Compromise Can Be A Good Thing!

[Pistarkle]

Like most of you, I was up all night worrying about a possible government shut down, and I was beyond relieved when President Obama and majority leaders Boehner and Reid came to an agreement about the budget.

Webster defines compromise as “a settlement of differences in which EACH SIDE makes concessions.” It is an EXTREMELY difficult task to accomplish because it means that YOU have got to give up a part of something you really, really care about for the greater benefit of WE.

Elected officials and political action groups who MISTAKE compromise for “weakness” need to start thinking “outside the box”. NOT BUDGING IS THE EASY WAY OUT- COMPROMISE TAKES WORK, and for thousands of U.S. military families, the unemployed, senior citizens, public sector workers, and the disadvantaged, it was a VERY “good thing”!

[Logical]

1. What if one side makes really crazy demands and we compromise on those....

Like planned parenthood and EPA? I think they were not legit demands.

[subterranean]

2. Our side should do that too.

That's how you negotiate. Start by demanding more than you're willing to settle for. Obama seems not to have learned that.

[backscatter712]

4. Thankfully, Planned Parenthood & the EPA were not cut.

[Logical]

5. True, but I feel like we have to give them something to prevent nutty demands. n-t

[BanzaiBonnie]

3. And then there is the fifth way...

A Nowegian pioneer in peace and conflict resolution, found there is a fifth way to resolving conflict. John Galtung recognized that there are five possible resolutions to every conflict:

1. I win. You lose.

2. You win. I lose.

3. Negative Transcendence in which the problem is solved by avoiding it entirely.

4. Compromise in which each wins by agreeing to lose a little.

5. Transcendence, which produces a resolution above and beyond the problem.


And this is what I see:

At this point, the two parties are so locked in place that they don't know any other way.

This new way, which is totally non-coersive and wholly collaberative will have to spring from We the People. In order to tap into the wisdom of the whole, we will need to come together in groups that include as many viewpoints as possible. From educated experts to those who know nothing about an issue and everyone in between. We will always be wiser as a whole than the wisest individual among us, alone.

[Taitertots]

6. If I want to take your house and you don't want to give it to me....

Than you should give me half as a compromise. After all, it is a good thing.