Nature of Compromise and the Specificity of Language.

There's a children's word game that we used to play called "Would You Rather", and every parenting book has a version of it. It is meant  to give your child the power to make their own decisions and limits the choices when creating a way to compromise.

Would you rather...

• have pizza or pasta for dinner?
• have the power of flight or the power of invisibility?
• go to college or go to work after high school?
• be the only black CEO of an all white company, or be a white manager of a minority owned company?
• die for a good cause or live as a Nazi?
• defund the police or increase police spending?

You pose a dilemma in the form of a question and the other person must chose one choice over the other.  But the "Would You Rather" form of choosing A over B is never fair because the person making up the options always has the upper hand... as in the Slave Trade Compromise or the Three-Fifths Compromise from 1787.  Do you think Slaves had a say in any of the proceedings of these compromises. I don't think so.

A variation of "Would You Rather",  comes up often in our house when trying to compromise with one another, when one person wants the other person to do something and makes up a list of things to chose from.  So instead of would you rather...it now plays out as:

 If you do__________ I will do ___________.

As In:

If you take a shower tonight, I will let you sleep in for an extra 15 minutes tomorrow.

or

If we can get a dog, I will do aerobic exercise every day.

It's a form of bartering, which I feel will make a comeback as society  enters into an economic depression, and without a visionary leader who can create something like the New Deal, it will be necessary to have this skill.

Hiro and I have taken these skills to a new level of haggling and bartering (with crazy side deals) to the extent that our nephew Phillip refuses to play Monopoly with us. But isn't Monopoly about the art and skill of persuasion?

If you give me Boardwalk, I'll give you my Pass Go $$ for the next two turns, and you never have to pay rent on all my Green properties AND I'll clean my room tomorrow.

or

I'll give you all my orange properties if you practice violin 2 times a day this month and take a shower every night.

There is a lovely folktale called "The Girl Who Would Be King" where as usual, a childless king is looking for an heir and poses a challenge to any who is brave enough.  He sends three people, (a scholar, a thief, and a young girl) off on a quest to buy something to fill his grand hall with less than a penny.  Of course the girl succeeds, not only once, but she fills the room three times.  The one thing that stuck with me about that story was the creativity of the girl as well as her mama telling her "when you trade and barter, make sure that both parties are pleased in the end to ensure that the trade is good."

Last night's bartering tactics looked like this:

What I do:  Get HBO

What Hiro will do:  

• won't watch Marvel movies until August
• Stop bugging me about getting HBO
• Stop bugging  me about getting a dog until August
• stop bugging me about getting a PayPal account
• go on a long bike ride tomorrow
• will give me 5 points (long story on the point system)
• infinite glitter pounds.

So I signed up for an HBO one week free trial last night so Hiro could watch some mind-numbing X-men movie.  When I asked him to go on a long bike ride with me, he casually told me that all of those demands were for getting HBO monthly, not just a one week trial, but being the generous person that he is, he will abide by all the rules except the biking one.  Specificity of language is so important when haggling with an eleven year old, as they tend to take EVERYTHING literally. I have to keep reminding myself to proofread his language. In the end, was I happy?  Not really, because I didn't catch the loophole...and I'm just exhausted from these back-and-forth deals.   His tactic now is to wear me down until I say yes.  

The marches and riots are the wearing down of the establishment, until people get what they want.  But the big problem is how the word DEFUNDING is being defined. 

Does it mean UN fund? Not to fund? Stop funding?  or Reduce funding?  Anyone using this word needs to first define it clearly: 

We all know what the verb to FUND means:

To FINANCE

BANKROLL

ENDOW

PROVIDE CAPITAL 

PAY FOR...

but what it gets really murky when you add DE in front of those words.   Biden needs to reverse his stance, get his ass in gear and define what he means when he says he will not support defunding the police.