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Tolerance isn't considered a virtue because it's easy. Tolerance is a virtue because it's difficult. It requires us to put up with people who may adhere to worl

• dragontamer 7y ago
  Tolerance for tolerance's sake isn't useful though. The hypothetical Nazi / Hitler example shows up: if Hitler existed today, are we supposed to tolerate his views? Tolerance breaks down because morality kicks in: a good moral person tries to wipe out evil when they see evil. The problem is that we can't agree on what is, and isn't evil. Which is a problem when people increasingly believe the "other side" to be evil. (Abortion is murder vs Anti-choice are womanizers). Both sides want to wipe each other out, not necessarily kill them, but they want to politically negate the opponent's argument. In many cases, ideas, ideals, and philosophy are incompatible. That's just how the world works.
  • josteink 7y ago
    > are we supposed to tolerate his views? His views are his own. He should be free to express them. What we wouldn’t have to tolerate was his actions, because they clearly harmed others.
    • dragontamer 7y ago
      > His views are his own. He should be free to express them. Hitler didn't do anything but talk and lead others. Hitler just inspired an entire country to attempt genocide, through inspiration ALONE. Hitler wasn't a man like Stalin (Stalin would personally execute people). Stalin "swung the axe", made sure his hands were as bloody as the people he led. Hitler in contrast, was a coward who ended up killing himself in a secure bunker as soon as the world turned against him. Words alone have huge effect on people. The words of a powerful man can alone be enough to cause issues.
    • SolaceQuantum 7y ago
      Does action include hateful speech? Not being facetious just genuinely wanting to know. I've always found it difficult to dissociate views vs actions when it comes to espoousing a hateful view.
      • Kalium 7y ago
        Someone, at some point, probably regardes some of your views as hateful. With that in mind, how much would you like to be subject to prior restraint based on someone else's internal emotional understanding of your views? Generally it's worth dividing hateful words from hateful actions. Saying something racist in hateful, and might have political or social consequences, but wise societies are aware that getting into the game of policing speech is a mess. Attacking someone for being the wrong race is much more clear-cut, and society generally has an interest in discouraging violence to begin with.
        • dragontamer 7y ago
          > Someone, at some point, probably regardes some of your views as hateful. With that in mind, how much would you like to be subject to prior restraint based on someone else's internal emotional understanding of your views? How does ME accepting tolerance cause the OTHER guy to be tolerant as well? I don't swing the first punch during fights, but I'll absolutely punch back. That doesn't change the fact that fights happen to break out. One day, you will find yourself up against an intolerant person, and your only defense is to also be intolerant against them. That's just the facts.
          • Kalium 7y ago
            > One day, you will find yourself up against an intolerant person, and your only defense is to also be intolerant against them. For me, that day was a long time ago. And that was not - and is not - my defense. That's just the facts.
            • dragontamer 7y ago
              > For me, that day was a long time ago. And that was not - and is not - my defense. Please share your experience. Did you run away? Did you actually change their opinion? Here's my story: for a month, a man with an anti-Asian sign would be marching around and pointing his "Go back to China" sign at me. (My parents are Filipino and I'm born in America) What do you expect me to do, walk out and have a reasonable discussion with the guy? No. You call the police and get that man out of my life. No one has to tolerate this kind of hate. And no amount of reasonable discussion can convince a crazy man to tolerate others. Deal with the problem. Get them out, kick them out. I'm not going to wax-philosophical and think "oh, he's demonstrating his freedom of speech / 1st amendment rights". Nah, he's trespassing on private property and I want him out of my workplace. True story. This is how you deal with problems. "Tolerating" the hate only makes it fester and get worse. Hoping for the man to stop marching (after he's been marching for literally weeks) is the height of insanity. --------- Look, we've got Christchurch mosque shootings and El Paso shootings. There's a hateful philosophy which is GROWING. Its pretty clear to me that "tolerance" has lost the fight. There's literal blood in the streets now, as the hate is beginning to fester and spread even further. We can work to slow down the hate today, or we can sit still and "tolerate" it for the years to come, hoping it goes away by itself.
  • manfredo 7y ago
    Yes, we let literal Nazis March in Skokie. Tolerance except for those one thinks are immoral beyond reason is gives just as much license for, say, an anti-abortion activists who genuinely sees abortion as murder to remove people who support abortion.
    • dragontamer 7y ago
      Indeed. And that is the conundrum, is it not? We absolutely cannot let evil stand when we identify evil. Otherwise, it marches in and kills many. On the other hand, if we misidentify evil, then innocent people die. I'm not saying I have a solution. But the idea that "tolerance will save us all" is hopelessly naive. The sad fact is, a large number of people are systematically intolerant.
      • manfredo 7y ago
        > We absolutely cannot let evil stand when we identify evil. Otherwise, it marches in and kills many. No, you let evil speech stand. And you call it out as evil, and make clear reasoned arguments why it is evil. That is the solution. Only when that evil speech turns into action does the society step in. Resorting to censorship only demonstrates weakness and an inability or unwillingness to argue against evil. This leads to people questioning whether the target of censorship really is evil at all.
        • dragontamer 7y ago
          > No, you let evil speech stand. And you call it out as evil, and make clear reasoned arguments why it is evil. That is the solution. That doesn't work. If you really think you can "convince" people to tolerate others, feel free to go to Stormfront and convince the white-nationalists to stop being racist. Go and try it. Its not like these hateful locations are unknown, its a free and open internet. Go an talk with them for a week. You might learn how easy it is to rationalize bigotry and racism. At some point, you gotta just shut it down, like what the world did to 8chan. And these situations aren't hypothetical at all. You literally can go test your theory at Stormfront. > Only when that evil speech turns into action does the society step in. We're too late for that. Christchurch shooter, and then El Paso shooter. We've got a strain of intolerant speech that are inspiring lone-wolves to go into literal suicide missions to shoot people they don't like right now. Gun control debate is locked. Its been like 2 weeks and everyone's already forgotten about the El Paso shooter. Nothing will come about with that. But at least we shut down 8chan, one of the hangout spots for this hateful branch of people. We should probably shutdown other hangout spots too, like Stormfront.
  • kgwgk 7y ago
    > Abortion is murder vs Anti-choice are womanizers Womanizer: a man who often has temporary sexual relationships with women or tries to get women to have sex with him.
• dharmach 7y ago
  Being difficult shouldn't make something a virtue.
  • Kalium 7y ago
    You're absolutely right! Being difficult does not in any way make something a virtue. However, in cultural terms we generally don't aspire to traits that are trivially achievable (example: having skin). I would say difficulty is a neccessary, but as you so right point out, woefully insufficient condition.
  • nostrademons 7y ago
    Tolerance didn't become a virtue solely because it was difficult. It became a virtue because it was difficult and the alternative was war - total, global war that could've annihilated the human race a lot more quickly than global warming. We've largely forgotten what war was like - it's become something that we send disenfranchised young soldiers from poorer economic backgrounds to so corporations can make more money. I suspect that if people were actually faced with a direct choice between tolerance and war and could make the choice rationally, they'd choose tolerance every time. But of course, usually once wars happen it's because people are no longer acting rationally. And right now few people really believe that the alternative to tolerance is war, they just believe that the people they can't tolerate will willingly give up the beliefs they find repugnant.
    • Kalium 7y ago
      > it's become something that we send disenfranchised young soldiers from poorer economic backgrounds to I know this is an article of faith in some political circles. Promising poor kids money for killing Those Other People is the only way military service makes sense. Just FYI, this isn't actually true. US military recruits are more likely to be from the three middle quintiles than the first or fifth. Data here: https://www.cfr.org/article/demographics-us-military https://www.cfr.org/article/demographics-us-military
• arrrg 7y ago
  Tolerance of someone who wants to deny your whole existence is not something anyone should ever tolerate. That‘s not a virtue, that‘s madness and potentially suicidal.
  • manfredo 7y ago
    We let literal Nazis March in Skokie, the world did not end. Tolerance except for those one thinks are immoral beyond reason is gives just as much license for, say, an anti-abortion activists who genuinely sees abortion as murder to remove people who support abortion.
  • Kalium 7y ago
    The issue with refusing to tolerate intolerance tends to be the difficulty in defining intolerance. There are strong incentives to define intolerance as today's political foes, and weak incentives to resist this urge. For my own part, I exist in a political context where I know that lots of people want to deny my whole existence. And so long as society is willing to keep them to nothing worse than the occasional unkind word, I'm willing to live with that. I prefer it to the endless mission creep that all too easily comes when the ostracism and purges start.
    • arrrg 7y ago
      I know that this didn’t work out in the past and the result were not hurt feelings, the result were millions of murdered people. I know that tolerating intolerance is not solely to blame for that, it probably didn’t even play a major role, but it did play a role. And that‘s why I want to avoid making that deadly mistake in the future. Yeah, deciding when it is ok is then a hard problem but I’m willing to accept that.
      • Kalium 7y ago
        It might be worth recalling that historically, trying to supporess interolant viewpoints often helps make them more popular. Which is to say that intending to avoid repeating a historical mistake may wind up encouraging the exact opposite. Cautious consideration of the possible effects of deliberately adopting intolerance may be worthwhile. It may also be worth inquiring about what a person means when they refer to their own lives before going on to describe genocide. There's potentially some awkward outcomes there.
• shshehe 7y ago
  Tolerance is not inherently a virtue. Sometimes tolerance is moral weakness.
• snowwrestler 7y ago
  Tolerance of someone who thinks such things is certainly possible. Tolerance of someone who says such things in a work environment--knowing that the subject of the speech might be a coworker, boss, or direct report--is another thing entirely. Employees should not have to tolerate that, and employers should not expect them to. To be super clear about this, making bigoted statements is a behavior in the workplace, and it is smart of businesses to set and enforce expectations for acceptable workplace behavior.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]