Talking to strangers by Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell never fails to fascinate me with the way he approaches writing and storytelling by capturing the reader’s/listener’s curiosity and interest.
In his book “Talking to strangers: What we should know about the people we don’t know”, Gladwell writes about stories involving crimes, lethal misunderstandings, and tragic deaths and highlights the difficulty of trying to understand and make sense of strangers.
I went into this book blindly without reading any of the blurb and I must admit: I SHOULD HAVE. If you would like to read this book or listen to it (The audiobook version is fantastic, with a cast of actresses and actors and a theme song you will hear every now and again), I definitely recommend reading what this book is about, but more than that, please research about trigger warnings and take them seriously.
Talking to strangers involves heavy topics such as terrorism, sexual assault, and gun violence. In the audiobook version you will also listen to reenactment of court trials as well as original tapes from victims of assault, bystanders or perpetrators. The stories that the author picked up are US-focused and may cause head shaking moments from readers/listeners from other countries (e.g. topics like gun violence). However, I did find the cultural differences important in order to be able to understand the complexity of what was talked about.
Naive me thought that this book gives you prompts about how to make talking to strangers less awkward. I was truly taken aback by the intensity of the book and the hard-to-stomach topics. It’s not necessarily a book you’d read in one sitting and also not a light hearted one if you were looking for something relaxing.
The following part includes spoilers of the book for review purposes.
Default to truth
Default to truth is the assumption that whoever you are interacting with is being honest.
It is incredibly difficult for us to tell if strangers are lying or not. We sometimes tell a liar from a truth-teller apart by their appearance, the way they speak or take their past and overall circumstances into consideration. To our surprise we may or may not find out that our assumptions were wrong.
We may have doubts but the question is: Do we have enough doubts to believe differently?
In extreme cases, sexual assault offenders may roam freely for years before the truth come to light and they thus get incarcerated (if at all!). If you were wrong with your assumptions, so are soldiers, police officers, and judges - their judgement and action having life altering impacts and consequences.
Believing in the honesty of people and their good intentions is human, though it may be a cause for errors, it is essential for us humans to be able to thrive in communities or even be able to find and form such. Not defaulting to truth could cause just as much harm if not more.
This was just one key takeaway from Malcolm Gladwell’s “Talking to strangers: What we should know about the people we don’t know” Other aspects are having doubts but not enough to believe differently, coupling, the illusion of transparency (believing that people’s behaviour matches their feelings), and misplacement (of interpretation and judgement)
If you have read this book, consider reading it or have read about other similar books, I would love to read about your thoughts in the comments below! :)
Stay curious and BE BOLD,
Soso