In our pursuit of productivity, we’ve found ourselves in a world with increased complexity. There’s much discussion on the implications of this trend, but I haven’t heard anything on the correlated decrease in compromise (note: I haven’t done research, this is merely my experiential opinion). Here’s my flow of thoughts on the matter:

↑ options → ↑ complexity → ↓ compromise → ↑ entitlement

Let me make some sense of that through examples now. Think about how many transportation, dating, medicine, food, etc options you get to choose between these days. Then think about how many options you would have had back in, let’s say the 1800s.

Instead of trying to find a partner among hundreds, sometimes thousands, maybe you just had a few from your village or the neighboring one to pick from. If you got a toothache, you could either live with it or have it pulled out. But now (thankfully), you can choose between going under, being numbed, doing it painfully, not getting it pulled out and using pain meds, trying alternative solutions, talking to a different doctor… Transportation? Do you want to take a bus, train, walk, car, taxi, plane, boat, tram… lots more options than by foot or by horse. And so on… I think you get the point.

The lack of options was an external force for internal compromise. You had to come to terms with the fact that you couldn’t get exactly what you wanted because that option simply did not exist or was not feasible.That reckoning is not as prevalent today - we’ve been building a world where we have more options that are more customized to our needs and wants, and as a result, we don’t need to compromise as much.

That’s all fine and dandy, so why does this matter?

We can control a remarkable amount of our lives now, but the universe still has curveballs that we can’t do anything about. With reduced experience in situations where we have to compromise outside of our comfort zone, those curveballs are more devastating and harder to grapple with.

I also believe that the lack of forced (by circumstance) compromise is subconsciously feeding a sense of entitlement. If we’re so used to getting our way all the damn time, we begin to expect it, rather than appreciate it.

I think we’re also losing proficiency in person-to-person compromise. The skill is not reinforced or taught outside of interactions nearly as much (i.e. in day to day circumstances), so we’re less likely to sacrifice our personal comfort and desires when someone else’s needs/wants don’t align with ours.

Continuation, as per a follow up conversation with Laurel prior to publishing (Thanks Laurel for sanity checking my writing and chatting!!):

Inability to/discomfort with compromise seems particularly prevalent in the US because of the American focus on individuality and freedom of choice. The idea of freedom is literally tied to our ability to choose… so it’s no wonder we (collectively) hold it at a higher value than making decisions that benefit others more.

Also with the ridiculous levels of customization and algorithmic curation we get on our phones, it’s so much easier to turn to them rather than face the discomfort of talking to someone where we run the risk of thinking about something that we don’t want to be.