Tolerance Rant Redux: Or, "She is tolerable; but not handsome enough to tempt me."
I started blogging in late August 2002, and I promptly used the opportunity to log my displeasure at the prevalence of the word "tolerance" as it is currently used. In fact, I hated the word, and I still hate it today. I mean, think about it: we use a word that historically means "desensitization" and "putting up with" to talk about a real and positive moral position. That position, as I understand it, is civility at its highest: a willingness to believe the best about people with whom we share virtually no opinions, no outlook, no background. Why on earth should we think it a good idea to call this civility by a name that by its nature congratulates the self for its social durability rather than describing a courteous movement between two people, two races, or two classes?
In the past, when I've aired this opinion, I've usually gotten one of two reactions: an awkward, sidelong look and a murmur, as if I've committed a mild faux pas; or fervent agreement and a look of relief, as if the other person had been treading a minefield and had suddenly found a safe zone. Neither reaction do I find particularly reassuring. In either case there's a scent of betrayal in the air; either I'm seen as a betrayer, or I feel myself to be one.
Because frankly, I've never fully associated the word with the Horrors of Liberalism that most of its detractors do. Even when I was rather socially conservative myself, I understood what was being said. I understood that it was an attempt to meet the dilemma that occurs when you yourself disapprove of someone else's moral position but have no right to browbeat them or attempt to change their mind. What shames me most in these days is that fewer and fewer people recognize that they do not have that right. If they knew them, they would cite Charlie Peacock's lines: You don't ask a drowning man/If he wants to be saved -- and conclude it their solemn duty to browbeat and harangue, or use other levers to guarantee an alteration in the other's objectionable behavior.
That's not what you do with other human beings. It's not about changing the other, it's about living with them. And I can't think of anything more treacherous to the spirit of that commitment than calling it "tolerance", as if the highest level of the Natural Law was putting up with people.
No, we need a new word. A word that doesn't, frankly, pander to the notion that giving people moral freedom is itself moral cowardice. A word that instead recognizes that that freedom is what makes our society possible.
It may be difficult to find a new word, not least because the concept of "tolerance" as a virtue has developed in response to mainstream norms, not those of crazy kooks. Racism, in the form of segregation, was once a mainstream norm. So was the subjection of women. No doubt, if the playing field were level, it'd be just as, well, just, to say that we ought not to force a change of opinion in people who don't want to let blacks eat in their restaurant. Or who don't think women have any business voting. Who has power to hurt? What is just? These are not easy questions. It makes yet another reason why we need another word. We need to talk about these things like the complicated matters they are, not gloss it all with some namby-pamby word that means "putting up with".
And we should, paradoxically, use simple words to discuss these matters: anger, love, justice, honesty, kindness -- as in, kind, family, behaving to others like the members of the human family that they are.
See, this is always what has been behind my hatred of "tolerance" as a virtue -- and so when liberals look at me funny, and conservatives think they've found an ally, I find myself slipping through the cracks, into some void of opinion that seems to make no difference. It's depressing. Hence my rant.
I shall go quietly to bed now.
I started blogging in late August 2002, and I promptly used the opportunity to log my displeasure at the prevalence of the word "tolerance" as it is currently used. In fact, I hated the word, and I still hate it today. I mean, think about it: we use a word that historically means "desensitization" and "putting up with" to talk about a real and positive moral position. That position, as I understand it, is civility at its highest: a willingness to believe the best about people with whom we share virtually no opinions, no outlook, no background. Why on earth should we think it a good idea to call this civility by a name that by its nature congratulates the self for its social durability rather than describing a courteous movement between two people, two races, or two classes?
In the past, when I've aired this opinion, I've usually gotten one of two reactions: an awkward, sidelong look and a murmur, as if I've committed a mild faux pas; or fervent agreement and a look of relief, as if the other person had been treading a minefield and had suddenly found a safe zone. Neither reaction do I find particularly reassuring. In either case there's a scent of betrayal in the air; either I'm seen as a betrayer, or I feel myself to be one.
Because frankly, I've never fully associated the word with the Horrors of Liberalism that most of its detractors do. Even when I was rather socially conservative myself, I understood what was being said. I understood that it was an attempt to meet the dilemma that occurs when you yourself disapprove of someone else's moral position but have no right to browbeat them or attempt to change their mind. What shames me most in these days is that fewer and fewer people recognize that they do not have that right. If they knew them, they would cite Charlie Peacock's lines: You don't ask a drowning man/If he wants to be saved -- and conclude it their solemn duty to browbeat and harangue, or use other levers to guarantee an alteration in the other's objectionable behavior.
That's not what you do with other human beings. It's not about changing the other, it's about living with them. And I can't think of anything more treacherous to the spirit of that commitment than calling it "tolerance", as if the highest level of the Natural Law was putting up with people.
No, we need a new word. A word that doesn't, frankly, pander to the notion that giving people moral freedom is itself moral cowardice. A word that instead recognizes that that freedom is what makes our society possible.
It may be difficult to find a new word, not least because the concept of "tolerance" as a virtue has developed in response to mainstream norms, not those of crazy kooks. Racism, in the form of segregation, was once a mainstream norm. So was the subjection of women. No doubt, if the playing field were level, it'd be just as, well, just, to say that we ought not to force a change of opinion in people who don't want to let blacks eat in their restaurant. Or who don't think women have any business voting. Who has power to hurt? What is just? These are not easy questions. It makes yet another reason why we need another word. We need to talk about these things like the complicated matters they are, not gloss it all with some namby-pamby word that means "putting up with".
And we should, paradoxically, use simple words to discuss these matters: anger, love, justice, honesty, kindness -- as in, kind, family, behaving to others like the members of the human family that they are.
See, this is always what has been behind my hatred of "tolerance" as a virtue -- and so when liberals look at me funny, and conservatives think they've found an ally, I find myself slipping through the cracks, into some void of opinion that seems to make no difference. It's depressing. Hence my rant.
I shall go quietly to bed now.
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