Let's be unreasonable

Ever since I read it as a kid, I have been fascinated by the following quote from the insightful and witty George Bernard Shaw:

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Alright, replace "man" with "person" if you must: Shaw did not live in the politically correct era (although I doubt if it would have made any difference to him even if he did). But that is besides the point.

Consider the "unreasonable" person. We have all met him/her, sometimes in the mirror, too. Think of the aggressive negotiators ("Here's a great deal for you: I will buy twice of what you're offering for half the price you're quoting for one"), the bosses from hell ("I expect you to divine what I want before I say it, and then deliver it before I expect it. With top quality, by the way. That's all"), the perfectionists ("Detail 34 on page 345 of the Appendix may be off by a couple of decimal points: could you please re-check?") or the hard-charging bulldozers ("My business has doubled in the last two years. Now I want it to double again .. this time in one year. What do you mean that's impossible?") and many other types of unreasonable people you might have come across.

They can be irritating, painful to endure or even outright annoying. But is Shaw right in saying that we owe our progress to such people? And if "reasonable" can be approximated to "nice", can Shaw's quote above be loosely interpreted to mean, "Nice guys finish last"?

By extension, does this also mean that there is a tension between progress and happiness? Because even if unreasonable people create progress by pushing boundaries and driving change, they sure don't create a lot of happiness. Not inside them, and not around them. They are perpetually dissatisfied and usually insecure, always feeling a need to validate themselves via their next achievement. By contrast, reasonable people, who adapt to things as they are, seem more happy with themselves and with the world around them.

Is this all part of a grander design? Do these unreasonable people exist to challenge the "impossible" so that that they can create new possibilities and make the world a better place for the rest of the reasonable population to enjoy? Would it then be right to see them as martyrs to the cause of our greater collective happiness?

But before we jump to that view, here is another perspective. Unreasonable people drive change, but is all change good? For instance, unreasonable people like Hitler drove regressive and reprehensible changes. It was therefore right for these people to have been stopped in their tracks.

Even if we talk only of constructive change, does more progress always mean more happiness? There is research out there that questions our entire developmental paradigm, which implicitly assumes that higher GDP / capita leads to happier populations. While that is certainly true for countries struggling with basic economic issues like a lack of food, housing, education and employment, perhaps the GDP-happiness correlation weakens at higher levels of GDP above a certain minimum, as this "world happiness map" seems to suggest.

The color coding of this map - brown = unhappy, yellow is in between and green = happy - raises interesting questions. I must caveat this map, however. The methodology is still being debated, and I cannot vouch for the validity of the results.

So what does this all mean to us? Should we encourage the unreasonable instincts within us to drive progress, or be reasonable and happy, but not too progressive. Arrgh! Choices!

My vote is to be "unreasonable" in order to be a change agent, but do this consciously in a way that creates constructive change, progress AND happiness. Think of Gandhi or Lincoln as the iconic role models of this kind of unreasonableness.

Let's be unreasonable ... but still have a soul and a heart! Come on, be reasonable!