Harlan, Kentucky

Malcolm Gladwell is a great storyteller.

One of his great stories is about Harlan, Kentucky, featured in his book Outliers.

In Harlan County, Kentucky, and throughout Appalachia in the 19th century, there were continual skirmishes, brawls, and duels to the death between family clans. The most famous case in American folklore would be the Hatfields-McCoys. In Harlan, Kentucky, it was the Turners and Howards.

As Gladwell goes on to explain, the reason for this regional phenomenon could be explained by what sociologists refer to as a ‘culture of honor’. It turns out that the behaviors of their ancestors, centuries before, tended to be aggressive and confrontational. In fact, it was required of them as a matter of their livelihood.

This learned behavior carried over through the decades, across oceans and state lines. It continues yet today in the South, influencing successive generations, even after entering into distinctly different modern lifestyles.

He goes on to write:

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. …and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behaviors that we cannot make sense of our world without them.

Patrick Kenzie would have understood. It’s similar to what he was describing in Gone Baby Gone. Social heritance.

And it is these cultural legacies that help lead to malconformity.

. . . . .

We can see examples of social heritance through the lens of professional sports.

Anyone that knows the intensity of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, or Real Madrid-Barcelona, also knows that these loyalties are easily, and often, passed down through generations. They become deep, personal, and passionate commitments.

In these cases, members of these various tribes are willfully ignorant. Let me explain.

With sports allegiances, historical statistics don’t matter.

The New York Yankees have won 27 World Series. The Red Sox have won 8. And yet I guarantee this has no effect on any Sox fan from Southie, Manchester, or even up in Maine.

They don’t choose to be a Sox fan based on performance history or rational statistical evidence. They choose to be a Sox fan because of their community and the culture they grow up in.

It’s a feeling. It’s an emotional connection. It’s personal.

They are willing to ignore rational measurements of success in order to belong to a group. They are willfully ignorant.

. . . . .

There are two other areas of culture similar to sports: religion and politics.

And similar to sports, people often do not choose their religious or political beliefs. Rather, their environment chooses it for them.

If you are raised in the United States, chances are you will be Christian. If raised in Iran, you will likely be Muslim. In India, Hindu.

If you are raised in San Francisco or Boston, you will likely be a Democrat. If you are raised in Dallas or Birmingham, probably Republican.

Like sports, we learn to be loyal to certain groups long before we have the chance to think rationally about the history, science, or statistical evidence. We become baptized into allegiances and belief systems.

By the time we are old enough to have the capacity to think rationally about these things, our biases have already taken hold, skewing the information we receive into the narrative that fits our beliefs.

. . . . .

I think most could agree that willful ignorance within sports is harmless. In some ways, it is part of what makes it more enjoyable. The friendly rivalries. The trash talk over beers.

However, with the polarization of politics and the irrational phobias of religions, I would have to say that willful ignorance is becoming a growing problem in our society at large. It leads to malconformity — conforming to bad habits, ideals, groups and norms.

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives.

Willful ignorance and malconformity are not cultural legacies we should want to sustain.