The Tolerant Society
A concept that seems to be very popular in current times regarding politics and
society in general is tolerance.
Tolerance is defined as "allowing, permitting or acceptance of an action, idea, object,
or person which one dislikes or disagrees with".
The following segment is a critique of how the concept of tolerance is
used to categorize groups of people and of the valorization of ideas that are
thought to be tolerant. The main argument is that tolerance (in the context of society)
is meaningless and is simply based on one's set of values, it's merely an impression
and an illusion used to glorify some ideas and condemn others.
Problems with Tolerance
Being truly tolerant would imply being tolerant towards things that you
consider intolerant. For instance, if someone was intolerant towards the idea
of being tolerant, you, as a tolerant person, would have to accept it. This
is also known as paradox of tolerance and would lead to a state of total chaos
where truly tolerant people would have to accept whatever happens.
Since true tolerance (the acceptance and tolerance of everything) can obviously
not be achieved in a society (it would result in chaos) the concept of tolerance
has literally no value. Not being fully tolerant implies that you are tolerant to a certain
arbitrary degree based on your personal set of values, if that's the case, why even
bring up the illusion and the concept of tolerance?
People are pushing
ideologies and framing them as being tolerant ideas that good people agree with, but since
their ideas aren't actually fully tolerant towards everything (especially towards what they consider
intolerant ideas) their concept and idea of tolerance is pure fraud. They are only
tolerant to the extent that they believe is the respectable limit,
like literally everyone else. There are therefore no difference between
pseudo-tolerant people and people considered non tolerant since they both
accept things as long as these things dont overflow what they personally think is respectable.
In fact, the only difference is that the self declared tolerant people are virtue signalers
that probably don't even understand the irony of tolerance and the misaligment between their
ideas and the meaning of these ideas.
There seems to be a dangerous confusion between being open minded (something actually positive)
and being tolerant (which doesn't really exist nor make sense in society). They are
two very different concept: one implies considering things that seem foreign
and the other means accepting things that seem unacceptable.
The biggest issue with tolerance is that the line
between what's acceptable and what's not is arbitrary and different for everyone. There
needs to be some kind of universal (at least within a specific community/society)
agreement about common values, this would decrease confusion. If people within a society
feel like their current set of values isn't tolerant enough towards certain topics
or ideas, they simply have to rework and extend their set of values and include the things
that they feel should be accepted. That way, there won't be any need for the concept
of tolerance: people will agree with what is perceived as okay (considering these
things will be included in their set of values) and will disagree and reject things
outside of this set of value.
Ofcourse this model is theorical and hard to implement
in an actual society where ideas diverge. It's simply to display that the concept
of tolerance, and even more the concept of considering oursleves as tolerant and
taking pride in this fake virtue, is pure nonsense.