A longer view of compromise.

An NPR News series called Crossing the Divide examines political and cultural differences and how they can be bridged. The episode on Friday’s Morning Edition (Jan. 26) linked reconciliation in chimpanzees to game theory in politics. It’s no small coincidence that the book Matrocracy also examines what chimpanzee behavior and game theory tell us about gender differences.

Compromise, the third topic in the NPR episode, featured an interview with author Robert Remini about Senator Henry Clay, "the Great Compromiser." Clay’s Missouri Compromise of 1820 put off the American Civil War for another two generations at the small price of keeping the institution of slavery alive and permitting its westward expansion. But what was left unsaid by NPR is that we need a vision of compromise that doesn't mean the perpetuation of wrong, and that takes a both a larger and a longer view.

Matrocracy examines how women generally are more open to compromise than men, and shows how women’s greater influence likely will spread more cooperative approaches that will benefit our world. At the same time, Matrocracy argues, women generally take a larger and a longer view in policy and problem solving. Women are more likely to include everyone in decisions, including the less powerful, and to think about the consequences over a longer term.

My hope and expectation is that as we increasingly search for compromise and cooperation, and as women’s influence grows, we also will increasingly take a longer view. We should avoid compromises in the tradition of Clay that our descendants in the next century likely would judge to be as barbaric and immoral as we view slavery today.