The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. 

3/5 rating. 

Book #106 of 2019. Read September 5, 2019.

This book has almost become a modern-day classic among intellectuals and business psychologists. After finally reading it, I can see why. I think this book is a must-read for anyone who is looking to get their message out into the world and spread it far and wide!

Quotes:

“Then there’s Goetz. He did something that is completely anomalous. White professionals do not, as a rule, shoot young black men on the subway. But if you look closely at who he was, he fits the stereotype of the kind of person who ends up in violent situations. His father was a strict disciplinarian with a harsh temper, and Goetz was often the focus of his father’s rage. At school, he was the one teased by classmates, the last one picked for school games, a lonely child who would often leave school in tears. He worked, after graduating from college, for Westinghouse, building nuclear submarines. But he didn’t last long. He was constantly clashing with his superiors over what he saw as shoddy practices and corner-cutting, and sometimes broke company and union rules by doing work that he was contractually forbidden to do. He took an apartment on Fourteenth Street in Manhattan, near Sixth Avenue, on a stretch of city block that was heavy with homelessness, and drug dealing. One of the doormen in the building, with whom Goetz was close, was beaten badly by muggers. Goetz became obsessed with cleaning up the neighborhood. He complained endlessly about a vacant newsstand near his building, which was used by vagrants as a trash bin and stank of urine. One night, mysteriously, it burned down, and the next day Goetz was out on the street sweeping away the debris. Once at a community meeting, he said, to the shock of others in the room, ‘The only way we’re going to clean up this street is to get rid of the spics and niggers.’ In 1981, Goetz was mugged by three black youths as he entered the Canal Street station one afternoon. He ran out of the station with the three of them in pursuit. They grabbed the electronics equipment he was carrying, beat him, and threw him up against a plate-glass door, leaving him with permanent damage to his chest. With the help of an off-duty sanitation worker, Goetz managed to subdue one of his three attackers. But the experience left him embittered. He had to spend six hours in the station house, talking to police, while his assailant was released after two hours and charged, in the end, with only a misdemeanor. He applied to the city for a gun permit. He was turned down. In September 1984, his father died. Three months later, he sat down next to four black youths on the subway and started shooting.”

“‘It is hard to think of  a context in which norms concerning helping those in distress are more salient than for a person thinking about the Good Samaritan, and yet it did not significantly increase helping behavior,’ Darley and Batson concluded. ‘Indeed, on several occasions, a seminary student going to give his talk on the parable of the Good Samaritan literally stepped over the victim as he hurried on his way.’ The only thing that really mattered was whether the student was in a rush. Of the group that was, 10 percent stopped to help. Of the group who knew they had a few minutes to spare, 63 percent stopped.” 

“But do you know what the experimentation statistics are for illegal drugs? In the 1996 Household Survey on Drug Abuse, 1.1 percent of those polled said that they had used heroin at least once. But only 18 percent of that 1.1 percent had used it in the past year, and only 9 percent had used it in the past month. This is not the profile of a particularly sticky drug. The figures for cocaine are even more striking. Of those who have ever tried cocaine, less than one percent – 0.9 percent – are regular users. What these figures tell us is that experimentation and actual hard-core use are two entirely separate things – that for a drug to be contagious does not automatically mean that it is also sticky.”

“But to have kids growing up in disaffection and loneliness is hardly a new development. Millions of kids who grow up just as emotionally impoverished as Andy Williams don’t walk into their school one morning and start shooting. The difference is Columbine. Andy Williams was infected by the example of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, just as the suicides of Micronesia were infected by the example of that first dramatic love triangle.”

“The post-Columbine outbreak of school shootings is, in this sense, no different. It is happening because Columbine happened, and because ritualized, dramatic, self-destructive behavior among teenagers – whether it involves suicide, smoking, taking a gun to school, or fainting after drinking a harmless can of Coke – has extraordinary contagious power.”

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