What I've Been Reading

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell.

Late last year, something dawned on me and I wrote:

Ever Since Max came into my life:
I am grateful for what I have in my life and realized it was an asset and never worried about what I don't have in life. But now I think it's time to be grateful for what I don't have in my life. There is so much one doesn't have that it not only can be used as a psychological asset but also as potent cognitive and physical asset. I guess, the grey matter realized that sometime this year before I was consciously aware of it.

No kidding, this is essence of Gladwell new book (and more) and I loved it. This is once in life time inspirational offering from Gladwell. Once you read Robert Trivers's book The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life (and his other works) and it would be obvious that we humans are always at the top self deceiving game; I think, Gladwell understands this better than any another writers in the world. I feel lucky to live in a time while he is writing.

I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

  - Corinthians 12: 7– 10

• Society frowns on disagreeableness. As human beings we are hardwired to seek the approval of those around us. Yet a radical and transformative thought goes nowhere without the willingness to challenge convention. “If you have a new idea, and it’s disruptive and you’re agreeable, then what are you going to do with that?” says Peterson. “If you worry about hurting people’s feelings and disturbing the social structure, you’re not going to put your ideas forward.” As the playwright George Bernard Shaw once put it: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
• Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.
• We need to remember that our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has nothing to lose, and because he has nothing to lose, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set by others. That’s how people with brains a little bit different from the rest of ours get jobs as options traders and Hollywood producers— and a small band of protesters armed with nothing but their wits have a chance against the likes of Bull Connor.