The Artistry of Misfits and Rebels

“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.” – George Bernard Shaw

Misfits. Rebels. These are two of the many words that describe the personality of those who choose to defy societal standards, question established norms and deeply ingrained traditions. You can find these breeds anywhere, be it in politics, business, religion, or profession. They are people who don’t give a damn about what the society says. They are characterized by their unflagging effort to see to the reversal of deeply ingrained societal construct — a normalized way of doing or seeing things which any variation or deviation from the norm is considered abomination.

These people are the fishes out of the water. They are the square pegs in a round hole. They are unreasonably crazy. Stupid. And inherently stubborn. They are not people who think outside the box. Rebels simply thinks like there’s no box. They are free in their thinking just as much as they are free in their will to think. They don’t view the world through the same lens as others. Rebels create their own lenses, and view the world through that lens. In a sense, when they look at the world they are not seeing what the society wants them to see, they are seeing what they want to see.

There’s always a cost to being different, that’s why it’s a choice very few people make. It’s easy, extremely easy, to go along with the crowd. To be normal. To think the way people think, refusing the urge to be creative. But to be the one who says “no” when the multitudes are yelling “yes”, it takes more than being a man born of a woman. It takes being a man conscious of his environment and the implication of a rebellious mind. It takes knowing an action might cost you your life/career, but standing still undauntedly until the very end.

We have seen rebels pioneered new technologies. We have seen misfits championed very radical ideologies. To them normal isn’t final. They are explorers and until all other options and variations have been explored and tested out, they weren’t ready for acceptance. Little wonder why rebels are never short of ideas. They are constantly thinking of ways to make, reform or rebuild. They are thinkers and as any thinker would readily testify, they hate others setting the standards or dictating what should be and what should not.

Steve Jobs is an all time rebel. A misfit in the inextricable world of technology. He’s someone whose obsession to shrinkage is second to none. He’s not just a fan of inadequately big and robust technological items. He loves it simple, and according to him, “simple is complex”. So he always thought of ways to shrink things into smaller sizes without them losing potentials.

The Apple Mac was a result of several shrinkages. It took a great deal of chiseling and fine-tuning to come up with a mini computer that does what giant computers invented by IBM can do. But at the time when everyone was thinking the invention of the Mac was a great achievement, a monumental success and a great bewilderment to tech lovers, Steve decided to shock them further. They had seen small things but he decided to give them a still smaller thing. He set the pace for the shrinkage of the Mac into the iPad. His engineers were yelling it was impossible but Steve didn’t argue, he only told them to “Think Different” and today, I’m writing this article with the result of that conversation.

What more? At a time when the whole world was entangled with phones with keypads, he led his engineer and they challenged that system, birthing the first smartphone fully operational by touch. Steve Jobs saw the way the world was, he could have adapted himself to it by flooding the cellphone market with more cellphones with keypads, but that is not typical of him, it gives him satisfaction seeing to the disruption of existing norms, he instead adapted the world to himself by challenging the status quo. He gave his employees a sense of belonging. He told them to “Think Different”, and today, that has become a movement.

Henry Ford is also leading exemplar in the short list of rebels. A very articulate and dogged creative. Another confirmed misfit whose obsession is also associated with shrinkage. Henry Ford risked the entirety of his career to develop and produce a V-8 engine for mass produced cars. Producing the engine was not an easy feat. But it takes a man with stubbornness in stride like Henry Ford to achieve such.

Henry Ford was crazy enough to put his career on the line while challenging the system. Steve Jobs too was crazy enough to put his company on the line. And they both ended up changing the way we see things in the world. They did not try to adapt themselves to the world. Instead, they persisted, and succeeded in adapting the world to themselves. They are creatives. They are rebels. They are misfits. Their kind is RARE.