One thing that people do that is a huge mistake and that is pretending or ignoring Evil with a capital E. They think Evil people are misguided, or had bad childhoods, or not enough opportunities, or a poor education, or made wrong choices, really need love and more understanding, more time, etc.
Now some people are like the above. But there are plenty of people are are literally on the dark side, they avow Evil, love Evil, choose Evil, believe in Evil. Of course they don’t “think” it’s Evil usually, they think Good is Evil, and Evil is Good.
My religion has no “Satan” or devil, in the sense of a competitor or rival of God, but definitely recognizes Evil as a force of darkness, chosen by humans, and once chosen, they become agents of Evil. And trying to placate, make nice, understand, compromise or work with Evil leads only to lots more Evil.
Another ‘critical thinking moment’ ;)
Compromise.
Assuming you begin with two people with strongly held convictions, one must by definition ‘compromise’ a portion of that conviction to achieve a ‘mutually agreeable’ result.
This is fine when choosing a pizza with sausage or pepperoni. It is abandoning some portion of strongly held belief when treading deeper waters.
A recent quote I saw on FR illustrates it perfectly (this was RE Abortion)
“If it’s not a baby, then you aren’t pregnant”.
I love that quote because at it’s core it’s 100% unassailable logic. As it pertains to compromise,
“If you are willing to abandon part of a strongly held belief, at some point, you will find a reason you’ll be willing to abandon the rest.”
I learned what happens in ‘compromise’ with the environuts. YOU compromise, over and overandoverandoverandover... until you lose everything. Incrementalism at it’s finest, and that’s what compromise with evil, capital or lowercase E, results in eventually.
You lose everything.
I should have been a Palidin. At the rate that the govt is compromising with Islam, I may still get the chance ;)
