"Socially Horrifying"

I've never read any of Malcolm Gladwell's books, just the occasional article in The New Yorker, so I've never formed much an opinion one way or another. His recent article on underdogs, however, knocked my socks off. He looks around the corner and throughout history to see how Davids beat Goliaths--which they do almost 30% of the time--and whether there are any consistent patterns.

Turns out, there are. One is that underdogs simply work harder.

"We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It's the other way around. Effort can trump ability--legs, in Saxe's formulation, can overpower arms--because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination."

The other consistent trait is that Davids often come from the "outside" and thus confront their superior adversaries using unconventional or unexpected methods. At one end of the spectrum, the adversaries mock these methods. At the other end, they find them "socially horrifying."

Gladwell weaves in stories of George Washington, Rick Pitino, Lawrence of Arabia, and a team of 7th-grade blonde-haired girls (among others) to make his point. Totally fascinating and somewhat inspiring.

I don't know if was intentional or not, but towards the end of the article, Gladwell begins using the terms "underdog" and "insurgent" interchangeably. It made me think the piece should be required reading for every member of the US military force in Iraq and Afghanistan.