So I’ve finished reading/listening to Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s definitely a good read and I highly recommend it, especially to anyone who has ever asked “How did they do that” in reference to a wildly successful individual. There are many theories that the author posits and then backs up with evidence and you really feel like you come away with a deeper understanding of what makes people tick. I don’t want to share all of these with you, as that’s the fun of reading the book and also the author does such a better and more eloquent job of explaining than I ever could.
First is the importance the author places on culture in terms of it’s effect on success. That is that, where you come from has a LOT to do with your potential success. Not just what income bracket your family falls into, or what side of the tracks you grew up on (the author does discuss this however) but also the values and morals that the culture you come from has. This is related to the title of this post and I’ll get into that a little more in the next section.
The title of this post is an old Chinese proverb that, as the author explains, conflicts strongly with many western and especially American proverbs. Chinese, and many Far East cultures and economies are based completely around rice farming. It has served as currency, food, wealth and it’s role is summed up best in the statement: Rice is Life. Rice is a year round crop that requires relatively small plots of land to grow. It requires much skill in irrigation, fertilization, and grooming of the crop in order to have a successful harvest, however. It is a sun up to sun down year round job. But it is not resented, it is instead cherished. This is because rice IS life. The harder you work on your rice crop, the more benefits you have in life. This satisfies one of the three “magic” ingredients values that the author feels successful people grow up around. That is that they see a direct correlation to working harder and seeing more reward. This would be a difficult value to learn growing up on a corn farm that is VERY busy in the spring and fall but is generally calm during the summer and near dormant in the winter. The direct correlation that could be made in that instance would be that more land equals more reward, as the main resource for a more successful corn farm would be land.
The author believes this lesson and the other 2 “magic” ingredient values (which you’ll have to read the book to find out what they are) have caused the Far East cultures to develop a different attitude toward work. All kids in China go to school year round. A summer break is something almost unheard of outside of western culture. The author feels that the agricultural rhythm of hard work, rest, hard work, rest has ingrained in us the compulsion to balance hard work with rest. So while our kids are sitting at home all summer watching television, the rest of the worlds kids are in school getting a head start. I’d like to reiterate that this doesn’t mean American kids aren’t as smart as Asian kids. Actually to the contrary. It’s simply that our culture has provided us with different values. The Asian culture holds the idea that if a man works hard, then he will attain success.
I’m not proposing we take away summer break, I just think it’s interesting to think about and observe. The idea that our culture has such profound impacts on us in an almost sub-conscious way. If that sounds interesting to you too, then I urge you to check out Outliers and let me know what you think of it when you are through.
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