Case For Being Unreasonable

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

 –George Bernard Shaw

After reading this quote, I wanted to see who the news was calling unreasonable.  When typing in unreasonable in Google News, I saw articles about Steve Jobs and Facebook.  Facebook and Steve Jobs did not adapt to the world, but took this world to another level.  This did not come without cost.  The battles and resistance that Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook) and Steve Jobs (Founder of Apple and Pixar) faced is dramatic. Despite opposition, these men's creations changed our lives.  


About Steve Jobs, Adam Savage (Host of Documentary on Jobs) said:

“Steve Jobs was an unreasonable man. He didn’t simply give the public what they wanted, he defined entirely new ways of thinking about our lives in the digital space." 

In the study of psychology, there have been many reasons put forward for such resistance to change. The single most important consideration would be the risk of change is greater than the risk of staying put. This is because while current practices have been tried and simulated on historical cases, a new practice requires one to venture into uncharted territories as there are no models for the new practice.

"Change is hard because people overestimate the value of what they have—and underestimate the value of what they may gain by giving that up."

— James Belasco and Ralph Stayer

Flight of the Buffalo (1994)

We stand in awe as we watch one person make a difference, but what we do not fully know is the courage that was required to stand against opposition.  Dramatic change does not come without its opposition. 

We now regard Galileo, an Italian astronomer, mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, as one of the “greatest scientific thinkers of all time.”  However, during his life in the early 1600s, due to his theory, courage and convictions which violated Catholic Church teachings that the Earth was not the center of the Universe, he spent the last years of his life under house arrest. Some people can’t help but look with discomfort or fear as someone goes against tradition.  

Is it worth it?

There cannot be leadership without courage.  It requires the unpopular decision sometimes, Aristotle called courage the first virtue, because it makes all of the other virtues possible. Thomas S. Monson said the everyone has fear, but it is people that face their fear with dignity that have courage. Despite fears, everyone has a desire to be courageous in some form and the ability to do so.  It takes courage to make a difference in one's own life.  It takes courage to stand in front of others and lead them in a world that is known to resist change. Courage, not fear progresses society forward.


Deep down inside, many of us look in awe wishing we had the courage to stand boldly with our deepest convictions and make history.  Whether it is fear of the unknown or because people overvalue what they have, there is always resistance when change is happening. That is why courage is a necessary aspect of leadership.  It is almost inevitable that there will be resistance, but if we want to make a change, we will need courage.  We will need to be "unreasonable."  

It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth 

than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to 

stand up for it. --A.A. Hodge