Compromise: The Forgotten Necessity

An old Dr. Seuss rhyme tells of two creatures, one traveling east, the other west. Through happenstance, these two run straight into each other, and the first tells the second to move aside so he can continue east. The second refuses to budge, instead demanding that the first move so that he can move west. Both refuse to move, and stand there, glaring at each other as the landscape surrounding them slowly changes and progresses into the modern age, leaving them behind.

Compromise is at the heart of all civilization. From humanity's humblest beginnings, people have had opposing ideas on how to shape the world. Without compromise, people could never form cities or nations, or develop the advances in science, medicine, or engineering that benefit the modern world.

Across the globe, people fight against other ethnicities, religions, or nationalities, blaming them for society's ills. One culture dismisses another as backwards, violent, greedy, or immoral. Too often when someone commits a crime or acts in an immoral way, his or her victims hold the wrongdoer's entire group equally culpable. Excessive patriotism paints one's own society as flawlessly enlightened and other countries as foolish or evil. Radical religious leaders preach hate against others, declaring that only their narrow-minded view is right and all others are heathens, infidels, and a blight upon humanity, dismissing reconciliation as destructive 'moral relativism,' fearing that even the acknowledgment of the enemy as humans is detrimental.

How then can society solve the problem of absolutism that reduces all to black and white?

People do not need to abandon their convictions and beliefs in order to promote cooperation. All that they need to do is to stop seeing those with different views as monsters or subhuman. We do not need to agree with another viewpoint, but we need to recognize that those who disagree with us are still human beings and that if we look hard enough we can find a kernel of common ground between two sides of an issue. And if various factions can realize that without compromise there is no progress, then compromise becomes that much more likely.

For example, America's founding fathers all had different ideas on what the infant American nation should become. Slavery was one especially polarizing issue, yet the minds of the era knew that if they did not compromise on such difficult issues as slavery for the time being, there would be never be a United States. And while some people supported slavery before and after those fateful days of 1776, and others still fought against it, they all were able to temporarily put the polarizing issue aside to accomplish what needed to be done: forming a nation.

It is easy for people to be crushed by the emotions of polarization, the unwillingness to find common ground. If humanity wishes to better itself, then we must realize that without compromise, there can be no progress in the world. We must understand that compromise and teamwork are the first steps to community.