Zero Tolerance for Tolerance

The lessons we learn in our younger years are perhaps the hardest lessons to master. Perhaps it is good, then, that we learn them early to provide as much time as possible to work on them. Every sitcom and lecture provided to me as a child told of the woes of racism, sexism, and intolerance. Star Trek, among other space-faring serials, would quite often lead to a conflict requiring tolerance of different alien species. So much was it drilled in my head as a child that I had mistakenly believed that humans understood the message. If they didn't, why would all these shows be continually emphasizing it? I came to realize, however, that not only are humans bad at it (hence the continual attempts to teach it), it is often masked and hidden in plain sight.

I'd like to think that the majority of first-world humans knows that we do not discriminate based upon race or gender. One's skin color or gender is not something to determine whether or not a person is good or bad. That, however, is about as far as humans have comprehended it. If we were space-faring, we would be making enemies at every turn for this very reason. We struggle so evidently at the ability to recognize differences in thought as being similarly acceptable to differences in physical appearance. Instead, the only acceptable differences in humanity's eyes are skin color, male/female, and neutral tastes for food, fashion, and entertainment. We are so terrible at comprehending what tolerance truly means that we take race and gender tolerance to their extremes while foregoing all other forms of tolerance. Such extremes themselves beget intolerance in a guise of morality.

When we lack the ability to contrive of tolerance as an acceptance of differing ideas, opinions, and cultures based upon the genes and upbringing afforded to each of us, tolerance becomes a moral imperative of rigidity and rules. To be tolerant of gender becomes a requirement that women must be afforded all the same responsibilities and found in equal numbers to man. To think otherwise is now deemed intolerant when in fact tolerance would very much lead us to conclude that we ought to accept that there might be natural differences or, at the very least, that it is okay for someone to presume so even if it is not the case. Tolerance is the ability to accept a person for where they are as derived from whence they came without ousting them as evil. To do otherwise is no different than charging a person as evil for the skin in which they were raised. We simply don't choose it. Tolerance is the ability to agree to disagree or to even embrace differences without resorting to hatred.

Race and gender were the first categories that we humans have learned to tolerate. Some have since moved on to tolerating multiple views on religion, but unfortunately that is still a rather solid source of us versus them hatred and fear. Perhaps the final category, however, is that of a person's systems of morals, ethics, and virtue. This category is, by far, the hardest to overcome and is quite often tied to religion making it easily comparable in difficulty. In Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, he goes into great detail regarding the political left's and the political right's overarching methods of determining moral behavior. Such fundamental differences cause a great deal of hatred and, being moral in nature, are fairly immutable ideas. If it is immoral to me to wipe my feet on a flag, I can't hardly find it acceptable for another to do the same. That is what morals are, after all: the foundation of right and wrong. 

One cannot be fine with condoning what is wrong, and therefore one must be fine with being intolerant for another person's perspective if it differs. And this is exactly the very nature of tolerance that we, as a human species, must learn to accept. Different people find different things wrong and that is okay. The other direction is much more difficult however: different people find different things perfectly acceptable. Imagine we find an alien species whose children have sex with their grandparents. Are we going to be able to accept that species or are we going to attempt to show them the error of their ways? Perhaps for them sex does not have such a taboo whereas eating and defecating do and they'd find us similarly repulsive for dining rooms and public restrooms. There are so many ways in which right and wrong can differ between people and we need to find the proper line for tolerance.

Barring alien species, the intolerance I see today along a political line is absolutely appalling. It is so rancid with hatred that one cannot even request that we attempt to get along without being labeled as a Nazi. We have so utterly lost our way that we find such intolerance to be the only tolerable way. If you have not already come to my exact understanding and position when it comes to racism and sexism, then you are clearly an evil bigot bent on the destruction of the world. There is no room for you to speak, you are evil, and we might as well burn you at the stake like a witch. Everything you say is evil, you are simply trying to justify your behavior, and your dog-whistle word-choices are secret signs and ways of banding like-minded ill-intended bigots to your side. You must be stopped at all cost and there is no reason to give you a platform to voice your opinion ever again. Freedom of speech is not meant for you because you are clearly an evil, hating, misogynistic, racist pig.

Far be it from me to only provide one side of the argument however. You may say such things about me, but you're just being hateful yourself and pandering to criminals. You want to push down people who work hard for what they have just to give handouts to those who don't deserve it. You would steal from a CEO just to give his money to corrupt and lazy beggars who refuse to lift a finger in a country where all your dreams can come true with effort. You want to kill innocent babies just because you're too sleezy to keep your junk in your pants! You want to take away our rights, silence us, and bring us to our knees in submission until everyone is like everyone else. You are weak-willed, snobby, whiners, and complainers about every single tiny little offense! Your very breath is evil bent on destroying our country and bringing us to our knees like sheep to the slaughter! You must be stopped at all cost lest we die at your mercy!

This is our political climate. Tolerance of either side is clearly tolerance for evil and thus tolerance becomes a love of intolerance and intolerance becomes the only defense of true tolerance. It is disgusting. It is vile. We must rise above it, but we have quite the "chicken and the egg" problem. The only way to fix this is through a cultural shift and education of the masses. But how can we get that without already culturally shifting to encourage such tolerance and educate people regarding it? There are very few of us out there who see the need for such tolerance to begin with. I assume we need to continue to speak out and show the way, but this is an extremely self-detrimental action of loneliness and despair. The world hates a peacemaker and such efforts are met with hostility. It makes enemies of both and friends of few. Alas, it appears outside my nature to anything but that. And so, I write. And so I speak out. And so I try much to my own consternation.

But where do we draw the line, anyway? We can't let people molest children and simply claim they have a different idea of right and wrong! We can't simply let people go on treating black individuals as lesser than human and denying them rights, and we can't simply let people go on treating women as objects for their personal enjoyment. We must take a stand! Perhaps the trick is in preventing the behavior while allowing the belief. Despite disagreeing with such stances, we should at the very least be capable of comprehending that their minds were uniquely created to come to such differing perspectives. We cannot hate them for it since we do not get to choose the very nature by which our genes compose us and our culture grows us. We need not hate such people. We simply need to band together, as a collective, to decide what we will deem to be right and wrong for ourselves. That's what democracy is all about. And we need to learn to accept the overall choices and be fine with the differences of understanding even if we do not always agree or get our way. This is true tolerance. It is far more than skin color and gender. To focus too strongly on those is to do away with tolerance altogether. In the end, if a significant portion of a population believes something, there is a good chance there is a means by which it can be deemed acceptable even if untrue. We are not the epitome of righteousness and it is time to stop acting like we are.