Revenge of the Tipping Point: Overstories, Superspreaders, and the Rise of Social Engineering

by Malcolm Gladwell

A monoculture typically emerges only when something happens, deliberate or otherwise, to upset the natural order—for instance, when a group of affluent parents comes together to create a community that perfectly reflects their commitment to achievement and excellence. The parents of Poplar Grove wanted a monoculture, at least until it dawned on them that a monoculture, even an apparently perfect one, comes with a cost. Epidemics love monocultures.

A monoculture, on the other hand, offers no internal defenses against an outside threat. Once the infection is inside the walls, there is nothing to stop it.

Havel’s conclusion was astonishingly prescient: “What if [the brighter future] has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us and kept us from developing it?”