The Power Of Context, By Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Johnson, And Karen

Society is stocked full of various trends and epidemics. To many, the way in which these trends start is a mystery. As members of a society, we often subconsciously take part in these patterns without questioning our participation. Therefore, people continue to ignore the drastic changes in society, and the reasons why they occur so swiftly. There is a lack of motivation to take a step back and inquire about society as a whole, and rethink one’s actions. In The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell effectively discusses and analyzes how and why ideas spread throughout societies using the rhetorical appeals, ethos, pathos and logos.

People do not rise from nothing, according to Malcolm Gladwell. There are many components that effect the way an individual becomes successful. Gladwell argues that where, when, and how the person was raised has the biggest impact on their future successes. The use of pathos, logos, and ethos benefit the points that are being convey by Gladwell. They persuade the reader in thinking with the same mindset as the writer. In Outliers, pathos, logos, and ethos are found throughout the book, multiple times, through examples of people that achieved success. For pathos, connecting to the reader emotionally is essential to convince the readers of Gladwell’s argument. He uses pathos to evoke an emotional response. One of many examples of Gladwell’s use

The world’s humanity was folding away without being noticed by a single soul. The society was focused on technology so that when the characteristics that made man human were gone, they would not be missed by the majority. Government officials were strict on the molding of the new era, but they even more harshly enforced that the wisdom of the past not be acknowledged. A harsh, cruel world that had decided that free will was too dangerous. This is the world of Fahrenheit 451.

Most people would believe that we are shaped and defined by our values and moral character. However, Malcolm Gladwell argues, in the chapter “The Power of Context, Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York City Crime” In other words, The Power of Context is the social setting and or the environment around you and how it affects your behavior. Anticipating resistance from the reader Gladwell uses rhetorical strategies such as real life examples, controlled experiments and theories to help advance his claim and to help persuade the reader to side with his argument.

In the novel, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Huxley includes allusion, ethos, and pathos to mock the wrongdoings of the people which causes physical and mental destruction in the society as a whole. The things that happened in the 1930’s plays a big contribution to the things that go on in the novel. The real world can never be looked at as a perfect place because that isn't possible. In this novel, Huxley informs us on how real life situations look in his eyes in a nonfictional world filled with immoral humans with infantile minds and a sexual based religion.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Power of Context,” includes a series of short anecdotes in which are all defined by environment and how society shapes mankind. While reading these short stories Gladwell put into the novel, the audience can conclude that the rules of society have the power to shape a person or community. When reading “The Power of Context,” the reader must be able to grasp the understanding of how environment can affect an individual. One would say nature is the setting in which a person is brought up, nurture is the care variable one has the power to influence how they behave or how the setting can define who they are. In this style of writing Gladwell uses, shifts in societies behaviors tell stories of how the setting can influence behaviors of the main characters.

For example, in Gladwells essay, Gladwell says that if a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charged of the window. Soon, more windows will be broken and a sense of anarchy will spread from building to the street on witch it faces, sending a signal that anything goes (Gladwell 289). Gladwell is basically saying that crimes are contagious. It is true, in our society crimes are spread from one place to another. When kids see other kids stealing candy from a store, then that kid will go and do the same. Or if a kid sees another kid beating up another kid, than that kid might go and do the same.

People believe that an abundance of technology and fast, busy lives are beneficial to more efficient and overall better society. In reality, that lifestyle may be a detriment to society. The culture, characters, and themes in Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 create an interesting dystopian setting that serves as a warning to future readers.

We are all factory workers in some sense – each and every one of us. As individuals, we each have our unique ambitions, quirks, and moral compasses; however, we coexist together in institutions to create the same products of prejudice, despite our characteristic differences. In one instance, Wall Street and Ivy League universities in Karen Ho’s “The Biographies of Hegemony” employ countless undergraduates of various backgrounds to sustain an unhealthy environment of elitism. Similar ethical malpractice also extends to the voracious pharmaceutical companies in Ethan Watters’ “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” with various types of researchers and marketing scholars under their umbrella. The hegemony perpetuated by these systems are not just limited to humans, as in Charles Siebert’s “An Elephant Crackup?” the elephant society is severely oppressed by government agencies who acted as a direct consequence to the behaviors of hunters and poachers. In such institutions, there can exist two distinct groups of individuals: those who enter a larger system with the malicious intent to subjugate others, and those who enter with a fervent desire to advance society. Tragically, because institutions are intrinsically materialistic and parochial in nature, both groups of individuals would regardless contribute to a product of inequality and ethical misconduct under these systems of hegemony.

At one time or another, there comes a point in everyone's life where they are propelled to question the implications of their surroundings. Such is the life-long warfare that characters Grendel and Winston, in John Gardner's Grendel, and George Orwell's 1984 engage in. "I understood that the world was nothing: a mechanical chaos of casual, brute enmity … " (Gardner 27.) This internal struggle manifests itself in blatant isolation, a pro-active habit of seeking out allies, and the deterioration of their very lives that follows. In both texts, the hypocritical world that these personas are resident to renders their perception to be perpetually pitted against reality. This, in turn, is what facilitates their eventual downfall.

Gladwell's discussion and illustration of the concepts of the Poor Law, the Factor of Adherence and the Power of the Context constitute the majority of the book.

Chapter four in the book “ Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell  discusses the power of context: Bernie Goetz and the Rise and Fall of New York. To illustrate the power of context, Gladwell goes up against the rapid decrease in violent crime rates that occurred in the 1990s in New York City. In 1984, a man name Bernhard Goetz who was walking to the subway was approached by four young black men asking him for money. In response Goetz took out his weapon and shot the four black men. In the consequence of the shooting, Goetz became something of a hero. At a time when crime rates in New York City were increasing, Goetz was seen as a brave man who stood up to dangerous criminals. Although Gladwell recognizes that a wide variety of complex factors

In Brave New World, Aldous Huxley introduces the dystopia of a society created on the principle of social stability at all costs. Huxley wrote this book in 1932 hoping to warn future generations of what he feared might happen if society did not do something to stop the inevitable. The leaders of our society today hope for and work towards social stability without taking away primitive rights. Social stability can only be achieved by a society whose beliefs in social and ethical issues are never challenged. So even though modern society hopes for social stability, it is not a practical aspiration because it is obvious that some of the social and ethical

Several conflicting frames of mind have played defining roles in shaping humanity throughout the twentieth century. Philosophical optimism of a bright future held by humanity in general was taken advantage of by the promise of a better life through sacrifice of individuality to the state. In the books Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 clear opposition to these subtle entrapments was voiced in similarly convincing ways. They first all established, to varying degrees of balance, the atmosphere and seductiveness of the “utopia” and the fear of the consequences of acting in the non-prescribed way through character development. A single character is alienated because of their inability to conform – often in protest to the forced

George Orwell, an English fictionist of the 20th century, is known for his notorious remarks on humanity and his questioning of the morals and awareness of human nature. Orwell is infamous for his critical novels, including Animal Farm, a timeless novel that describes the relationship of power and conformity in a society. A similar theme is continued in the article of Edward Goldsmith, an author, and philosopher, titled Religion- the control mechanism of a stable society building on the evident relationship of religion and control. The apparent correlation is reinforced by the 2011 study of what makes a society “tight” across thirty-three nations, determining the patterns of what makes civilizations around the world strong. Orwell uses