Letting the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good

I've been in meetings lately about a Steemit writing project I'm planning with Native American teens from the local reservations, getting them successfully writing here on the platform. In the process the most interesting clarifications have come about. Don't you love how life uses everything as another opportunity to expand your clarity about what you value and believe just that much more?

Anyway, the issue that came up was that to do this program I need help. I need connections, which I now have to some extent, but need more. And I need space and volunteers with skills I lack.

The particular skill set I need volunteered to really make this what I hope for it to be is experience teaching the craft of good writing. I think I'm a pretty good writer, but that doesn't mean I know how to teach someone to write. I don't. But others do.

Working together, in about 2 months I can help the poor youths from the reservations learn the platform well, and then the writing teacher can help them develop the quality of their writing on here over the months that follow. I can then start up the next group of teens for the 2 month program, and so on.

Yesterday one of my meetings was with someone with deep roots in the reservation community who is going to help me get the teens and a space to teach them in.

My next meeting was with a mostly volunteer-run writing program. They were also happy to help me with the project, and offered to try to recruit a writing instruction volunteer to either work with the kids at their high school or have them come into the non-profit's offices for training.

The Clarifying Incident

All good, except that a friend of mine recently told me about a terrible experience she had with that writing center. For the sake of her privacy, I won't go into the details here, but it was such an outrageous offense that it left her in tears and those of us hearing about it truly shocked. Massive insensitivity and empathic failure on their part.

Today when I was at lunch with this woman and some other women, and they asked me about what I was working on, I mentioned the offer of help from the writing program. After lunch I checked in with my friend to make sure she was okay with my working with them, even after how they treated her.

She said that she was definitely okay with it, because this was something to benefit the children, and she wasn't going to let her experience stand in the way of that. They might be great with the kids, even though they didn't deal with her situation well at all.

And that's what I was thinking when I decided to meet with them even knowing her experience in the first place. That while I want to avoid any contact with the exact person involved in her incident, ultimately we have to be able to work with people we aren't completely on the same page with when it helps us achieve mutual goals. And the leadership at that writing center wants to support young writers on the reservation just like I do.

Coalitions

Everyone involved is a person trying to contribute something good to this world. Though some may also cause a lot of pain and suffering due to their cultural unconsciousness, they also can be a part of more goodness coming into the world. People aren't all good or all bad.

While there are some values that must be upheld, and you really can't work with EVERYONE, so long as you can morally justify collaborating with someone, I think we should all work together when we see how we can do more good that way than alone.

I don't have to agree with everything someone thinks in order to work with them where we do agree.

The inability to say that is why I think that though about 80% of my country agrees on most social issues in poll after poll (such as a desire for universal healthcare), almost none of what we agree on has come to pass. Why? Because there is always some one thing among 10 agreements that is a disagreement, and a lot of people find it impossible to work with anyone where there isn't 100% agreement.

Those of you who are married, do you even 100% agree with your spouse?

There is a term for this, and it is the title of this post.

Letting the perfect be the enemy of the good means that because someone isn't a perfect match with what you think they should believe, you will not let them have the power to at least do for you or with you the 80-90% they could do. You will reject anyone 100% if they do not agree with you on all issues 100%.

Sounds pretty stupid when I put it like that, but in practice it's much more subtle, so smart people still fall prey to it.

Examples

Since I'm a progressive, I'm most familiar with this in that context. So think of someone trying to get a progressive elected to Congress for their state. They are with a group who works on environmental concerns and the candidate is mostly pro-environment, but won't renounce cattle grazing in the state. Now maybe this is because it would hurt the economy, or hurt cattle ranching constituents, or that they just believe in diversity of beliefs around food choice. Whatever the reason, they don't support the group's stance against cattle grazing, but do support all other environmental aims of the group.

Because of the one variance though, the group won't endorse that candidate. And many groups with progressive aims this candidate also fights for each find some one point of disagreement, so don't endorse the candidate. The progressive vote splits among many candidates, none of them as close a match overall as this one, but all offering something to someone. The conservative candidate wins, even though the congressional district is 80% progressive. Now their concerns aren't represented at all.

Over and over, so it goes. Because people have a habit of holding their alliances to higher standards than they do their adversaries.

This has to stop, or it's all going to hell in a hand-basket.

(Photo source: Pixabay)

Resteems always appreciated