No Compromise

Compromise is talk; Collaboration is action. In compromise, everyone represents his own interests and fights to satisfy them in a negotiation of terms. In collaboration, every person works together to build something that changes as it grows and defines itself.

Compromise requires opposing sides and conflict. It makes conflict the central element of problem solving and puts a premium on maintaining an asymmetry of knowledge. Cat and mouse. Cops and robbers. Court-ordered minimums. 

Nobody gets his way in a compromise, and everyone must cooperate for a payoff that is less than the sum of the parts. It’s every man for himself.

Collaboration requires cooperation, too. But in collaboration, everyone pushes his interests to the center of the table. Knowledge is shared, not hoarded. Expertise is offered, not auctioned. Self-organizing maximums, as long as social anxiety doesn't turn it all to mush.

Collaboration can create something greater than the sum of the parts. It satisfies the separate interests each participant has, while illuminating a bigger, shared interest underneath it all.

Compromisers don't share. They mind turf. In fact, that’s what they were doing the entire time you wondered what the hell they were doing.

It is difficult to collaborate with compromisers, because they cannot contribute to the actual work of a project. Contracts become the main product for compromisers, and those who plan on breaking contracts love nothing more than to draw one up. “It won’t work without us,” is a favorite slogan, because it absolutely could.

A compromiser can't imagine playing a game without any rules. Have you played the exciting game without any rules?

The words say it all. “Compromise” means to settle differences with mutual concession or reciprocal modification of demands. “Com + promise” literally means to declare what will be done, together: to promise something together.

“Col + laborate," on the other hand, literally means to engage in productive activity, together: to labor on something together.

Henry Clay of Kentucky, The Great Compromiser

Beware the compromiser. Promises over action, concessions over gain, his incredible devotion to finding a balance between the slave and free state.

The compromiser fears he has nothing to offer in collaboration. He is correct. If not in the beginning, by the end, he will leave the business of enforcing rules to people who, for better or worse, never wanted them.

We think the same things at the same time. We just can't do anything about it, together.

One Thin Line

Characters by Kyoko Uchida

In Japanese, the difference between suffering and happiness is one thin line.

And these are some thin lines from the film "The Thin Red Line," written by James Jones and directed by absolute genius Terrence Malick:

"How did we lose the good that was given to us? What keeps us from reaching out and touching the glory?"

"Maybe all men got one big soul everybody's a part of: all faces of the same man."

"How do we get to those other shores, to those blue hills? Love. Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us? A war can put it out, conquer it."

"The world is a box, a moving box. They want you dead or in their line. Only one thing a man can do: find something that's his and make an island for himself. If I never meet you in this life, let me feel the lack. A glance from your eyes, and my life will be yours."

Jargon Ain't Argot

People who speak jargon think it’s argot.

Argot is a characteristic language of a particular group. It’s quick and laden with meaning. When a heavy says, “We put the grips on him,” he’s using the argot of organized crime. When Violet McNeal, author of Four White Horses and a Brass Band, says, “Never try to trim a young handsome man; all the women will be running after him,” she speaks the argot of medicine show grifters.

However, when a corporate head says, “… generates stellar ROI for our company by optimizing our cross-functional team's blah, blah blah …” he or she uses jargon.

Jargon, by definition, is nonsensical, incoherent or meaningless talk that has an unusual or pretentious vocabulary, convoluted phrasing and vague meaning.

Q: Why do those without argot cultivate jargon instead? A: The need for high adventure

William Strunk and E.B. White sum it up in one of the sharpest passages from The Elements of Style:

"The young writer will be drawn at every turn toward eccentricities in language. Today, the language of advertising enjoys an enormous circulation. Your new kitchen range is so revolutionary it obsoletes all other ranges. It is the language of mutilation.

"The businessman says that ink erasers are in short supply, that he has updated the next shipment of these erasers, and that he will finalize his recommendations at the next meeting of the board. He is speaking a language that is familiar to him and dear to him. Its portentous nouns and verbs invest ordinary events with high adventure; the executive walks among ink erasers, caparisoned like a knight. We should tolerate him—every man of spirit wants to ride a white horse.

"Finalize, for instance, is not standard. One can’t be sure, really, what it means, and one gets the impression that the person using it doesn’t know, either, and doesn’t want to know."

Portentous is a great word, and caparisoned a huge favorite because of that passage. Tolerate works wonders, as well.

Many writers take issue with Strunk & White, but I find their advice on style valuable to review every so often. The humor in it is undeniable. Here are some selected elements from "The Elements of Style."

I Like It. You Like It.

One of the best copywriters works at the Samurai Bento cart in Portland. Every time I eat there, I get jealous. If I could write with this kind of pithy unconsciousness, the words would Murakami me.

Fidelity

"Darling" made in comity at Picassohead.com

"The critics say I draw like a child. When I was a child I drew like Raphael. It took me my whole life to draw like a child."

Pablo Picasso

"Head of Comity" by Raphael from Art Institute of Chicago

"Your idea of fidelity is not having more than one man in bed at the same time." 

Frederic Raphael, "Darling" 

Obviously, A Definition

I obviously posted this photo after taking it at Petersen's Rock Garden in Redmond, Oregon.

Adverb meaning "quite apparent," obviously precedes something the author either shouldn't say or says with previous knowledge. Though often used to gloss over a dubious claim, the word puts the reader on guard--opposite its intended effect.

It's the verbal equivalent of notching on someone for asking a question you wouldn't have known the answer to yourself. "When used at the end of a sentence, it's even worse, obviously."

Nobody likes that.

(See notch.)

Finisher

There's a man with white gloves who jogs west to east on the Broadway Bridge. I've seen him every morning, as I'm walking the other way. He wears a long-sleeve T-shirt: faded navy blue, cotton that's wet around the neck from his sweat. On the shirt it says, "Finisher.”

Presumably the man got the shirt at a marathon. He finished. "Hey, nice job! Here's a shirt with our logo on it."

"Finisher" in soccer has clout. It means the guy who can come in and bang out a goal. He's the man. Same in baseball, the "finisher" is the stud out of the bullpen that comes in to strike out the side in the bottom of the ninth with two on, no out.

In tailoring, the finisher fells the lining, stitches the buttonholes, and tidies the edges of the garment. In "finish" carpentry, the doors get hung, as well as tacking on the moldings, railings and shelves.

Scarcity & Abundance

Scarcity creates a hot, limited focus.
Abundance leaves a tiny hole, unfulfilled.

Sastruga

[sas-truh-guh] Russian –noun, usually plural, sastrugi Ridges of snow formed on a snowfield by the action of the wind.

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Lashes

A writer connects ideas to images using words.

It's the difference between a tree that has leaves and one that has eyelashes.

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