I wrote a blog post commenting on this idea of humility, which, from my understanding, is a theme in Adam Grant’s book Think Again. His book and his ideas have been bouncing around the cluster of podcasts I listen to, and I suppose that is why I am revisiting the idea. Humility itself is interesting. I think it is vaguely amusing that I reactively dismiss the promotional urgency to read the book based on what I feel I already know. However, Adam Grant recently released a podcast episode that combined two interviews he’d done with Malcolm Gladwell and this latter gets at a point that reflects my feeling. Here is my (lightly edited) transcript of their conversation:
Malcolm Gladwell: I’m always very attracted to religious themes in things, particularly if they’re slightly sublimated. But it always struck me that there was some kind of moral case being made in your books, that maybe you weren’t making explicitly but that there was something about reading your books that felt very comfortable to someone who is used to thinking about the world in terms of character, ethics, morality, those kinds of things. Like if I (I was thinking) if I had a Bible study of Evangelicals and I said ‘this week we’re not reading the New Testament, we’re gonna read the works of Adam Grant’ I think actually people with that kind of worldview would be very at home with the arguments that you’re making.
Adam Grant: That’s interesting! I love it when ancient wisdom matches up with modern science. And I think, where the ancient wisdom often leaves me short is around … for me at least, a lot of the principles and recommendations that comes out of religious traditions are missing the nuance about ‘how do you actually do this in life’. So yeah, of course you want to be a generous person, but how do you give to others in a way that prevents you or protects you from burning out or just getting burned by the most selfish takers around. Yes, I want to be humble, but I don’t want to become meek, or lack confidence and so I think, I guess what I want to do in a lot of my work is try to use evidence to pick up where, where these higher principles leave off, and ask, ok, what does it mean to do this without sacrificing you know, our ambitions.
M.G.: Yeah, yeah. But even that, I mean, that’s why Christians have Bible studies, and that’s why Jews study Torah, because the original texts, they are only the beginning, they require additional interpretation and understanding. They’re not sufficient on their own, otherwise you wouldn’t need to study them.
A.G.: When it comes to having those conversations about the ideas in those texts, I just, I happen to love the tools of the scientific method as a way to figure out what’s gonna be effective for more of the people more of the time.
I think Malcolm Gladwell highlights what it is in Adam Grant’s latest book that makes me feel like his theme is a familiar one.