By Mark Helsel
I have had Malcom Gladwell's book Outliers for awhile now and just haven't been in the mood to pick it up, my bad. So far this is a great book. Gladwell is looking at what makes people successful. He starts with an incredible story about the town of Roseto right here in Pennsylvania. It seems that in the 1950"s in this small PA town they had virtually no one under the age of 65 with heart disease in a time when heart attacks where a national epidemic. In fact Roseto's death rate from heart attacks was 50% lower than the national average and the death rate for all causes was 30 to 35% lower. What was so peculiar about these people? Here is a quote from the book:
"There was no suicide, no alcoholism, no drug addiction, and very little crime. They didn't have anyone on welfare. Then we looked at peptic ulcers. They didn't have any of those either. These people were dying of old age. That's it."
So they looked into dietary reasons, exercise, genetics, and geography to see if that was what was making these people so healthy, so different. All of those factors were dead ends.
What they began to realize was that the secret of Roseto wasn't diet or exercise or genes or location. It had to be Roseto itself. As the researchers walked around town, they figured out why. These people visited each other, cooked for each other. Many of the homes had three generations under one roof, grandparents where treated with respect. They all went to church together, and there were 22 separate civic organizations in a town just under 2000. The wealthy were discouraged against flaunting their wealth and encouraged to help the poor. They cared for each other.
The Rosetans were healthy because of the world they had created for themselves in their tiny little town in the hills. People's success was defined by the community they were in.
In order to understand success of the individual we have to understand the culture he or she is a part of, and who their friends and families were, and what town their families came from. They had to appreciate the idea that the values of the world we inhabit and the people we surround ourselves with have a profound effect on who we are!
This is fascinating. It is a great picture of community, of the Kingdom of God, of what Jesus intended for his church. How can your church or youth group be more like Roseto?
