All Progress

An investigation into the origins of the famous fortune cookie saying All progress occurs because people dare to be different led me to a dead end, and I missed these important points.

Why?

Why this particular pearl of wisdom? Harry Millner compiled around 4,000 others in his book. This one isn’t even at the start of the book: the All progress quote appears on page 230 of Pearls of Wisdom.

Part of the reason why this saying is so widespread almost certainly comes down to randomness. My guess is that in the distant past of the Internet, someone found that saying in Harry Millner’s book appealing, and copied it to their brand new web page, because they needed to fill in empty space. From there, it spread organically, as witnessed by the ongoing process of mutated attributions. Changing “Harry Millner” to “Harry Milner” or “Henry Miller” is a lot like chain letter evolution pre-Internet.

But the saying has to have appeal to spread after the initial zoonotic event, where it jumped from paper to electronic media. I believe at least part of the appeal is the “dare to be different” phrase.

Everyone wants to be the hero of their own story. Daring is a romantic, brave action. Being different (but not too different) is also appealing, at least in English-speaking countries, like UK and USA.

If you dare to be different, you’re doing a dashing, romantic thing, and you’re making progress! That’s got to get you some dates.

The Ambiguity of Progress

Another part of the appeal of Harry Millner’s legacy is that “progress” is an ambiguous and loaded term. There’s a good deal of argument about what progress even means. I think this ambiguity allows anyone who reads Harry Millner’s saying to read into it whatever form of “progress” they like the most: scientific, financial, manufacturing, political.

Another orientation, another saying, a real authority

Consider what Alfred North Whitehead said about progress:

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

This is almost exactly opposite of Harry Millner’s idea, or George Bernard Shaw’s similar thought, provided you equate progress with advancing civilization.

This particular saying floats around the web almost as prolifically as Harry Millner’s, so it too must resonate with people.

Whitehead produced a body of philosophical, scientific and mathematical work, and taught at both Cambridge and Harvard universities. Unlike Harry Millner, he was an authority. That authority lends some metaphorical heft to his pithy observation.

What value?

Does the saying has any value? Does it have any relevance?

Harry Millner didn’t cite a source for it, unlike other quotes he credits to Jesus, or Pope Pius X. The large number of appearances of this saying on the web typically cite Harry Millner as the source, although some cite Harry Milner or even Henry Miller.

If the saying has any validity, it’s not due to the authority of who wrote it. The saying is almost the entirety of Harry Millner’s intellectual legacy. There are used copies of his Pearls of Wisdom book floating around, but Harry Millner produced no artistic, literary or academic body of work to give him any authority. He/she/they have left no record of any feats of leadership, endurance, athletics or military strategy.

There is no reason to believe that because Harry Millner said it, it must be true. I believe that means the saying must stand on its own, without the support of an authoritative source.

Consider this image, from an Internet Weirdo on Bluesky that goes by Inspirational Skeletor.

Skeletor is a cartoon super villain from a 1980s animated TV show created specifically to sell plastic “action figures”. Skeletor-the-super villain was comically evil. An Inspirational Skeletor is quite absurd, and thus deliberately undermines the authority of who posts the saying in favor of the innate truth and authority of the saying itself.

Meme from Inspirational Skeletor

There are a lot of ways to read Inspirational Skeletor’s meme. The mundane setting can be considered in interpretations. Inspirational Skeletor’s own bizarre presence in the meme, combined with his inherent absurdity probably should encourage us to ignore comically evil, surrealist and thoughtlessly optimistic interpretations.

We could read the meme as encouraging us to imagine that a simple thing, perhaps a seed, or a small idea, could literally or metaphorically blossom into a flower. We could read the meme as encoring us to get off the dime, to take that first step towards a larger, glorious goal or accomplishment.

Since we are all subject to the stark fist of Gall’s Law, this meme could also remind us to start with a simple system that works.

Inspirational Skeletor’s hyperxiological choices force us to consider his aphorism on its own. This is quite different than web pages attributing All progress occurs because people dare to be different to “Harry Millner”.

Does this pearl of wisdom have any value on its own? I don’t think it does. Where Inspirational Skeletor urges us to see the simple, or maybe just to start something, Harry Millner wants us to be daring, and to be different. Starting simple is far easier than being daring and different.

Skeletor and Millner both leave us with ambiguous ends of something marvelous and progress. Who determines whether or not something is marvelous? You do. A mandate of the masses, or at least a mandate of historians, determine whether or not progress occurred, and some time in the future at that. You’ve got no say in that determination.

I conclude that Harry Millner wrote something that’s appealing to those of us who don’t consider things deeply or for long, but doesn’t have any actual value. You can be as different as you dare, but the world is so big, contains so many political, economic and cultural partitions that you will have exactly zero effect on any of them.