I didn’t wish to hijack the other thread so I started a new one. I have a theory that when most people speak about the virtues of being tolerant towards others they’re actually talking about a rather superficial level of tolerance. That group speaks a different language? Well, we all gotta communicate I guess. That group bows instead of shaking hands? Eh, no biggie. That woman chooses to wear a hijab? Eh, it’s not for me but it’s not big deal.
I suspect tolerance comes to an end, or is at least seriously threatened, when we dig past the superficial layers and come down to fundamental ideas of right and wrong. It’s just a theory and I don’t imagine it would apply to every single person. I just wonder whether or not it can apply to most people.
Thoughts? What does it really mean to be tolerant?
Language and culture aren’t so “superficial” that they haven’t led to millenia of war and oppression. It surprises me that people suddenly suppose that such tolerance is trivial and inconsequential.
Well, actions are divided into three classes: obligatory, forbidden, and permissible. I think being intolerant means having a large class of forbidden actions and a smaller class of permissible actions. Being tolerant involves the reverse, having a lot of permissible actions and relatively fewer forbidden actions (e.g., moving ‘gay sex’ from forbidden to permissible). The problem in the other thread is that some people think that being tolerant means reducing the class of forbidden actions to zero, which is of course absurd.
That sort of intolerance makes it easier to legally discriminate against people: not only meaning writing laws that encode this intolerance into law but also make it legal to refuse service to others in the course of business.
I would say that those heavily opposing intolerance would oppose not only the casual notions of
-isms, but also the legal encoding of treating people differently based on superfical characteristics, and perhaps eliminating the oppotunity to discriminate in business by enacting laws.
These don’t seem superficial to me, even though I am not entirely for the last part. After all, like many people fear, how soon would it be before they’d force me to deal with someone I found morally repugnant? Not to mention freedom of association. Although the government can and should use the bully pulpit to denounce private -isms.
But I don’t think that tolerance goes so far, even in most far-liberal people’s minds, to endorsing abhorrent ideas as morally equivalent to your own. It just means that you don’t think they should be discriminated against legally if they are not an imminent danger.