That quote gets less convincing by the day. It has reached a state where it’s regurgitated without proper context or consideration and is now no more than a deepity. There are plenty of “unreasonable men” adapting the world to themselves. Bezos, Musk, Trump, they are all changing the world for the worse.
> Progress is movement towards a perceived refined, improved, or otherwise desired state.
I.e. progress is understood as positive advancement. Otherwise we use other words like “regression”.
The quote as it is typically used is advocating for the unreasonable man because they precipitate progress. My point is that we shouldn’t idolise this idea of advancement in the abstract, because pretty clearly it can turn everything to shit. We’re not benefiting from those unreasonable men, quite the contrary.
I think the use of "progress" in the quote is somewhat ironic -- "movement towards a perceived refined [...] state", as the definition puts it; an unreasonable person's perception of progress likely doesn't match up with a reasonable person's.
As I see it, the quote neither advocates nor critiques unreasonableness, but rather observes that unreasonable people are most often the ones responsible for change. Whether you take that as a lesson on the merits of unreasonableness, the dangers of it, or something in between, is up to interpretation, and depends on how much one values reasonableness vs progress (for the record, I've heard the quote more often in a negative sense by people who put reasonableness above "progress"). It also depends on one's definition of "reasonableness" of course, and whether something can be unreasonable yet still a positive.
So I guess my point is that the quote can mean just about whatever you want it to mean. It's an interesting litmus test. I do agree that people using it as carte blanche for unreasonableness in the name of some sort of nebulous "progress" is, well, unreasonable, though with context I'm certain GP was using it as more of a critique.
>Bezos, Musk, Trump, they are all changing the world for the worse.
But they are changing it. "progress" in this case doesn't imply change for the better, only the will to power.
It's obviously wrong in the sense that the world is full of unreasonable men who only managed to ruin their own lives and the lives of others, and because plenty of change has occurred through "reasonable" means by "reasonable" people. What separates Bezos, Musk, Trump and the like isn't their unreasonableness so much as the power their privilege gives them. Trump was a C-tier celebrity known for being rich and playing himself on tv, then he was granted the privilege of the presidency. Musk and Bezos have the privilege of vast wealth and the control of companies. They have the power to bend reality to their will not because of their refusal to bend to the rules of society, but because the rules of society consider it reasonable that wealth should equal power.
It's a Nietzschean statement about self-actualization undermined by the reality of capitalism.
