"Tolerance does not work"

W

wynn

˙
Valued Senior Member
From here:

"/T/olerance is an ineffective basis for reflection and action in our world today."

Pros and cons?


I agree with the cited statement. To tolerate means to let others be what they are, think and feel what they do - and this sooner or later comes at the expense of one's own identity.
A fundamental degree of intolerance for others is absolutely necessary if one is to have any basis for reflection and action.
 
Tolerance means, you even endure society's assholes. What you do not endure is when society IS the asshole!
 
Three hundred years ago, most people never travelled more than a dozen miles from where they were born. Tolerance wasn't necessary because everybody was the same.

With globalization, people are faced with wildly different cultures. Without some tolerance, people won't be able to function.
 
I didn't see that statement in the cited text...

??

Bad link??

In any case, I disagree.

Intolerance is not necessary for reflection or action.
It can certainly help (or hinder..) but it's not necessary.

The problem with making these kind of blanket judgements is that it's removed form context. As always within the realm of ethics, context is of the utmost importance..
 
Signal said:
I agree with the cited statement. To tolerate means to let others be what they are, think and feel what they do
Click to expand...

Agreed. (Note that this does not mean DO whatever they want - laws are there for a reason.)

and this sooner or later comes at the expense of one's own identity.
Click to expand...

How would someone else's opinion (one that differs from yours) eventually degrade your own identity?

A fundamental degree of intolerance for others is absolutely necessary if one is to have any basis for reflection and action.
Click to expand...

I disagree. You can tolerate other points of view and still have a quite valid basis for reflection. Indeed, having no other viewpoints available to you is quite a handicap if you want to consider your own thoughts and actions. A theologian who never studied any other religions would be a lesser theologian than one who was exposed to many others.
 
Tolerance is not an absolute. It is purely relative. You say someone is tolerant, you mean they are tolerant compared to some standard.

A degree of tolerance is needed for humans to work together, since there are so many differences between people.

In any discussion like this, for any statement about tolerance to have any meaning, you must state the degree and type of tolerance being discussed.
 
We have laws to control our level of tolerance. You cant just make your own judgments of right and wrong. After all you can't survive without society..
 
Signal said:
"/T/olerance is an ineffective basis for reflection and action in our world today."

Pros and cons?
Click to expand...

Too vague, not enough content.

This reminds me of what somebody (Winston Churchill?) once said about democracy - It's the worst form of government there is, except for all the others.

I agree with the cited statement. To tolerate means to let others be what they are, think and feel what they do - and this sooner or later comes at the expense of one's own identity.
Click to expand...

How do you propose to even have your own "identity" when you are only allowed to think, feel and behave as your leaders command? Puppets don't have personal identities.

You seem to be assuming that you will somehow be the Commander, completely autonomous and self-directing while telling others how to think, feel and act. Well, let me tell you something: I intend to occupy the top of the heap. You will dance to MY tune, you sniveling insignificant little man. When I pull the strings, puppets will have no choice but to dance.

I am your Fuhrer! I am your God!! EVERYONE will bend a knee to ME!!!

(Oops, got carried away there...)

A fundamental degree of intolerance for others is absolutely necessary if one is to have any basis for reflection and action.
Click to expand...

Maybe part of the problem here is that the idea of 'tolerance' might be implicitly defined in such an exaggerated way that it turns into kind of a straw-man. Tolerance doesn't mean that people have to agree with everything that others tell them. Tolerance doesn't mean that people can't voice their own opinions, even if they disagree with the opinions of others. Tolerance doesn't require that everyone be totally passive, credulous and compliant.

Tolerance just means that others be allowed to make up their own minds and to disagree if they want to. If somebody wants somebody else to agree with them, then that second person has to be given some convincing reason why they might want to do that. Intolerance makes its appearance when dissenting belief and action is suppressed by threats, violence or by means such as control of education and communications.

And as others have already said, tolerance isn't typically an absolute and it almost always has some limits. Criminal laws for example, that maintain social peace and protect the public from violent and fraudulent predation. And sometimes a tolerant society finds itself hosting ideologies that exist precisely in order to end tolerance and replace it with some supposedly God-revealed social order (militant Islamism might fit that description) or with some totalitarian revolutionary program leading to an imagined secular utopia (Marxism and Naziism probably fit that one). So there's always going to be arguments about the precise limits of tolerance and about what measures a tolerant society can ethically and consistently employ to protect itself.

The way I see it, some significant degree of tolerance is presupposed by democracy and is necessary in order for it to function. The value of tolerance increases as globalization proceeds and as local societies everywhere become more culturally and intellectually diverse.
 
Last edited:
Tolerance is indeed a bad model for society. It means to ignore something rather than engage it. Sure, we have to ensure freedom of thought and speech, but it's also a good idea to try create a society that has some minimum set of shared values. There are limits on what people can and should tolerate.
 
spidergoat said:
Tolerance is indeed a bad model for society.
Click to expand...

What would you replace it with?

It means to ignore something rather than engage it.
Click to expand...

I agree that political voices on both the left and the right try to interpret 'tolerance' as implying their own immunity from any sort of criticism while licensing their own attacks on all and sundry. But that's just self-serving hypocrisy.

As far as I'm concerned, tolerating something doesn't suggest that we have to agree with it. In fact, the word 'tolerate' suggests that we probably don't. I don't think that it forbids us from stating our disagreement as persuasively as we can either. What toleration does seem to imply is that those we disagree with won't be prevented from making their own decisions or silenced against their will.

When it comes to overt actions instead of thought or simple speech, things get hazier. My own thinking is that everyone is pretty much soverign over themselves. As long as behavior doesn't directly impact anyone other than the actor, I'm inclined to advocate tolerating it. But when somebody's actions start to restrict others people's freedom to think and behave as they choose, we start to encounter problem situations. We face those kind of boundaries-of-tolerance situations in areas like criminal law.

Sure, we have to ensure freedom of thought and speech, but it's also a good idea to try create a society that has some minimum set of shared values.
Click to expand...

I agree. It's hard to see how a collection of people can even be called a 'society' unless they share some basic core principles in common. That, by the way, is one reason why I strongly and emphatically favor the American 'melting pot' model over the so-called 'multicultural' model favored in some other Western countries.

But I also think that culture should be allowed to evolve naturally without being imposed top-down by some self-consciously "enlightened" politburo or by some Iranian-style committee of religious scholars in charge of protecting and enforcing tradition. Cultures should grow out of the thinking, values and wishes of the people themselves, although a democratic society would have to temper that with stuff like Constitutional guarantees that protect the kind of tolerance I discussed up above to prevent some kind of dictatorship of the majority.

Intellectual and cultural minorities needn't be automatically handed the keys to the culture, but they shouldn't be silenced, harassed or intimidated either, unless they represent a clear and present danger to others. Nobody else has to agree with them or kiss their butts, but they should be allowed to speak and to argue their case. If what they have to say sounds good and makes sense, perhaps they might even win public opinion over to their side. That's how creative cultures advance and grow.

There are limits on what people can and should tolerate.
Click to expand...

I agree with that too. But in a free, open and democratic society, we should probably endeavor to keep restrictions on freedom as few and far between as possible.
 
spidergoat said:
Tolerance is indeed a bad model for society. It means to ignore something rather than engage it.
Click to expand...

Not at all. You do not need to ignore something to tolerate it. You merely have to not try to stop it.

If your neighbor is black, you don't have to ignore that. But it would be nice of you to not try to run him out of the neighborhood because you won't tolerate blacks there.

Sure, we have to ensure freedom of thought and speech, but it's also a good idea to try create a society that has some minimum set of shared values. There are limits on what people can and should tolerate.
Click to expand...

Sure, and those minimum set of shared values are called "laws." We don't tolerate murder, theft, rape etc - and we have a system set in place to help prevent them.
 
It's not enough just to "tolerate" black people in your neighborhood, you should meet them and get to know them. That's what I mean about how tolerance isn't a good value. I certainly don't mean that intolerance is preferable.
 
its alot easier to convince ppl to tolerate someone than it is to convince them to love them..

but your right..to aspire to tolerance is insufficient to create a harmonious society, one has to be better than that for it to work, IOW you are free to explain to me what you know to be best,it is up to me to decide if that is what is best for me..
 
spidergoat said:
It's not enough just to "tolerate" black people in your neighborhood, you should meet them and get to know them. That's what I mean about how tolerance isn't a good value. I certainly don't mean that intolerance is preferable.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. I agree; when people interpret "tolerace" to mean "keep your distance" that's definitely not a good way to live in a community.
 
spidergoat said:
It's not enough just to "tolerate" black people in your neighborhood, you should meet them and get to know them. That's what I mean about how tolerance isn't a good value. I certainly don't mean that intolerance is preferable.
Click to expand...


At first you didn't mention which interpretation of tolerance you used, getting to know someone who's different from oneself can also be interpreted as tolerance.
 

The retreat from more substantive visions of justice heralded by the promulgation of tolerance today is part of a more general depoliticization of citizenship and power and retreat from political life itself. The cultivation of tolerance as a political end implicitly constitutes a rejection of politics as a domain in which conflict can be productively articulated and addressed, a domain in which citizens can be transformed by their participation.​

Tolerance as an Ideological Category
 
The way an enlightened zen master tolerated.

To add an perspective to the topic, & to have a look from Eastern philosophy, I post this real story:

“Zen master Hakuin was praised as he lived a stainless life. A Japanese family having một food store near where Hakuin lived had a beautiful girl. Suddenly, one day, the parents found the girl was pregnant.

The parents got angry. The girl didn’t confess who man she had had sex with, but after much trouble, they found out Hakuin.

Being indignant extremely, the parents went to the master. Hakuin only uttered the word:”Really?” then stop.

After the child was born, he was carried to Hakuin. Then, Hakuin lost all his honour, but not sad. Hakuin took care of the child carefully, begging milk and necessary things of neighbours for the child.

A year later, the girl could not stand any longer. She told the truth to the parents that the real father of the child was not Hakuin but a young man selling fish in the market.

The parents went to Hakuin immediately, apologized. The asking for forgiveness was lengthy, and they begged him to bring back the child home. Hakuin gave them the child and uttered only :”Really?””

Do you find Eastern philosophy valueable ? It sounds like the zen master loved his enemies.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top