cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6541859
Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
This makes sense. I guess I get mixed up because I want to live in a tolerant society, which I understand as being a society which tolerates others. I understand the paradox as “sure, we all want others to be tolerated, we want to live in a tolerant society, but this doesn’t mean pure tolerance, as in tolerance of intolerance”, or otherwise as an exception to the tolerance we should have in a tolerant society.
But I recognize that we live in a society that is intolerant of others. There’s the nazi extremists, but also conservatism as a whole being intolerant of anyone but the conservative white man. It boils down to me being intolerant of most people, as most people are intolerant of someone else. Of course in my example, my intolerance is my additudes towards that person and not say trying to make live actually miserable (via harming the person, the person’s employment or the person’s rights). I try to attack ideas, and not people, and by “attack” I mean criticise and question.
It might be, but this is also where I get confused. A contract is an agreement between one or more parties. If I agreed to the tolerant society contract, but the nazis agreed to the 14 words contract, who’s right? Which contracts trumps the other? Who arbitrates this? The best I can understand is that “our” social contract is the paradox of tolerance, or simply put: “you’re cool unless you want to physically harm and murder others, in which case it breaks the social contract and now we get to punch you” - which sort of makes it sound like a bit of a mob protection order: “that’s a nice face you’ve got there. Shame if some violent rhetoric about hurting minorities were to come out of it”. The reason for “our” social contract is because “thier” social contract seeks to terminate the lives of non-white people.
Anyway, thanks for explaining. It clears things up a bit. I still don’t like the idea of the social contract, but I think we’re splitting hairs at this point, and most of my dislike has to do with how easy it is to pick apart the concept due to the “contract” wording.