Compromising America
How often do you find yourself giving in, to do things someone else’s way? Do you agree with others, because you want to be reasonable? Ask yourself, were you wrong in to begin with though?
Compromise, a word that means so much to us in modern times. We are raised hearing of its virtues, are taught that it is our moral obligation to belive in, preach, and live by it. After all it is only the right, and just thing to do. We have to understand everyone else’s point of view after all. But do we really know what it means? I acctually had to look the word up to know a true deffinition of it. Let me give you the most basic definition that I found.
Compromise: To settle by concessions.
Pretty plain and simple isn’t it? I give up something, you give up something. We reach an agreement that we can both adheer too. Simple right? Its the logical thing to do isn’t it? I mean we’ve all heard how wonderful it is, and we can be proud of how reasonable we are. But I have one more question that this brings to mind. What are we conceeding to each other?
I mean what happens, hypothetically, when I’m right, and in that case, you’re wrong. I’m conceeding the stronger position. Giving up on doing the right thing. For what? To be reasonable? And what are you doing when your wrong? Is it conceeding to admit that something is wrong, and you’re giving it up? How am I being reasonable to give into your weaker, wrong demands? I could be wrong but, I was sure that to make things better in life, we did what was right, not what is obviously wrong.
But are things always so simple? We can easily see how we compromise a punishment to our children. After all its only something small. They’re only a child. They don’t know any better. But the next incident is only a little worse. We were reasonable before. We don’t want to be mean. We can let this slide too. What can that build to in eightteen years? We’ve always been reasonable. Willing to compromise, and we’ve conceded to them what was right for so long. How can we suddenly put them on the straight, and narrow now? Maybe we shouldn’t have compromised our own rules to begin with. After all, we set those rules for a reason.
Now, mind you, we all know that life is full of grey areas. So of course, we don’t want to be so stuck in our ways, that we can’t change our stripes from time to time, when its called for of course. Of course what that neighbor boy did was wrong. But his Father, he’s such an angry man that the poor kid has a hard home life. I mean it’s a terrible thing that a child isn’t taught right from wrong, or has bad examples set for them from day one. But isn’t right, right? Isn’t wrong still wrong? Are we doing such a great service to the child by compromiseing these principals? Or, are we simply reenforcing bad examples, and behaivior, with our reasonable nature?
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