I love talking to strangers

I always enjoy chatting with strangers.  Nowadays, I do it frequently too.  Small conversations with a cashier at Trader Joe’s or a  barista at Starbucks and the list goes on.  

Talking To Strangers -  by Malcolm Gladwell is a captivating book that explores why sometimes it's so difficult to do that - I mean talking to strangers.  The book is an extensive survey tour of miscommunication through stories that we are familiar with and perhaps have read in history books. 

The book takes us into many examples of how people like us “default to the truth,” that we tend to take on face value the words other people tell us, even if we should now better.   For example, how Britain's Prime Minister - Neville Chamberlain was believing in Hitler’s assurance that all Germany wanted was the Sudetenland (the ethnic-German part of Czechoslovakia) and had no plans on Poland or perhaps the rest of Europe.   Chamberlain sincerely believed Hitler because the British prime minister got the “Double handshake” from Hitler.  Keep in mind that Chamberlain was one of the very few European leaders to have met with Hitler before the eruption of WWII.  In fact, Chamberlain met with Hitler three times and was acting on the same premise that we all follow in making sense of our conversations strangers.  We believe that the knowledge we gather from a personal interaction - with a double handshake is uniquely valuable.  Surely history has not been too kind to Chamberlain. 

Gladwell tells us many more accounts, of course.  He probes into the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State University, the prosecution of Amanda Knox in Italy, Sylvia Plath’s suicide in England, and many more.   Other stories ranging from, the Spanish conquistador - Hernan Cortes, who’s inability to communicate with Aztec ruler Montezuma II leading to Montezumas death and consequently eventually end of the Aztec empire; to Fidel Castro, who planted a Cuban spy into the US Department of Defense, which notwithstanding troubling warning signs, the US government failed to detect for over a decade: to the famous story of Bernie Madoff, who  cheated his way to the top of a massive Ponzi scheme involving the most prominent institutions on Wall Street.  What’s fascinating is that as with the Cuban Spy, there was no shortage of warning indications and red flags that something was off about Bernie Madoff’s claims of successful strategy in investing his clients’ money.

Madoff’s story is particularly fascinating as some in the SEC (the Securities and Exchange Commission- that is overseeing the financial industry) was suspicious.  Madoff has been claiming an investment strategy connected to the stock market, which meant like any other market-based approach, his return ought to go up and down as the market went up and down.  But Bernie Madoff’s rate of returns was rock solid - which challenged all logic!  In fact, Madoff’s answer to SEC was that “essentially, Maddof could see around corners; he had a ‘gut feel’ for when to get out of the market just before a downswing and back into the market just before an upswing.”  There  were many instances that the SEC investigator reported to his supervisor, who also had doubts but, “not enough doubts.”  Because of SEC like how we typically think, defaulted to the truth, and the fraud of Bernie Madoff continued!

We often don’t think how just small scale instances of miscommunication with strangers could have tragic consequences.  Gladwell takes us to July 2015, when Sandra Bland, a young black woman, was stopped by police near the campus of Texas A&M, where she has just got a job.  Texas State Trooper who pulled over Sandra, was Brian Encinia - white, short dark hair, 30 years old officer.   The reason?  Supposedly changing lanes without using the turn signal.    This very routine traffic stop escalated as the officer told Sandra to extinguish her cigarette.  The exchange got more hustle, and the office told her to get out of her car, threatening “I will light you up” if Sandra failed to follow his order.  Sandra was brought to jail.  48 hours later, she was found hanged in her cell.   The book examines the policing method that indirectly led to Sandra’s death, the result of a very aggressive theory developed to stem crime in troubled big-city neighborhoods - like Kansas City, or Brooklyn - in part by pulling over anyone suspected of even the smallest infractions as a justification to search their cars for weapons or drugs.    It was not a suitable tactic for a peaceful rural college area in the middle of the day, stopping someone who should never have been stopped, jumping to conclusions that should never have been drawn.  The Death of Sandra Bland “was what happens when a society does not know how to talk to strangers.

I have been thinking a lot about Sandra Bland’s case, should we really ignore or disregard racism?  Does it really just come down to two strangers who don’t know how to interact with each other?  

I still love talking to strangers.  Perhaps as Gladwell suggests that it “requires humility and thoughtfulness and a willingness to look beyond the stranger, and take time and place and circumstances into account.”   This advice is all too often ignored throughout history and in everyday life.