On the Value of Exceeding Expectations
Expectations are what ground us in life. They give us instructions about the things we’re likely to value, or fear, to treat with indifference or just plain disregard. But they also lead us away from perspectives that require a little too much thought in peculiar directions. I mentioned this briefly when I wrote about cartoonist Scott Adams recently – he has always succeeded against other people’s expectations. But what about ideas? Are we too dismissive of ideas that don’t fit our expectations?
That’s what I had in mind when I set out to write a new batch of microreviews this week. The books highlighted in the sidebar aren’t the usual fare. They shift from the surprising delights of comics to the far more dubious social mechanics of drug-dealing gangs, all the while taunting, asking whether you, leisurely reader, will buy their big ideas. And whether I appreciate them or not, that’s a valuable asset in itself.
Probably the most disappointing book of the batch is Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day. An account of Venkatesh’s unusual approach to sociology forms most of one chapter in Seven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics. But where that version cuts to the bone and reveals society writ small in the economics of drug dealing, Venkatesh’s book wallows in a sort of tough but scared sociologist mode.
And there’s also a sort of repulsiveness about the subject that makes it at once fascinating and almost loathsome. Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution describes the effort as very interesting but “somewhat evil, if I may call upon that old-fashioned concept”. Interesting because it offers a unique view of how close gang dynamics are to more acceptable social norms, but evil because Venkatesh spent years encouraging and supporting the vicious gang leader JT. As a narrative the book fails, but as a surprising affront to middle-class values I truly hope it lingers on the best-seller lists.
Posted by Mike Poole 
