Ga-hyeon Tak

Malcolm Gladwell compares Vassar College and Bowdoin College to discuss on the college’s focus on providing equal opportunities for low-income students. The ranking and tuition fees are about the same, but Gladwell says that the luxurious food at Bowdoin College is a “moral problem”. The ‘food’ represents the ‘amenities’ provided by the school. There is a trade-off between offering financial aid for low-income students and providing high quality amenities. Gladwell creates a clear image that Vassar College prioritizes on the opportunities while Bowdoin College prioritizes on the amenities. So, Gladwell makes a point that since Vassar is better at “opening the doors for low-income students”, we shouldn’t go to Bowdoin nor let our kids go there. Yet, I thought that Gladwell was too biased that Bowdoin is a college uninterested in equal opportunities. He should have looked through the financial aid system of Bowdoin College, not just how Bowdoin College prepares high quality foods. As ...

A society is an inevitable product from civilization. Inside the structure of a society, people pursued ‘unity’ for maintenance of the society. Yet, this pursuit of unity caused people to misinterpret unity as ‘uniformity’. Uniformity is not necessary in order to obtain social unity. Unity between different groups (or individuals) of people can exist when they embrace one another. I think Wilt Chamberlain's decision to stop throwing underhand is fundamentally rooted from the misunderstanding of unity. People choose to do 'dumb' things, even when they are fully aware that there are other 'smarter' choices. In the case of Wilt Chamberlain, he knew that he could shoot better underhand. However, he rather, chose to shoot the way most of the other basketball players shoot. As most people do, he blindly followed the rules of society. Society expects compliance or obedience from its members; individuals get protections and comfort as a rewards. This social expectation s...

There were certain important cases where particular events or actions led to a progress in human history; however, Malcolm Gladwell, in “The Lady Vanishes” Episode 1, discusses about the opposite cases that represent “Moral Licensing.” For those who believe in ‘progress’ in a society or a human history, moral licensing seems to be quite ironic because the door allows someone exceptional to enter but shuts more firmly than before to block the opportunity of entering. Gladwell relates moral licensing to racism and sexism. Moral licensing is one of the factors that made people vote for Trump and definitely applies to the 'shy Trump' voters.  We, as human beings, cannot help falling into the fallacy of moral licensing, not only because we cannot make rational decisions all the time, but also because our choices can be affected by emotional and social factors. Therefore, we should always be open to the possibility of making errors and mistakes.So, by evaluating the things we super...