Blinked

Blink: The Power Of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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I picked this up a second time. Thanks to Buffalo-Erie Public Library System for providing this free facility.

Blink takes the reader through some case studies and associated case studies on snap-judgements and its base on expertise, prejudice and autonomous nervous system.

It was interesting to wonder if some Kathakali artists could collaborate for the facial action coding system. For the uninformed Kathakali is an old art form mixing drama and dance, action and emotions. Kathakali artists spend a lot of effort in efficiently enacting the required dramatic sequences based on Indian (Hindu) mythology. It takes equal amount of effort from the audience to understand the performance. This art form is considered to be the height of acting. It is also an old saying in Kerala that face is the mirror of mind (മുഖം മനസ്സിന്റെ കണ്ണാടി). And blink re-affirms that mind reading (read face-reading) is for real.

Malcolm also says about well educated people doing blink judgements and actions which may be right or may not be right based on the habits built by exercise. While the policemen killed Diallo because of their bad exercise, and Paul Ekman could judge facial expressions to predict the nature and behavior of persona by good practice. Musical experts picked up good music performed behind the screen and also got dissatisfied by seeing a woman performing trombone , when the screen was removed later, due to prejudice of expecting only males perform high quality trombone.

In the afterword, Malcolm wishes to urge the US American jury system to adopt the “screen” to avoid prejudice in official judgement that may creep in due to the jury system of USA. This brings in a question about the jury system itself. The world class movie “Rustom” vividly portrays and adaptation of real story that used the last jury system based judgement that happened in India. I was wondering why the system was restricted to judgement by judge alone in India. If USA uses jury system that must be good. Ain’t it ? Blink reassures me that definitely, well educated individuals in jury hardly know legality and constitution. They are influenced by their prejudices and what the they feed themselves a.k.a media and opinions as demonstrated in the actual court case which inspired the movie “Rustom”.

In this same way, as a reader, I would have to read people by face, I can know their mind. Let rationality take over instead of pre-judgement in case of confrontation and confusion. Let me be guided in the right direction as the Gayatri Mantra states.

 

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