first of all — the sling is one of the most feared weapons in ancient times. It's not a child's story. The rock that goes from David's sling has a stopping power that's equivalent to a bullet from a .38-caliber handgun. When David decided to bring a sling to a sword fight, he's got superior technology. He's not messing around here. He knows exactly what he's doing.
Second, Goliath probably had something called acromegaly, which is a condition where there's a tumor on your pituitary gland, and so your pituitary overproduces human growth hormone. And many of the great giants in history had acromegaly. André the Giant — the great wrestler — acromegaly. Tallest man in history — a guy named Robert Wadlow — had acromegaly. He was 7'11", I think. Acromegaly makes you really, really big and tall. It also comes with a side effect that the tumor starts to compress the optic nerves and radically diminish your vision.
And if you read the biblical story of Goliath very closely, it's clear the guy can't see. He's led onto the valley floor, much more than this, by an attendant. He's the mightiest warrior in Palestine and he has to have a boy lead him by the hand to the battlefield. And then there's this whole thing about it takes him forever to figure out where David is and what David is doing — because David comes down from the mountain and doesn't have a sword. Doesn't have a shield. Isn't wearing armor. Duh! He does not intend to fight you in a sword fight. Why does Goliath take forever to respond to this? Because he can't see him.
So, here you have a kid who is really fast moving, nimble, has superior technology. Has changed the rules of the conflict without telling his opponent and his opponent is largely blind. That is not the story of an underdog. David holds all the cards, properly understood.
*** [6/27/14]
Gladwell is the opposite of disagreeable,
the word he uses to describe many of the
underdogs chronicled in his new book, people
who overcame perceived disadvantages to
change their lives and the world. The word is
not meant to be a stigma but a way to identify
those people who, through means, motivation
and even hubris, managed to make their
mark in unusual and unorthodox ways.
These disagreeable folks include Gary
Cohn, the president and chief operating officer
of Goldman Sachs, who learned to use his verbal
skills and chutzpah to compensate for his
dyslexia; the Impressionist painters, who, after
mostly being rejected by the prestigious Salon
in Paris, started their own modest art gallery to
gain notoriety; Wyatt Walker, Martin Luther
King Jr.’s right-hand man, who knew how to
strategize and how to manipulate the media to
advance the cause of civil rights; and Emil
Freireich, the blustery, imposing doctor who
used unconventional and even controversial
means to battle childhood leukemia.
“Doing something disagreeable is doing
something that is frowned upon by your peers,
that is offensive to your peers and that requires
you as a person to take extraordinary social
risks,” Gladwell tells The Connection.
“Sometimes that strays into things that are
downright questionable. In Freireich’s case, he
was breaking lots of rules, but his argument
would’ve been the rules are dumb. In retrospect,
he was right. He also had to be coldblooded,
like when I tell the story about him
jabbing the needles into the kids to get the
bone marrow. It’s really hard to do. Most people
didn’t want to do it and were looking for
reasons not to do it. He didn’t let those kinds of
considerations get in the way of what he knew
had to be done, and I think that’s an
incredibly disagreeable act and an incredibly
heroic act at the same time. I think
he’s an extraordinary figure.”
The way Gladwell views the world is
refreshing. Whether he’s discussing how a
spontaneously strategic Vietnam vet beat a
highly prepared Pentagon team during pre-
Iraq war games in Blink, analyzing the time
and place factors that led to Bill Gates rising
to prominence in Outliers or chronicling
underdog ascensions in David and Goliath,
the author espouses clarity of thought, learning
to sift through and filter out the noise of
the world to focus on what is essential to one’s
life, and to perceive people and situations for
who and what they are rather than what one
thinks they are.
“I feel that people are experience-rich and
theory-poor,” asserts Gladwell. “That is to say,
most people have lots and lots and lots of
experiences but don’t have the time to try to
make sense of them. It’s a luxury to be able to
sit and theorize and read psychologists, sociologists
and historians and to attach explanations
to events. The reason people read books
like my own is that they’re searching for those
kinds of explanations, of ways of making sense
of things. There is this tremendous body of
knowledge in the world of academia where
extraordinary numbers of incredibly thoughtful
people have taken the time to examine on
a really profound level the way we live our lives
and who we are and where we’ve been. That
brilliant learning sometimes gets trapped in
academia and never sees the light of day. I’m
trying to give people access to all of that brilliant
thinking. It’s a way of going back to college
long after you’ve graduated.”
Ideas have always propelled Gladwell’s
writing, which is clear when interviewing
him. While some authors or intellectuals gesticulate
dramatically, he is rather soft-spoken
and thoughtful, but still passionate, in his
delivery, sometimes surreptitiously
fiddling with his utensils as we
await our meal. He quips
that if you think going to
a library is an exciting
event, you will probably
enjoy his books.
“I write for people
who are curious and
who don’t mind having
their beliefs challenged,”
he says. “I don’t shock
people’s belief systems, but I
do nudge them sometimes.
Some people are fine with that, and
those are my readers.” Several authors and columnists
have challenged assertions or claims in
his books, but that at least proves he knows how
to stimulate debate among his readers.
Has his work on all of his books given him
a new worldview or altered the one he has?
“The last three books in particular have made
me very suspicious of the way that all of us as
human beings react to the world,” the author
replies. “The assumptions that we carry around
in our head aren’t very good. Our first impressions
of things can sometimes be really terrible.
This book is basically about how we look at
situations and misread them.
-- Costco Connection, October 2013
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