Slave To Moderation

A good friend of mine recently posted a "quote of the week" by Bill Cosby on his blog:

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

- Bill Cosby

It's a good quote, and it's true that I will paralyze myself and my causes if I try to please everyone, because I can't fully satisfy both sides of a polar issue.

Still, in every issue, even the views I am opposed to are likely right in some nuance or aspect, and I'd do well to at least try to be open to that.

So I have a reservation with this line of thinking when not taken in moderation. It is often misused as a weak excuse to discard diplomacy, a copout to avoid putting on someone else's shoes for a day, or a lazy guise of noble, unyielding conviction to cover stubborn, narrow pigheadedness.

I started composing these comments on his blog, and then I thought, "Wait, this is a reasonable quote and a productive thought, and instead of just shrugging and going away with a good reminder, I find myself debating its validity, skeptical of how some readers will interpret it, feeling the need to voice that concern to moderate the behaviors I foresee sprouting from an imbalanced interpretation...I'm a freak."

OK, I reject that. I'm not a freak. But I am, I think, a fairly moderate thinker, and sometimes to a fault, becoming annoyingly so for many people. I am skeptical of information and rarely accept something as fact until I have verified it in some way. Actually, I'm probably flattering myself by making that assertion because I probably buy more easily into what I want to hear than what I don't. I'm a gullible, limited human being. And as my Jazz Choir conductor, Dan Bukvich, used to yell at us (while thinly masking a wry grin), "You're genetically flawed!" And I am. Go fig.

But with all the debating, enemy-making, and misinformation I've read and listened to over the past few weeks regarding the election, prop 8 in California, and other more personal or local issues, I've gone into turbo moderation mode. To little avail, I'm afraid. McCain- and Obama-supporters alike seem to think the nation would crumble under the leadership of the other guy. Prop 8 crusaders on both sides seem to be unable to really see the reasoning and rationale behind their opponents' positions. And I've reached the point where, though I may continue to make token efforts, I am re-realizing I just can't change people's minds or force them to step into someone else's shoes. That's something you just have to want to do on a personal level. You have to care more about truth than about causes. You have to care more about people than about strictures. You have to care more about reconciliation than about vilifying opponents. And exploring the grey, or the middle ground, or the ambiguous, just doesn't seem productive or comfortable to most people, it seems.

Under fermenting righteous indignation, open, loving dialog is transformed into harsh and destructive rhetoric. Under pretense of correctness, brothers and sisters who disagree become perceived as mindless drones of the tyrannical opposition. Under the din of "us or them" battle cries, the call to stand for something becomes entrenched refusal to sit down at dialog with perceived enemies.

Yes, I'm just an idealistic, naive boy who doesn't realize the harsh realities of the spiritual, political, and cultural wars in which we find ourselves. I'm foolish to imply that we must validate or dignify our subversive enemies' cries by hearing them out. I'm short-sighted to think that there is any time for forbearance while our opponents are mobilized in opposition. I'm lukewarm and useless to the cause if I stay back and withhold judgment or side-taking until I feel fully comfortable doing so. And yes, it's true that you cannot please everyone and should probably not even endeavor to do so.

You might say I am a slave to moderation, a believer that truth is often found in listening to those with whom I disagree, which requires shutting my trap long enough to hear it without incessantly calculating my counter-response. And accepting truth comes at the uncomfortable cost of some degree of self-assurance, the acknowledgment that I am limited in experience, mental capacity, and perspective, and even a fool knows something I don't. Recognizing truth wherever it is found also requires recognizing that, even if my conclusion is correct (assuming there is a "correct" or "incorrect" conclusion to be reached in a given debate), if I have done nothing more than defend faulty logic to the right conclusion, I may be worse off, morally, than I would be if I made a different conclusion but for more righteous, or correct, reasons.

Pansy politics? Appeasement? Moral relativism? Never mind how some might choose to slant it with their favorite negative labels. I see admirable traits in people who strive to understand both sides of each story, whether or not they agree: humility, truth-seeking, building on common ground, understanding of nuance. Those are virtues in my eyes, and traits I would like to emulate, along with other traits such as integrity, conviction, principle, and courage to stand up for what I believe, come what may.