Talking to Strangers - Gladwell

How do you link terrorism, Adolf Hitler, sexual predation, murder, ponzi schemes, and the Black Lives Matter movement under one cover?  Ask Malcolm Gladwell to write a book….  And he has.  His latest is called “Talking to Strangers” and he has created yet another phrase for our culture and times, Much like he has with “The Tipping Point” and “Blink”.  The phrase, “Talking to Strangers'” will forever mean, don’t forget, when you are out there in the world interacting with people, you don’t really know what is in the mind of the person you’ve never met standing in line in at the checkout counter, even though you’ve seen them many times.  This is not to infer something nefarious is going on. It is to explain that although it is our human nature to give fellow humans the benefit of the doubt, and to trust them, we never know  how a person’s personality and what they are thinking, presents itself outwardly in a manner for us to infer anything about them.  The phrase, you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, was never meant to be about books. Thus, Gladwell has usurped the idea, and giving it a new name.  Talking to Strangers is how Gladwell has recast the old line but given us a much deeper understanding of how? And why? It’s a thing.  This is not the simple classic admonishment that has become an internet meme or YouTube video where we are reminded not to get angry in the checkout line because the person in front of us might have experienced a death in the family, or diagnosis with the “C” word.   Rather, Gladwell presents the evidence from all these unrelated examples, that even with our very best intentions to read people correctly,  we always get it wrong…

Ironically, I write this review as the novel Corona virus, Covid-19, has begun amping up it’s chilling effect on the population here in the United States. Strangely, three things occur to me.  One, the “C” word, now apparently stands for “COVID-19”.  Two, just like not being able to judge a book by it’s cover, we really don’t know who is the carrier of the virus.  And three, social distancing tells us to keep six feet away from everyone, including in the supermarket checkout line.  Perhaps we will have to wait a few months before we get back to talking to strangers in line at the grocery store. But I digress...

As always, Gladwell did a lot of research to come up with this book. Most of the stories he relates to us are familiar topics in the news and the ones he connects with his ideas about not judging a book by its cover are well known to us.  How Chamberlain totally misread Hitler during his meeting with him prior to WWII, How Bernie Madolf with his ponzi scheme, pulled the wool over the eyes of Wall Street.  How Gerry Sandusky could have had a charity to help young boys and abuse them at the same time, under the watchful eyes of the most famous football coach in the world? How was a doctor able to sexually  abuse so many women on the US Gymnastics Team, sometimes with their parents in the same room?  And on and on...

The answer, in a nutshell, is that we are a trusting race of humans.  We evolved to trust because we have to live by trust and  trust our other fellow humans to live by us and trust us as well.  Maybe it’s to live in society together, but we’ve been evolving long before societies, so it must be something deeper.  But with regard to society, here is my own analogy from something I like to do, drive cars. In order for the rules of the road (society) to work, and not have mass chaos on our highways, we trust other drivers to follow the rules.  It’s funny that we can be so trusting  but yet we yell and scream at the a-hole who will not yield, or the maniac who passes us on the right.  Afterall, anyone going slower than us is an a-holet and anyone going faster than us is a maniac.  The dichotomy of thought is a classic human inconsistency.  We trust those a-holes and maniacs with our lives, and to stay in their lane,  as we wind down a two lane back road with a painted line in between us and a closing velocity of 140 miles per hour.  Since we are so trusting, perhaps we should be willing to believe the guy with the concealed carry permit is as reliable as his cousin on the highway.  This is a very pro-gun arguement, and many of my friends would agree.  They are to be trusted.  But Gladwell’s argument, that we can’t judge a book by it’s cover, suggests we shouldn’t, or can’t always trust the smile on their face.  Yet the list of reasons to trust people in society goes on and on... otherwise we would all live in a cabin in the woods and write manifestos (I’m referring to unabomber Ted Kosinski not HDT).  

Here are the use cases Gladwell writes about:

Adolf Hitler and Nevel Chamberlain.  Chamberlain traveled to Germany multiple times  to meet with Hitler so he could report back to the world that he trusted Hitler because he told him his objectives were not world domination as they shook hands and he looked into his eyes. History was not kind to Chamberlain given how badly he misread der Fuehrer's face, despite the fact that he had written an entire book on the subject.  Did anyone actually read, “Mein Kampf”?

Amanda Knox and the Italian policia:  The Italian authorities and most of the world did not believe a  girl buying red underware the day after her roomate’s brutal murder could have been anything but the perputrator of a  violent sexual esxapade gone bad.  When in fact, Knox is so ridiculously innocent, as to resemble any one of our shy, awkward daughters.  The missing detail, was of course, the fact that she was locked out of her apartment and literally had no underwear. She was seen by the Italian press, buying underwear the next day.  Who would do that after murdering their roommate? How about someone who didn’t murder their roomate. And the scandalous innuendo went viral from there....

Bernie Madoff fleeces all of  Wall Street given he had absolutely nothing to show for any investment he ever made?  How is that possible?  One man saw through the impossibility of it all...but no one would listen to him.  Madoff was too important of a figure.

In the Gerry Sandusky case, for decades, many looked away from the smoke, when there was not only smoke, but a fire.  Not just a campfire, but a three alarm conflagration and a towering inferno of abuse.  

Gladwell’s point, in all these cases, has been those closest to the issues, those who could have seen the signs and understood what was really going on, have been unable to effectively communicate because they have been talking to strangers, literally.  Like a pig looking at a wristwatch.  No matter how much talking you do, if you haven’t a clue as to the premise, the context, and the language being spoken, you will miss the mark.  

I’m reminded of my own “Talking to Strangers” experience from when I was in the Air Force many moons ago.  At that time the Wing Commander put me in charge of  an explosive safety mishap investigation.  The mishap involved the inadvertent firing of an explosive squib.  The squib is the first in a series  of explosive events that will  lead to the firing of the rockets in the ejection of a seat on the B-52H bomber.  It seems a maintenance technician pulled the ejection handle while on a Red Ball, an emergency maintenance response to an aircraft just before take off.  The maintainers blamed the mishap on the aircrew and the aircrew blamed it on the maintainers. Clearly, the maintainer pulled the handle, he was at fault. But if we let it go there, we would not understand what Gladwell is talking about.   After careful investigation I uncovered the following facts.  The aircrew refused to take the aircraft because the ejection seat handle appeared loose and it would wobble from side to side. Per the technical order (T.O.) the handle should not wobble. The maintainer insisted that the aircraft was safe for a one-time-flight and that the ejection handle, despite the slight wobble, would function if it became necessary to eject. Back and forth the maintainer and the aircrew went debating whether or not the seat would work.  The aircrew wanted to reject the sortie and the maintainers wanted them to fly the jet.  During the investigation, as I looked at the handle, and the disassembled unit, on the maintenance bench, there was no doubt the handle would work.  There was also no doubt there was a wobble. But during the incident the debate went on and on until the point that the maintainer was so frustrated with the aircrew, and their inability to trust his judgement, that  he said, “Look, it works!”, and he pulled the ejection handle.  The fact that the handle would work is so intuitively obvious to the most casually observing flatworm, it's so easy to see how the frustration would build.  This wasn’t a question of some arcane and mysterious black box, and there are many of those, for which the aircrew has to put their faith (and life)  in the hands of the  maintainers...this happens everyday. This is a very basic mechanical operation...the handle moves up and down...it’s an on or off proposition.  This came down to attitude, respect, and the ability to communicate, whilst engines running, and trying to move fast, in the heat of an aircraft launch.     Fortunately, the squib only sets off the first event in the chain of explosive event’s leading to the seat being rocketed out of the top of the aircraft. The seat has final safety pins that are only removed at the very end of the runway just prior to takeoff roll. Had those pins also been removed,  undoubtedly, both the maintainer and aircrew member would have been killed.  They would not have just been just injured.  They would have both been ejected violently through the roof of the B-52, traveling up on a rocket sled several hundred feet into the air, to be smashed by the seat leaving the aircraft, and then smashed by their subsequent fall to the ground…It would have been ghastly.

But it was the frustration of the back and forth, the lack of trust on both sides, the inability to see what the other one was saying, their inability to communicate, that neither party could be completely absolved, or completely blamed.  Gladwell would say, they were not talking to one another, despite all the training, they were effectively talking to strangers. Mishaps happen this way…in this case, the Chief of Flying Safety, a B-52 pilot himself, believed my investigation and called in every aircrew member from the wing to describe what caused this lack of trust and what we should do to enhance respect and grow closer as a flying wing.   We could not have tolerated the more ghastly mishap had it occurred.  On the flightline, it’s one family...yet  there is always a tension between ops and maintenance, I could go on and on but I will not. Communication and understanding is key,  trust is life or death.