I've always liked being liked. For most of my life, this was a yardstick that I could rely on to tell me how I was doing - a clear and measurable way to tell that I was progressing. Whether in school or moving to a new place, "being liked" was both something I knew how to aim for and was clearly a good thing. How could it not be, everyone likes you! But, after some time on this never-ending tour of appeasement, a small voice in my head started asking what I was giving up by insisting on gaining the reputation as a likable, reasonable, person. Perhaps more cynical branding - calling it "popularity contest" rather than "getting along with people" - would have had me questioning it sooner.

My current view, which undoubtedly will be revised again before too long, is that far more credit is due to those with the courage to not chase popularity. Those who will persist through the discomfort of being unreasonable, when the situation demands it. Once this idea caught hold in my head, I felt like the world repeated it back to me wherever I turned. From Theodore Roosevelt's epic "Man in the arena" speech, to Lin Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, stories throughout history put the spotlight on those stubborn individuals that belong to team "unreasonable". They have their eyes set on something and will take the best route there, regardless of how many toes they will step on during their journey. The opinions of others can not get in the way of their goals. Even as the underdog, they boldly face the antagonist and demand to know if you stand for nothing, what will you fall for?

Off-screen, in our day to day lives, these unreasonable people get a very different treatment. Once a troublemaker achieves something, they and their achievements are celebrated and any past sins of rocking the boat are quickly brushed aside. After all, we want to celebrate the progress. The arrow of time clearly points from boat-rocking to trailblazing, not the other way around, but we still find it very difficult to permit unreasonable behavior from the unaccomplished. This is perhaps the central point - it seems like society believes we can have trailblazing without boat-rocking, despite the numerous examples in history to the contrary. Everything we take for granted pissed someone off when it first came about. Bicycles were accused of corrupting women by helping them escape from home, every new hot musician since Elvis has been labelled a satanist, and even writing was rejected by Socrates when it was invented. A reasonable person, aiming to be liked, would have caved in the face of these protests, and abandoned their ideas. And we’d be left sitting here without books, music, and bikes, blindly agreeing with each other just to be nice.

Fine, I might be a bit too unreasonable here. Reasonable people can get to progress too. We should of course aim to get along with people, and being unreasonable does not give you a free pass to be a jerk to your friend because “that’s how we get progress”. On balance, though, I think most of us can afford to be a tad more stubborn, stand by our views, and worry less about ruffling feathers.

A rocky boat might be less comfortable than a steady one today, but who knows what insights it will lead to tomorrow. It's a weird kind of free-rider problem. No one wants to be around the unreasonable person who will argue over every detail and insist that their view of the world is the correct one. This cost is only borne by those immediately around that person. In case the unreasonable individual’s idea is good, the benefits are shared around the world. If so, we, on a collective level, are limiting the number of new ideas that get tested.

This seems like a huge bummer, which I unfortunately have no clue how to address. All I can do is decide what I do myself. So, until I do, I will lean on this flimsy intellectual crutch, and hope that you accept my advanced apology for being a bit more unreasonable moving forward.