On Compromise

The following post is a copy of another post I made in my friend's blog post: The Knights of the Square Table.

Today, I feel like writing about compromise. Ever since my discussion with Blake concerning his argument with Matt about education (as written about in a previous blog post), I have been contemplating the "the tao of compromise." For those of you "stupid, rich, ignorant, white Westerners" out there, "tao" means "way of" or "art of."

Just in case you are either too lazy to read Blake's post, or are like me and don't care what Blake writes (hehe), his ingenious post articulated how he reached the epiphany of compromise between both his and Matt's radical views. On one side, Matt advocated almost complete anarchy in our education system with no control by the federal government. Blake, on the other hand, was basically advocating a right-wing, religious, theocratic, and tyrannical education. (Another note: I have recently been experimenting with John Adam's maxim, "Why use only one adjective when six or seven will do just as well?") His compromising solution was to let the states handle education. In this issue, the two extremes involve federal control and anarchy. State regulation, therefore, is a compromise between the two sides.

My point that I'm trying to get at is that compromise is often-ignored political tool that can work wonders. Not only does it work to satisfy both sides, but it often ends up being the "right" thing to do anyway. Examples throughout history are numerous, and recently, I came across a personal, real-world example that I will reveal in a minute.

Historically, compromise was the foundation of our legislative branch. In The Great Compromise, otherwise known as the Connecticut Compromise, agreed to at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, the big states and small states agreed to a bicameral legislator, consequently forming the Senate and House of Representatives.

Unfortunately, I can't think of any other big historical examples, but here is my recent personal example. I am an officer in an organization called Arnold Air Society, which is basically a community service-oriented honors society exclusively for top Air Force ROTC cadets. Every year, candidates go through an extensive training process in order to be initiated. Near the end of their training, we have to evaluate whether we think they are worthy to go through with the final stage, an extended training exercise (usually a rough all-weekend, hardcore, paintball match in which they have to demonstrate teamwork, leadership, knowledge, and blah blah blah) and get formally initiated at the end). Naturally, we have to evaluate these candidates based on what we think they will do once they are in AAS, not what they have done in the past. However, it is only natural to want to initiate them after they have gone through all hard work of the training process.

Anyway, our squadron commander (CC) brought up the issue of a certain candidate whom he had worries about. This cadet supposedly has an "attitude," and our CC thought, based in part on his performance, that this candidate, whom I will now call Bob, would only perform at a minimal level (meet standards and be done with it). So, our CC put it to a vote, and the kid was not accepted. Personally, I abstained from the vote simply because I had not interacted with Bob very much and was not very involved in the candidate training process. There are numerous details I could bore you with, but the simple matter is that it has to be understood within an AFROTC context...and it would be extremely boring. Several of us felt extremely disappointed because we felt bad for Bob after putting him through all that training.

A couple days later, I pulled a "Blake Maneuver" and had an epiphany. Unfortunately, it was already too late to influence the decision. When you become a member of AAS, it is not necessary that you have a job or any responsibility. You have to get service hours, go to meetings, etc; but not necessarily any more than that. The circumstances upon which we rejected Bob and were definitely ambiguous, but if we let him continue and finish the process, we would have given him a chance to prove us wrong. Furthermore, by initiating and giving him very gradual responsibility, we would not have had to worry about him bringing the squadron down. Lastly, if he did not perform up to par, he would not have enjoyed the benefits or recognition of having a squadron job. On one side, we did not want to accept him. On the other side, he would have joined the squadron, performed poorly, and hurt the squadron. My idea represented the magic word: "compromise."

My experiences with compromise now offer me a guiding light for any serious future decisions or opinions. Compromise and moderation are often the answer. In the future, hopefully, I can be more aware of the circumstances and the factors concerning my decision-making. In the AAS example, maybe I could have made the difference between Bob getting initiated into AAS or not. As a political figure one day, you never know, it may mean the difference between passing The Great Compromise or not.