Compromise

[Montmorency]

Compromise (OED)

8.II.8 ‘To put to the hazard of being censured’ (Phillips); to expose (oneself, one's own or another's reputation, credit, or interests) to risk or danger, to imperil; to involve in a hazardous course, to commit (oneself).

What's so great about compromise, and why isn't it considered a last resort in the exhaustion of other options? Why is the mere presence of compromise, rather than the content or subject, valorized?

Politics
Compromise stripped down is a function of votes. If something is worth passing into law, it is worth not compromising. Compromise is only tolerable when goals are shared. Compromise is not any kind of worthwhile ideal in itself. Often, compromise and bipartisan effort produces some of this country's worst legislation.

Life
You only compromise when:
1. You care more about your relationship with the other agent(s) than the object under compromise.
2. You have no strong preference. Any of small factors could determine the outcome. (Is it really then "compromise"?)
3. You are being coerced or commanded.


Upon inspection, the two spheres aren't so distinct.


Beyond the 'electionism-as-ideology' of the New Democrats, when and how did people get it in their heads that compromise is valuable and laudable?

Now that's what you call "political correctness".

Be cautious in referencing the English tradition or the early Republic's statesmen, as they found compromise first and foremost preferable to open bloodshed (until compromise failed, to the bemusement of some).

"Moderation" is distinct from compromise (though equally nebulous as a value and buzzword).

Taking into account the needs of minorities is distinct from compromise, and I would advance that compromise tends to be inimical to the interests of most minorities except in those cases where the majority has a material interest in preventing non-participation or sabotage by those minorities. In land management, it could correspond to a bunch of owners whose plots border each other. In fragile societies, it could correspond to the mitigation of recurrent ethnic/sectarian insurgencies. In mature societies, what we see is the political cartelization of consensus-making, where the actors that can form majorities or minorities among one another far outstrip the average private individuals, who are not the owners or users of the system.

[Furunculus]

As I have begun to typify myself:
I am endlessly flexible in [how] the practical details of a matter are implemented.
But a total zealot when it comes to matters of principle (that I care about).

e.g. something I care about:
have an absolutely cast-iron principle that britain does not end up in a serf-like position a-la EUrope.
but really don't mind how that is achieved in practice, no religious beliefs about SM, CU, EFTA, ECJ.

e.g. something I don't care about:
capital punishment in [my] society. an odd position, most are either strongly for or against.
I'm willing to go with either option as it meets the 'need' of the wider polity.

Compromise in politics:
Something i have been toying with for a while is that fptp politics encourages an empathy for others, and thus encourages compromise.
Because I (my tribe) need 'their' votes in order to take first place.
Whereas, my experience of adherents of consensual is that they preach compromise without practising it, because their preferred method insulates them from the need to care about the motivations of others.
Health warning, not sure if this attribute represents correlation or causation; it could easily be the case that consensual politics people tend to be liberal (in the american sense), and thus fall foul of Jonathan Haidt's rule vis-a-vis liberals and conservatives, i.e. that latter understand the former than is true vice versa.

[Pannonian]

Health warning, not sure if this attribute represents correlation or causation; it could easily be the case that consensual politics people tend to be liberal (in the american sense), and thus fall foul of Jonathan Haidt's rule vis-a-vis liberals and conservatives, i.e. that latter understand the former than is true vice versa.

And where do conservative liberals figure in this? Ie. people who like the liberal world that we live in, and feel no particular need to roll things back to some mythical golden age. And what about those like myself who believe in the socialism of responsibility, with a society that enables individuals to take responsibility for themselves and for their community. That stipulates low level action by low level governments that necessarily requires consensus. But that kind of low level consensus politics has been marginalised in favour of high level government that overrides anyone that disagrees with the winning side, based on ivory tower political theory and demonisation of social groups. I don't give a toss about abstract liberty that requires the Commons to stomp over every other form of government. I want more bike racks and better public transport.

[rory_20_uk]

In First Past the Post, the first rule is to design a position that captures the required number of seats. The second is to then divide into safe seats and "marginals". Then ignore all the safe and "lost" seats, and concentrate on the marginals. Do whatever they want to keep power. Build ships in Glasgow we don't need? Done if they hopefully will vote Labour. Offer to torture animals to death in the countryside? If that's what keeps the marginal Shires blue so be it.

Any disagreement in government is viewed in terms as "fractures" or other such terms. FPTP creates false monoliths where discussion and dissent are all but outlawed. Leaders to change allow this or God forbid change their mind are weak and are undertaking U turns.

Low level politics in England remains FPTP with the MP locally elected having almost no role to play in the local area, yet those who remain local are barely known to anyone. This all but destroys anyone caring about local politics.

Occasionally Central Government tries to make things at a more local level. Historically the issue has been there is then variance and some things might work better in some places than others. This is generally blamed on the central government and no one seems to listen that they have no control. The latest iteration might work better since they have installed local lightening rods (or Mayors) who can be held accountable for this. And local government tend to be more inclusive since ideals are less important than the bins being collected.

The UK I am informed is a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society, and this is a Good Thing. I am not sure when the Plebiscite was on this, but I clearly missed the memo. I'm all for the former, but against the latter. I really dislike having to look at France with envy.

Everyone has to not just tolerate each other but actively like each other, as this is a Good Thing. To not do a Good thing makes you a Bad Person and an Intolerant Xenophobe who with absolutely no irony can therefore be Prosecuted.

However, Sunnis view Shi'ites as heretics. Catholics (especially) view all other denominations as heretics. I even had a friend at University who thought that heterosexual sex was disgusting - he was gay. At work most of the African people I worked with actively disliked those from the Caribbean and vice versa - one of the latter stating "I'm not Afro-Caribbean - I'm no f*cking African!"

I would view a compromise as for people to tolerate each other - but then I am agnostic. I am not sure how one can be deeply religious in one of the more... literal religions and be expected to get on with those one's religion has said to at the very least shun.

[Montmorency]

Far be it from me to deny you guys the opportunity to speak from a personally-relevant perspective, but I wanted to hear about:

What's so great about compromise, and why isn't it considered a last resort in the exhaustion of other options? Why is the mere presence of compromise, rather than the content or subject, valorized?

When did compromise become an end of government (particularly legislative activity) in itself, at least in the rhetoric of pretty much all politicians and mainstream media?

[Pannonian]

Far be it from me to deny you guys the opportunity to speak from a personally-relevant perspective, but I wanted to hear about:

When did compromise become an end of government (particularly legislative activity) in itself, at least in the rhetoric of pretty much all politicians and mainstream media?

Compromise may not be a desirable end in and of itself. But it's a good indicator that anyone that is unwilling to compromise is someone you wouldn't want ruling over you. A shibboleth, if you like.

[rory_20_uk]

Oh, that's easy!

The old example of there being two ice cream sellers on a beach. Long story short they end up very close to each other in in the middle - as long as you are nearer more of the target audience than the other lot more will like you / hate you less than the other lot. And on average you'll win. So those that stick to principles will get nowhere unless this happens to be closer to more of the target audience.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I am still not exactly convinced that compromise or at least an attitude of compromise and conciliation is not the best approach because some issues are black and white. Yes, vaccines are good and we should have them. Yes, civil rights are good and racism is bad. But are we being willfully blind to the realities of the typical voter?

Average joe who is not affiliated with a party will pop up two months before an election to watch debates and CNN talking heads and is not going to evoke strong passions towards a given topic. In fact, they actively detest the passionate, and believe them to be the problem with politics.

To what degree did civil rights win in the 1960s not because it was the right choice but because it was framed as the middle ground between the fervent segregationists standing in front of schools on one side and the Malcom X type militants on the other (at least up until his change of heart after visiting Mecca)?

Maybe it's two parts co-dependent. We need both the compromises and the militants. Without the former we get public alienation of the core ideas, and without the latter we get a slow drift of the public discourse to the other side.

I take it back, you guys must be correct. If the last 30 years in the US have shown anything it is a drift rightward. We are lacking the conviction of stubborn leftists to hold the Democratic party to its promises towards the working class.

[rory_20_uk]

Perhaps I was less than clear - generally compromise is good and that is with mutual tolerance and so forth. But the position should be assessed and not just placed between the two. Perhaps with human nature it does indeed require both extremes just to add utility to finding compromise is.

I wish the whole left / right misnomer was scrapped and something at least slightly more complex but far more meaningful was used. I realise one can add as many dimensions as one wants but surely a compromise ends up with a number greater than one...

[Montmorency]

To what degree did civil rights win in the 1960s not because it was the right choice but because it was framed as the middle ground between the fervent segregationists standing in front of schools on one side and the Malcom X type militants on the other (at least up until his change of heart after visiting Mecca)?

Maybe it's two parts co-dependent. We need both the compromises and the militants. Without the former we get public alienation of the core ideas, and without the latter we get a slow drift of the public discourse to the other side.

A more important point than you may realize. Think also of how socialist militancy propelled social democrats to victory in Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century...

What's the point? That you need a credible fight, or you are irrelevant. Build your own power as you won't be awarded any for "game balance".


On messaging and the "Left":

What, after all, is the fundamental principle of the political left? The most obvious candidate is a preference for equality over inequality. But the left is about more than equality. After all, to ensure perfect equality, you could just make everyone equally miserable. If the left is about nothing more than “equality,” the quickest way to achieve its goals is by taking everything everyone has away and leaving them destitute.

What we’re really about, then, is making life better for people, eliminating human suffering and creating better conditions for people to exist in. We’re about taking the bad features of society, the pain and the torment and the exploitation, and replacing them with good things.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It is the job of the left to make life better, to care about improving people’s conditions in tangible ways. This means helping people achieve decent wages. Making sure they have good schools. Making sure they’re not tangled up in red tape as they try to get healthcare. Making sure that they’re not lonely, or depressed, that they have a sense of community and purpose. Our job is to bring everybody the good life, to make sure they are able to eat good food, have great healthcare, have fulfilling and rewarding work, and maximize their potential. We don’t want people stuck in dead-end tasks that they hate, we don’t want them having to worry about whether they’ll be able to pay for their children’s medical needs, we don’t want them blown to pieces in a needless war.

Yet consider how people on the left frequently talk: in abstractions, generalities, and theories, in ways that don’t put our principles in intelligible terms. Partly because so much left-wing thinking originates in the academy, the language of the left frequently doesn’t lend itself to mass appeal. Instead of talking about suffering, cruelty, and deprivation, the left now frequently talks about “marginalization” and “exclusion.”

we need terms that make clear to everybody what the problem is and what it would look like if the problem were solved. We should be careful about using language that is unclear or vague, because this makes our goals fuzzy.

It’s important to believe in things that are real. Left-wing principles are often stated in abstractions. For example, “fighting oppression” or “creating equality.”

The more one uses shorthand terms (like “systemic injustice”) rather than descriptors of the actual problems in people’s lives that this shorthand term refers to (like “women being fired for becoming pregnant” or “factories closing and leaving hundreds of dads unable to pay for their children to visit the doctor” or “black men on the way home from their jobs being thrown against police cars and frisked” or “transgender people being bullied and beaten up and then crying all night believing they are totally hated and alone in the world”), the less we help people who are not leftists understand what we are actually concerned with.

Utopian thinking is often seen as the height of uselessness, because it necessarily speculates on worlds that don’t exist rather than dealing pragmatically with the world that does exist. But this misses a crucial purpose of these dreams: They help us understand what the end goal is, what the underlying vision is toward which we want to keep moving. By envisioning the promised land, you can chart a path toward it. You may not get there. But you will at least be heading in the right direction. (This is one reason why Martin Luther King’s dream was such an effective image; it offered a vision of a seemingly impossible world and gave people something to look forward to and begin to build together.) [...]
But you still need an answer to the obvious follow-up question “Well, if you’re not Donald Trump, then what are you?” Progressives therefore need a meaningful vision. Why should people want a left-wing world? What does the left actually stand for? And what would it actually look like to have a world in which the things the left wants are implemented? If nobody gives people a clear answer to these questions, then we cannot expect people to sign on to our program.

Don’t Move To the Right, Move to the Good – When Democrats lose, they sometimes have a tendency to believe they should act more like Republicans in order to win. This is true in one sense, in that Republicans know how to accomplish their political agenda while Democrats do not. But it shouldn’t be taken to mean that Democrats should adopt more right-wing political positions in order to attract a broader base of support. If you try to be both progressive and conservative, you’ll end up being nothing at all. People are far more likely to respect sincere progressives who are truthful about their values than politicians who take the public’s temperature via focus group and adopt their political positions accordingly. Liberalism does not need to be more watery, it needs to be more principled and genuine. People dislike liberals not because their ideas are too radical, but because they are frequently hypocritical (say by flying around in private jets while preaching about inequality) and because they are perceived to be elitist (say by insisting that people who disagree with them are dumb and uneducated). We don’t need to get rid of our commitments, we need to be persuasive in presenting them.

Communication must be effective if it is to be of any use at all. That means you need plain language. Preserving the social safety net. Getting tough on the 1%. Saving the middle class. We do not like cruelty. What is cruelty? Intentionally causing a person feel to feel pain and being indifferent to or enjoying that pain. Why is Donald Trump cruel? Because deporting people inflicts terrible pain on families, and sexual assaulting people traumatizes them.

Many ideological differences are not mere “misunderstandings” and it will be impossible to find common ground. Sometimes values are simply in conflict. But where resolutions are possible, we should try to find them before dismissing a clash as intractable.