October 05, 2009: Selling out
Category: Ethics
Posted by: David M Patt
Maddie Grant asked her fellow GenXers if they had ever sold out. That led to an interesting collection of thoughts and varying definitions of selling out. Jamie Notter and Elizabeth Weaver Engel posted excellent responses.
Those of us who are a bit older than the Xers entertained those same thoughts and held those same discussions in years past.
We learned - often while still young - that there is a difference between selling out and compromising.
Selling out is abandoning your ideals. Compromising is making decisions that allow you to preserve the most important of your ideals, even if others fall to the side.
When I was 30 years old, I challenged an incumbent Chicago City Council member in the aldermanic election. When I filed my nominating petitions, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners required me to also file an anti-Communist oath.
Since there was no law requiring candidates sign such an oath, I could not have been denied a place on the ballot for refusal to file one. However, I would have had to challenge the oath requirement and that act would have overshadowed anything else I said or did during the campaign.
I ran for office to bring quality representation to my community, not to make an issue of loyalty oaths. So, I signed the oath and filed it.
That was a compromise.
As we go through life, we find that we can't have everything our way all of the time. We need to decide what's most important and then do whatever we can (legally and ethically) to achieve it. We know we won't achieve everything, but we try for as much as we can.
That's life.
Those of us who are a bit older than the Xers entertained those same thoughts and held those same discussions in years past.
We learned - often while still young - that there is a difference between selling out and compromising.
Selling out is abandoning your ideals. Compromising is making decisions that allow you to preserve the most important of your ideals, even if others fall to the side.
When I was 30 years old, I challenged an incumbent Chicago City Council member in the aldermanic election. When I filed my nominating petitions, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners required me to also file an anti-Communist oath.
Since there was no law requiring candidates sign such an oath, I could not have been denied a place on the ballot for refusal to file one. However, I would have had to challenge the oath requirement and that act would have overshadowed anything else I said or did during the campaign.
I ran for office to bring quality representation to my community, not to make an issue of loyalty oaths. So, I signed the oath and filed it.
That was a compromise.
As we go through life, we find that we can't have everything our way all of the time. We need to decide what's most important and then do whatever we can (legally and ethically) to achieve it. We know we won't achieve everything, but we try for as much as we can.
That's life.
