What is advantage? In our day-to-day lives, we are inclined to believe that studying in small classrooms counts as one. So does being brought up by affluent parents, and in a sheltered, close-knit familial atmosphere. More money translates to better life. An Ivy League degree is the surest way to a high flying career. Having prior experience in the rules of a game and its strategies definitely is a head-start to victory. Being a part of the majority community in situations of persecutions, like that of Holocaust is a ticket to safety. And being a Philistine giant like Goliath is more than an assurance of victory in a war.
Going by this, more of these is desirable.
Here exactly is where Malcolm Gladwell shifts the narrative.
The biggest millionaires of Hollywood and Wall Street worry that their children have had too easy a childhood to appreciate the value of toiling hard and turning to lateral thinking for creating or earning opportunities & justifying them. The most watershed moments of alleviating leukemia in children happened courtesy a doctor who was so indifferent of suffering due to his disturbed childhood that he could think through the solution that was much more painful for his patients in the immediate short run, but created room for further successful interventions- and chemotherapy was born. He was "stone" enough to inject the kids with a medicine that was closest to being a poison, just because he could withstand the pain beyond the normal threshold.
While policymakers in the world are raging about having a smaller pupil-to-teacher ratio to improve learning outcomes in schools, evidence from psychological research suggests little correlation between the two beyond a point. A coach who has never played basketball coaches a team of motley schoolgirls to the national level tournament through a winning spree, because he can twist his strategy within the existing rules but beyond the conventional wisdom. Why? Because being a nerdy software programmer, he has no stake in the basketball based social circuit and its opinions. The only community that sheltered refugee Jews in the entire Nazi-occupied France was a persecuted sect that was openly defiant to Nazi diktats, and still went unscathed. Reason being, they had perfected the art of evading persecution by adapting their social structure and knew means to falsify identities, or sometimes, were plainly stubborn of their conscientious stand. Nazis had little energy to waste on them amidst other bigger & more immediate pressing issues.
One of the most counter-intuitive cases is that of the Ivy League education. Turns out, that it is more likely that a top ranking college reduces your chances of pursuing a discipline, especially Science & Economics at advanced levels, if you don't rank in the top percentiles of your class. Beyond the cream, a competitor who is a topper of her class from a much lower ranking college has much higher prospects of thriving in the discipline at advanced levels. What is a "perceived advantage" thus ends up being an impediment due to the collateral psychological damage caused by the top class universities.
Thus, the fascinating fable of a short, relatively frail, catapult wielding Israeli shepherd David defeating the giant Goliath, with multiple heavy weapons and a guard exclusively meant to shield him, and a heavy armour protecting almost every part of this body, should not be surprising at all. The Goliaths of the world focus on their weapons and armours. While, the Davids, refuse to fight with the same weapons and aim their well practiced slingshots to precisely those parts where the armour didn't cover the giant. Not all disadvantages are crippling, some are desirable and some are just "perceived" disadvantages. Playing by their own rules is often the hallmark of the Davids.
The book has important lessons not just for the common man, but policymakers and people in the position of power. The relation between a resource & its perceived advantage follows not a "positively sloping" straight line as expected, but an inverted U shape. Thus beyond a point, the same advantage becomes an obstacle. Too strong laws fail to contain crime beyond a point. Too much heavy handedness by the State in areas of strife and conflict erodes the legitimacy of the power. Too few students per teacher decreases the productivity of discussions in a classroom of wary teens. Just like a heavy, strong armour reduced the mobility & agility of Goliath against David.
It would therefore be fitting to quote Gladwell from the book-
"The powerful are not as powerful as they seem- nor the weak as weak".
Thus, life is much more of what we make out of even our perceived disadvantages.
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