Routes

I live in a small city on the west bank of a river. To the north and east lies a city on the opposite bank of the river. To drive between the two cities, you face the question of crossing a bridge right away, and making most of the trip on the opposite side of the river, or driving along your starting side of the river and crossing a bridge close to your destination. Both routes will get you to the same destination, and both routes have their adherents, some who feel very passionately that THEIR route is "right" and the other route is "wrong". There is a third choice, crossing a bridge midway between the two cities, and making a significant part of the trip in both sides of the river, but that route is rarely used, probably because it is the least direct and most difficult.

People make the choice based on a multitude of different criteria, including speed, scenery, familiarity, weather, and the specifics of the exact starting and ending locations. Personally, I do not believe that either route is "right" or "wrong", though I generally choose the route that is most familiar to me.

Much of life, and many of our disagreements, involve debates similar to driving between these two cities. Either route will get us to the same place, but we may choose differently based on our priorities and our familiarities. This is one of those areas in which some are loathe to face the truth that there is no "best" route, since determining the best route would require first determining the criteria to use to decide the best route. To some, certain criteria are obvious; to others, different criteria are equally obvious. In the end, the least effective route is a compromise between the two, if a compromise can be found at all. Sadly, this is often the route we are forced to take, based upon the need for compromise.

We are taught since childhood to embrace compromise, that compromise is a good and noble thing. Sometimes it is, but other times it is ineffective or impossible. There is also the issue of what I call false compromise -- something that sounds like a compromise, but is not.

A true example: A teenage girl was dating an older boy who lived some distance away. The girl asked her parents if she could stay overnight at her boyfriend's house every weekend, to save on travel. The parents told her they did not approve of her spending the night at her boyfriend's house. The daughter offered a compromise: She would stay overnight at her boyfriend's house every OTHER weekend. This certainly SOUNDS like a compromise midway between the two positions, but in fact it is mostly the daughter's "route," with barely a nod toward the parents' "route."

We are sometimes offered such "false compromises" -- ideas that are presented as "compromises" but actually would require us to give up all of our priorities and embrace someone else's -- and then find ourselves appearing to be unreasonable if we reject the "compromise." We must not be mindlessly subjugated to the idea of compromise, especially since even true and fair compromises may be totally ineffective.

Sometimes the only effective way to reach a goal is consistency. When the bridge midway between the two cities is closed, you must choose to travel on the west side or the east side of the river. Either route will get you to your destination, and neither is necessarily better, but you have to choose one or the other. Once you arrive at your destination, you can re-open the debate, and perhaps take the other route on the return trip.

Unfortunately, many areas of life, including our political system, defy consistency. In a polarized, two-party system, we are almost guaranteed to swing back and forth between different philosophies. Since it is doubtful that either party is always "right", this lack of consistency has certain merit. At the same time, we will never know if certain ideas WOULD have succeeded, or been proven correct, if only given sufficient time -- if we, as a nation, had followed them consistently. In politics, the problem is compounded by the fact that we do not necessarily share even the same goals, though both sides believe the goals are obvious.

A further problem is our reluctance to accept the fact that sometimes there is no "best" route, or at least that determining the "best" route is impossible under the circumstances -- that the truth is complicated. We want to KNOW which route is best, and we also want affirmation of the idea that OUR route is best. Sometimes we just have to accept the ambiguity -- the idea that more than one route may be okay, but that in order to GET anywhere, we will have to choose ONE of them.

Truth is complicated.