Diplomacy

In negotiations, the diplomat is not addicted to indiscriminate or heroic truth telling. They appreciate the legitimate place that minor lies can occupy in the service of greater truths. They know that if certain local facts are emphasised, then the most important principles in a relationship may be forever undermined. So they will enthusiastically say that the financial report or the homemade cake were really very pleasing and will do so not to deceive but to affirm the truth of their overall attachment, which might be be lost were a completely accurate account of their feelings to be laid out. Diplomats know that a small lie may have to be the guardian of a big truth. They appreciate their own resistance to the unvarnished facts – and privately hope that others may on occasion, over certain matters, also take the trouble to lie to them, and that they will never know.

The diplomat’s tone of reasonableness is built, fundamentally, on a base of deep pessimism. They know what the human animal is, they understand how many problems are going to beset even a very good marriage, business, friendship or society. Their good humoured way of greeting problems is a symptom of having swallowed a healthy measure of sadness from the outset. They have given up on the ideal, not out of weakness but out of a mature readiness to see compromise as a necessary requirement for getting by in a radically imperfect world.

The diplomat succeeds because they are a realist; they know we are inherently flawed, unreasonable, anxious, comedically absurd creatures. Diplomacy seeks to teach us how many good things can still be accomplished when we make some necessary accommodations with the crooked, sometimes touching and hugely unreliable material of human nature.