Chapter 1: The Three Rules of Epidemics

Chapter one talked mainly about what Gladwell referred to as the "tipping point". This being that point at which a few seemingly unrelated events are united and become notable. He uses Epidemics to better describe this phenomenon. In short, there are people who initially contract a disease, then there are others who help to spread the disease and eventually you get a tipping point where the disease becomes widespread. It's not necessarily true that the initial person who contracted the disease meant to spread it to others and those others meant to spread it to more, but whatever the intention, the disease was spread. Although epidemics are not viewed as positive things in the world, I believe that Gladwell was trying to paint a bigger picture about the significance of the tipping point. By portraying it in a negative light, we can see the power of the tipping point. It only takes a couple people to create something that can effect hundred of thousands of individuals. This chapter made me think about history and how every major event only happened because somewhere along the line, smaller moments came together in such a way that caused the larger one to occur. This reminded me of history class when we learned about the cause of World War I. Most people, myself included, remember the main cause to be the assassination of the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand. Whether it was his funny name or the perfection in one mans death creating a World War, that moment in history, for me at least, stuck. We don’t remember the Bosnian Annexation Crisis or the Accession of Wilhelm II to the throne, although they played just as big roles in the start of World War I as the assassination did. However, they are not remembered. Why is that? It’s because they weren’t the straws that broke the camels back so to speak. They weren’t the tipping point and they, therefore, aren’t remembered. In life, we remember that which makes the biggest splash and leaves the deepest marks. Anything in between is forgotten and to remember it is to understand how you got to the finish line, which to me is more important than getting there.