On Getting Along With People

One of the most important things in life is learning to get along with the people we have to live with. The question of peace itself—at home and worldwide—revolves around our being able to do just this. Living literally alone is seldom possible and seldom desirable, but living in daily association with others means either fighting with them or learning to get along with them.

There are many apparent ways of getting along with people, some of which are acceptable and some of which are not. One of the best plausible apparent, but also one of the most fallacious, is to eliminate all differences by force—to make everyone think and act alike. Another fallacious way is completely to give up our own views and try to do everything that everyone else wants to do. Such extremes, of course, are untenable. They could not be accomplished in the first place, and even if they could, they offer no real solution to the problem of getting along with people.

Less extreme, but still fallacious, is the assumption that getting along with others necessarily means the compromise of our own standards and ideals and principals. Compromising standards isn’t getting along with people. It is merely self-betrayal—retreat. It is appeasement, it is buying piece at any price; and appeasement where principles and standards and truth and moral rights are concerned is but the beginning of more problems.

And so the question still remains: How to get along with people, who don’t think alike, who have different standards and different interests? It is practical and possible to do so, as id daily demonstrated by countless men and women who live in the same world, in the same town, and even in the same homes with others of different likes, different interests, different convictions, and who do get along together without compromising principles.

But the moment we do compromise any of our principles we stand in danger of being forced to compromise all of our principles; for the moment we step across the line of principle there is no other border line at which to stop. After the first compromise all other compromises are merely a matter of degree.

And so, keeping peace among friends, and even among strangers, involves, whenever occasion calls for it, making known what we stand for and why, in staying squarely with our ideals and conviction, and respecting and defending all others in a like privilege.

In short, the way to get along with people is to know what we ought to be, to be what we ought to be, to give respect and to demand respect, and not resort to bluffing, appeasement, or compromise on any point of principle.