What happened to Tolerance?!
Tolerance used to be the central core, the very beacon of the Liberal movement.
Now that liberalism is the mainstream establishment ideology, at least in the most powerful quarters like media, business, education, government…. (everywhere except the real world where real people live their day-to-day lives), isn’t it funny how quickly tolerance has been replaced with intolerance?
Humans really don’t differ much at all do they? Let’s all tolerate everyone, great, until those campaigning for more tolerance (when in a minority) suddenly become the majority, with all it’s trappings and power, and then hey presto, let’s stop tolerating different people again in case they threaten our power now! Yawn.
What so many people seem to have forgotten over the past few years, is that tolerance only applies when the thing you’re being asked to tolerate is something you do NOT like! If you can’t do that, you can’t claim to be tolerant! Sorry, but I didn’t make the rules!
It’s not tolerant of you to listen to music you like, eat food you like, or ‘put up with’ people who have exactly the same views as you! By it’s very definition, tolerance only begins when you put up with those things you feel uncomfortable with, different from, maybe even afraid of or viscerally hateful towards. That’s when the need for tolerance is absolutely paramount.
As far as I can tell, tolerance is becoming a thing of the past, and that’s a damn shame and more than a little worrying. Especially as the governments of the world (left and right) are busy grabbing more and more power over their citizens in any way they can thanks to this wee little excuse they have in the so-called ‘pandemic’.
Time and time again, world history has shown us that tolerating different viewpoints, whilst being challenging at times for all of us, only ever has a positive outcome, and banning any one viewpoint from being expressed has only ever led to tyranny and disaster, usually for the poorest and most marginalised or downtrodden people on earth. You dont have to like different opinions, you just have to allow others to air them in the ‘free market of ideas’ we all contribute to, and benefit from massively every single day.
If you’re worried about ‘bad ideas’ getting the chance to spread, firstly you might want to ‘check your privilege’, who made you the judge and jury to decide what is a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ idea? Secondly, be mindful of the fact that truly bad ideas, the ones that 99% of people would agree are ‘bad’, only spread when they are silenced, shunned from mainstream discourse, and forced underground.
The best ‘disinfectant’ for bad ideas is the scrutiny of daylight, where everyone can see them in all their glory, warts and all, and everyone can think, discuss and ultimately reject them if they (in their plurality and collective wisdom) decide that’s what they deserve.
This process also allows what may seem like bad ideas to be carefully and thoroughly investigated, and sometimes they surprisingly turn out to be the new ‘best’ idea which would never have even been considered if we hadn’t made an unwavering commitment to hear all ideas and give them a fair crack of the whip in competition against all the others.
This is the simplest and fastest way to progress, which is so ironic considering how it’s the modern “progressive” types who seem to want to ban all but their own opinions whenever they can.
Progressive? What, by silencing dissent? Oh dear. That’s actually about as regressive as it gets.
By discussing as many ideas as possible, openly and positively, we have the best chance of advancing and improving life for everyone. There is a reason why, in a British courtroom, both the prosecution and the defence get as much time as they need to say every single thing they want in order to advance their positions. There is a reason nobody is allowed to interrupt them while they do so. There is also a damn good reason why the Jury consists of TWELVE people, not one! Diversity of thought is the most reliable way to a ‘good’ outcome, a ‘fair’ outcome, and wherever possible, a true outcome.
Twelve random people, with no connection between any of them, sit and listen to the best arguments from both sides. They then retire to think, to consider and discuss the evidence and arguments they heard, and to debate it out until a collective decision is made. Not a bad system really is it!
Without tolerance for new and sometimes seemingly crazy ideas, slavery would never have ended (in the West, it still goes on elsewhere), women wouldn’t have the vote (nor would most men by the way, as they didn’t have it either until not long before women got it, and men still paid for their vote by being eligible to be drafted to die in the trenches, bloody patriarchal bastards ;-) ), and countless other major events of real progress would never have happened. They happened because better ideas came along which challenged the orthodoxy, and those ideas were allowed to be discussed.
Granted, it didn’t come easy, and many people tried hard to prevent them being discussed. Those were the ‘bigots’ of their day. But please, if you’re the type of person who feels like certain opinions ‘should not be tolerated’ today, consider how it was precisely that mentality which, had it prevailed, would have ensured African slaves would still be in chains, and women would still have no place in elections or politics! (Sidenote: Slavery wasn’t exclusive to Africa, far from it.)
(Photo: White slaves on a sugar plantation in Barbados.)
And if you’re sat thinking something along the lines of: “Yeah but that was then, this is now and we know it all now so we can’t let anyone challenge or scrutinise MY idea of progress, because my ideas can’t be improved on”, well I only wish you had the faintest idea how incredibly dangerous you are because you, my friend, are the next slave master.
So I have two words for people who think differing viewpoints are somehow dangerous or a bad thing, and whilst F.O. comes to mind, those are not the two I was thinking of. I was actually thinking of Joseph Stalin, or maybe Chairman Mao, or maybe Adolf Hitler. Take your pick, they all apply equally well. The difference is simply the amount of power you have, and I for one pray you never have any more than you do now.
I don’t know who it was, but someone rather insightful once said:
“You can judge the strength of a person’s viewpoint by their willingness to listen to the best arguments of the opposing viewpoint”.
How true that is.
I welcome any challenge to my opinions on anything. I am never offended, far from it, so long as it’s an intelligent and rational challenge rather than a a straw-man insult or name-calling exercise, which can be duly ignored for the intellectually lazy dribble that it so obviously is.
Such challenges may (and do) cause me to change my opinion sometimes, which means they benefited me as I progressed to something better. My ideas were ‘upgraded’, that’s surely a win! And when they don’t cause me to change my views, they just strengthen the ones I currently hold. How is this anything but a win-win?!
Having our beliefs politely but firmly challenged is the weights-machine for our ideas ‘muscle’. Avoiding such challenges causes our minds to atrophy, losing the ability to debate, discuss and perhaps even think with any degree of rationality, ultimately leaving us only one strategy:
Silence everyone except those like us, those inside our ideological bubble.
I am seriously concerned with the direction things are going, and that’s my motivation for writing these posts, in the hope that it might just inspire a few people to see the value in openly discussing different opinions, particularly in this current climate of extreme censorship and aggression towards those who don’t parrot the nightly news’ talking points without critically analysing them in any way.
Maybe we can avoid some of the pain we have in store if more people recognised that we are not heading in a good direction. If I fail in that aim, at least when I am sitting in the ‘wrongthink’ gulags, waiting for my toilet bucket to be emptied in between mind-cleansing beatings counselling sessions, I can at least console myself with the knowledge that I didn’t go completely quietly to my Orwellian end!