The world has changed a lot since I posted last. I may write about that, but later.
For now, let me explain a recurrent thought that I keep having to put into words.
Tolerance
The threshold for what is “tolerance” is actually quite low.
Tolerance simply means that one agrees to not attack, demean, or harass another over a given concept.
This falls into what my grandmother always used to say — “if you can’t say something nice, say nothing.”
Some people can’t manage to meet this low, low bar.
Tolerance is not a value, either — many people talk of it being the point, not the tool that allows the actual value or the real point to form. The real value is having a society that is not feuding and squabbling over nonsense, with a baseline of manners to lift us out of the muck so we can worry about more important things.
Intolerance is a refusal to act with tolerance.
It is a refusal to abide by basic manners, simple politeness, and keeping your nose in your own business.
Thus, tolerance is a communal truce that agrees that things work more smoothly when everyone can at least put on their big boy and big girl pants and not bog down the process of designing a bridge or running a town government with racial slurs and similar backlash.
Tolerance is a truce, extended to everyone who wants to come in, but it is also a requirement for membership.
This is why I disagree with Popper’s “Paradox of Tolerance” — because it is not a paradox. If you and seven friends agree to not play pranks on each other, then the one fool who rigs up a water balloon drop isn’t getting invited to the next campout. If someone breaks the truce, the remaining members need not extend that truce to them.
Certain ideologies — extremism of various kinds, fascism, evangelicalism, to name a few — actively incorporate a hierarchical system of elitism counterweighted by a rejected-class. These ideologies are by their very nature prone to a rejection of tolerance, because they see no need to extend even the smallest grace or neutral action toward those they see as inferior, sometimes even surpassing this with an instinctive lashing-out or gleeful abuse of those in the rejected-class, since the state of oppression of others gives their better status its definition. If the Holy didn’t have sinners to step on and scream at, their holiness wouldn’t seem as important.
Those with experience dealing with those intolerant groups may proactively protect themselves and others by rejecting the likely-intolerant before they can act on the intolerance inherent to their ideology. Many people in the LGBT+ community, for instance, know which christian churches will allow them to become ministers, and which ones are coached to scream horrible obscenities in their faces, or attack them. Some don’t wish to take the risk, and blame all sects of a religion, or even all religions generally. This is a consequence of intolerance, not of tolerance — in self-defense, one cannot be blamed for informed caution.
One bad apple spoils the barrel.
It is worth noting that intolerance is a tool of some, who see it as a way of safeguarding their own position. But it is also a tool of others, who use it to sow discord and hate and fear of the other among their adherents. Many people are actively taught intolerance as part of their childhood, often without other options ever being presented. But the actual use of intolerance, no matter how hard one is conditioned to do so, is a choice of action over inaction. Intolerance is a choice just as much as it is a rejection of the truce. As such, it cannot itself be tolerated, because it destroys the Good Faith of the greater discussion of the issue at hand.
This last bit is, I suppose, a rephrasing of Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance" -- but still, given that the tolerance is a means to an end and not the end itself, is quite different. We do not want to create a tolerant society, but a peaceful one, a neutral one that does not hinder anyone. If we took all the time and energy and resources that went into Klan rallies and tiki-torch brigades and tea party costumes and qanon conspiracy doomscrolling, and instead put it into research or construction or education, then we would have more advancements, more bridges, more opportunity, and fewer racists.
