not the only place where slaves were acquired, but when they arrived in the lands of bondage, the Yoruba culture and norms became the dominant expression for most slaves where in Cuba it was the least adulterated as opposed to the amalgam in Salvador de Bahia because of the suppression of cultures and traditions of the slaves in Brazil and the American South.

The Yoruba dialect spoken in Cuba is known as Lukumi which derives of Oluku mi, which finds equivalent meaning from the Ijebu dialect of Yoruba meaning “My friend” – See Church of the Lukumi.

The Yoruba identity

Now, there is no way we can talk of the Greek civilisation without strong allusions to their mythology, similarly, it would appear the whole essence of the Yoruba beyond just the language is expressed in our mythologies which feature more strongly in the Yoruba Diaspora which descends from the slaves than in the indigenous tribes back home, this is commonly known as Santeria (Cuba), Oyotunji (USA) or Candomblé (Brazil).

The Yoruba are essentially a very religious if not very spiritual people but the unrelenting encroachment of a brand of Christianity and modernism that subsumes our core identity into a non-descript amalgam of Judeo-Western interpretations which leaves us with just the language but no representative tradition and compellingly vibrant history is worrisome.

All probably is not lost because simplistically we do use Olorun (Ruler of heaven) or Olodumare in synonymy with the Supreme God, but we need to relate more of our understanding of our culture to our adopted religions, we cannot become a listless people or all that defines us would be lost.

Giving up ours for others?

Now, I am not saying Christianity is to blame for this, but if our culture by certain Christian or other religious teachings is supposedly inherently evil because the underpinning mythologies relate to gods called orishas what have we left of our customs after we leave the church, the mosque or some religious place of worship?

I am no expert in these matters, but I worry about these generalisations - the American brand of Christianity that promotes materialism, the African brand that expands on this materialism with an enemy round every corner and the European brand which is too liberal for the comfort of many.

It is time to go back to the things that make us a people who have a history that predates when slave traders came to take our ancestors away to lands so far away but after hundreds of years, that self-same ideal of what is Yoruba has survived the onslaught of slavery, racism, modernisation and religion.

I think the core of what is Yoruba is worth fighting for regardless of any other foreign religious beliefs we might have acquired.