A failure mode of follow-through

In light of http://xkcd.com/1124/, it occurs to me that one of the failure modes of extreme follow-through, the sort of honor that keeps every promise and discharges every obligation or dies trying, is that it may not give consideration to the balance of good that it's accomplishing by following through, versus how upset affected parties might be when things go awry *during* the follow-through.

Let's contemplate a universe where Lily Aldrin's dad decided that to make up for a decade of bad birthdays, he was going to throw (adult) Lily a fabulous party with clowns, because he had *promised* when she was like six or something. And of course everything goes horribly wrong, and someone looking at the situation without the context of the weight of obligation would probably decide that there was nothing to be actually salvaged from the wreckage, and give the fuck up (much to everybody's relief; Marshall was getting ready to slap someone, and it might not have been Barney). But no, not Lily's old man. HE'S GOING TO FOLLOW THROUGH, DAMMIT. And disaster ensues, and in service of the stated goal (follow through on the promise) he loses sight of the deeper goal (make Lily happy).

A commitment to any promise or principle above all others, without giving consideration to what else gets broken in the process of keeping it, is really seriously best left to fiction. It's a heroic trait: for the hero of a tragedy. In its purest form, it's a tragic flaw waiting for a place to splinter.


I wonder who in Max's life is going to break that way. I have a feeling it'll happen.