On Being Unreasonable: Breaking the Rules and Making Things Better

A unified theory of reasonableness – and how to be unreasonable for the right reasons.

We're living in an age of division. From abortion rights to immigration, gun control to climate change, civil debate has gone out the window. Manners, order, and respect are being eroded. Why can't we all be reasonable?

The trouble is, what's "reasonable" to one person is outrageous to another. Is it okay to let children play in the backyard while others are working from home? To do your makeup on a train, or recline your seat on an airplane? What's the right way to breastfeed? To protect your neighborhood? To protest against injustice and oppression? In a world where we all think we're being reasonable, how can we figure out what's right?

Looking back through history and around the world, Kirsty Sedgman set out to discover how unfairness and discrimination got baked into our social norms, dividing us along lines of gender, class, disability, sexuality, race… Instead of measuring human behavior against outdated standards of rules and reason, On Being Unreasonable argues that sometimes we need to act unreasonably to bring about positive change.