Priam
March 15, 2004, 4:09pm
1
Hey everyone,
If you’ve got time to kill I’d highly recommend reading this article from the Sunday edition of the Washington Post. If you haven’t already you’ll need to create a free account but I’ve never received any spam mail from doing so myself. It expresses quite eloquently the roots of tolerance and how it is actually acheived.
Some quotes…
Today, “tolerance” is something of a buzzword in pluralistic societies, suggestive of open-mindedness and a celebration of diversity. But the origins of the word are not rooted in such permissive notions or generosity of spirit. Instead, they reflect how grudgingly and reluctantly we suffer – that’s right, suffer – the differences of others.
The word itself comes to us by way of the Latin “tolerantia.” To the Romans it meant the capacity to endure pain or adversity. Tolerance did not rid the sufferer of discomfort, or even mask it, but it did represent a triumph of will and mastery of self.
Tolerance begins as an exercise in forbearance, a gritting of teeth. It is how we deal with each other’s differences. Talk of religious conviction and threats to marriage, earnest though it may be, does not account for the deep visceral reaction underlying the current opposition to same-sex marriages. For that, one must go back to the earlier meaning of tolerance, and the anguish suffered when confronted with differences that appear as abominations and therefore are threatening. Our responses are tribal, our lexicon rife with words expressing aversion and suspicion. Only with time does the alien become the immigrant, the stranger the neighbor, the outsider the newcomer.
Good stuff. Really good stuff.