Drivers and Leaders of Change

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

- George Bernard Shaw -

I beg to differ with George Bernard Shaw's conclusion in this inductive statement. Since our world is ever-changing, adapting to the world would mean adapting to change. Unreasonable people, as put here, are the leaders of the change. That, I perfectly agree with. However, progress is only made when the reasonable man accepts the idea of the leader, and adopts it. So the very success of the unreasonable man depends greatly on the reasonable man. Like what we saw in one of the videos presented in class, it is the first follower that makes the leader not just another 'lone nut'. And it is the many followers that join in the after that that makes the movement huge, and distinguishes it as progress. Yes, the unreasonable man drives the change, just like a bus driver. But if no one boards the bus, then he is simple taking himself to the destination, with no purpose or profit whatsoever. There are many bus drivers who drive buses with no passengers on board. I believe they are among us, and their number is more than we can imagine. They are the unheard voices. Unfortunately, you have to shout really loud in this world to be heard, precisely because of the many voices drowning each other out. Only few ride buses carrying many on board. And these are our leaders of world change. 

Who/What are the drivers of world change then? Many of them were discussed during the lesson. Technology, the environment, ideologies, globalization and in more depth sustainability and consumer expectations. I believe these are the vehicles of world change. The drivers of the vehicles are us, the human race. 

So what drives the human race? Why are we constantly breaking our own limits, constantly innovating, constantly learning, constantly consuming more and more and more… Surely they are our values, the values we are rooted upon. We talk about self-interest and enlightened self-interest. Using firms as a model, we look at how they either strive to fill their own pockets at the expense of others or to fill their own pockets bringing solutions to the imperfections in our world today. There is one underlying motivator here, and that is pride. Pride drives a man to want more than he should have, drives a man to always fight his way to the top, drives a man to think destiny is in his own hands. It is pride which drives man to conquest. Columbus is such an example, so is hitler. Did they influence change? Most certainly. So is pride the main driver of world change?

However dominant pride may be in influencing world change, there is an opposing force. Again it boils down to values. There are people who live for something more than themselves, for something that lasts beyond their lifetime. These are the Mother Theresas, the Ghandis and a more recent example would be Mohammad Yunus, founder of Grameen bank. Man's intentions for what they do, we will never be able to fully read into. But the world is shaped by this battle of Good vs Evil. Question is: Who is the judge? Puts into perspective the choices we have to make and the decisions that have twisted our fate. 

I know i'm diving a little deep into the question. Its just the most prevailing thought of the day, out of the many others. I did think the presentations today were thought invoking. However, my feedback for this class is that the topic is simply too wide. I believe in the empowerment of students to make about what they want to learn in each topic, however, narrowing it down would make it easier for them to process these things that learnt. Its just the feedback for this particular topic. Hope it helps! Still very engaging though.

Lesson rating: 7