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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.
Except if you view tolerance as what it is, a social contract. I'll tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.
Thus I get along great with the religious person that just wishes to practise their religion in peace, and respects my existence as a connoisseur of cock outside of it, but we don't have to put up with the neo-nazis calling for both of our heads.
And so the paradox dissolves.
That's true. But it also requires that both sides have the same definition of tolerance and the same definitions of good an evil.
For instance, what if that religion being practiced believed that homosexuality is a sin, and you did not?
In their eyes they'd be justified in thinking you were intolerant of their god-given righteousness and you'd be justified in thinking that they were being intolerant of the liberty of others.
Maybe they actively roam the streets harassing gay people, maybe they have laws about a death penalty, or maybe they just talk about them as unclean. Where does your tolerance start? Is it only at words and not action? Does that mean hate speech is ok?
The paradox here isn't to do with tolerance and intolerance, but the assertion that either of those things exist as objective view points.
Thinking something someone else dies us wrong or immoral is is not the same as being intolerant.
A religious person thinking homosexuality is a sin and simply looks down on gay people, but otherwise takes no action is being tolerant. They are not being accepting, just tolerating. Someone who actively tries to stop gay people from existing (through laws, conversion therapy, murder, etc.) is intolerant.
The very fact there's now a bunch of comments each defining "tolerance" as something different but with equal fervour sort of proves the point.
Look, I have no answers, but I was particularly commenting on the assertion that the paradox dissolved if you think about it. It doesn't. It's not that easy, and if you think it is, you are the reason why the paradox upholds.
The social contract is to tolerate that which doesn't harm or significantly affect you. Someone can choose not to be gay, and that's fine. They don't have to "tolerate" a gay guy hitting on them. However, 2 gay guys sleeping together is none of their business. In your case, the religious person can feel what they want. When they start trying to impose that on the gay guy, they are being intolerant.
Things get more complex when worldviews start impinging on each other. E.g. the religious person can have issues with a "gay pride" parade. At the same time the gay community has a reasonable right to express themselves. The balance of these views is a lot of how the rest of society functions.
People don’t choose their sexuality. They can choose not to act on it, but that’s repression and is harmful.
We’ve got to the crux though. There are opposing viewpoints. A gay pride parade might be tolerated, but what if it is protested, peacefully. I should the pride parade tolerate the protest?
That's true. But it also requires that both sides have the same definition of tolerance and the same definitions of good an evil.
It's a similar problem to respect. If I said "I'll show you respect if you show me respect" I could mean that I'll give you due regard for your feelings if you'll do the same. However, too often it means I'll give due regard for your feelings if you'll treat me with deep admiration.
my existence as a connoisseur of cock
A penis sommelier, if you will
I’ll tolerate you as long as you tolerate me.
I'd only comment that it's not just about tolerating me. I am intolerant of people who are intolerant of others, unless they follow this contract.
But then not everything is about tolerance of other people. I don't tolerate people who litter, for example, even if they tolerate me.
Its not a paradox.
Tolerance is a social contract.
If you refuse to be part of the social contract, then you do not receive its protection.
it is not paradoxical to be intolerant to those who want to destroy the contract to harm individuals or society. Being violently intolerant against them is nothing but acting in the defense of our own personhood, the personhood of our fellows, and the good of our society.
True, but not a meme. More like an infographic.
And a pretty poor one at that. It doesn’t demonstrate the concept.
Sorry sir, we only do soapboxes here.
I've always disliked how this is described as a paradox. It only highlights a broader point found in many systems, a just system is never about "the good" outnumbering "the bad". It's about a balanced equilibrium, as are most relationships. Besides, allowing intolerance is not a tolerant act, that's not the way we define that term. To make such a claim would be as ridiculous as a racist person saying they are practicing tolerance by not challenging or question any of their bigoted thoughts and instead just letting them play out.
I view it as a contract. If you don't abide by it, you are not covered
It's only a paradox because the creator of the infographic has oversimplified what intolerance is.
When nazis are intolerant of a minority group, or whatever their target is, are violent towards them.
When the general society is intolerant of nazis, they are not usually calling for nazis to be killed or harmed.
And the creator does not differentiate between how a government deals with nazi versus the people. A government may "tolerate" nazis when it comes to free speech, and then be "intolerant" of nazis when they commit violence, and arrest or prosecute them. The general populace, unlike the government, cannot prosecute nazis (legally), they can only shun them. The creator clumsily does not differentiate between legal consequences and social consequences.
Basically, the infographic creator is trying to both-sides this shit, when one side want ppl dead, while other side just want nazis to go away. They are not the same. Moronic, sophomoric, low IQ. Too bad this may actually work on some people. That's the sad part.
When the general society is intolerant of nazis, they are not usually calling for nazis to be killed or harmed.
And why aren't we doing that? They're literally Nazis?
Fully agree. The only catch with this is it can be distorted with propaganda to point to anyone as being intolerant, with enough saturation. The bar for recognizing intolerance needs to be fairly high.
Why?
We don't want to risk further radicalizing those still within reach and not completely indoctrinated.
We don't want to risk a false accusation and provoke witch-hunts.
We don't want the intolerant to use this against the tolerant.
It's why I'm always a bit leery of the knee-jerk punch-a-nazi movements.
This gets abused a lot by people who claim agency over what is intolerance and what isn’t. It would seem an easy and straightforward enough distinction but in reality there seems to be a lot of wiggle room.
absolutely it gets abused. any time anyone wants you to tolerate what they want you to(defend their own tolerance), they might suggest that you're not being tolerant enough. (suggesting you intolerant)
this means that both intolerance of reasonable rules, as well as intolerance to unreasonable rules can always be twisted as "intolerant of the tolerant ruling".
essentially, whatever an authority establishes as being right/good must be tolerated, whereas what they consider wrong/bad will not be tolerated.
of course most reasonable people know that what people think is good/bad/right/wrong varies massively, and how tricky and meaningless this fact can make the whole idea of "tolerating the intolerant". it certainly doesn't help in convincing the intolerant to be tolerant, so i think it's not worth talking about.
It happened with the UK.
Our political landscape went to shit when mainstream platforms started giving highly right wing and racist parties like UKIP and the BNP platforms.
It's not the paradox, it's the common sense.
From what I've seen people use this as an argument for censorship. Personally I believe in proportional responses.
This assumes that censorship is inherently bad. Censorship against speech regarding the government should be protected. However it's perfectly legitimate to censor harmful ideas, and many countries censor hate speech. We censor people's ability to physically and emotionally harm others. We censor threats. Censorship isn't inherently bad, and is already used functionally everywhere, just ask ChatGPT.
I do however think censorship can be dangerous. I think the censorship we see in public forums (including lemmy) already treads on the toes of legitimate intellectual conversation of objective views on hate speech and offensive language. Tone policing is incredibly intellectually disingenuous, but is widespread because feelings trump literacy. I think the censorship of individual words is supremely dangerous because it also bans or limits the conversation around those words, their usage, etymology, and understanding their use. Comprehension of offensive things is just as valuable as understanding anything else, if not more so should you wish to fight them, but censorship of offensive things without context destroys the capacity for understanding to permeate the social consciousness.
The problem is that people label everything and everyone "Nazi" or "fascist" these days and with that they justify not tolerating any type of experience or opinion they find uncomfortable.
This leads to basically ignoring a whole bunch of people. But their problems won't stop simply because you ignore them. Instead you now have people who were on the verge to vote right wing, now definitely voting right wing because they feel the left ignores their problems (which is true).
I don't think that's "the problem." There's been a global resurgence of actual fascism over the last 20 years. Nationalistic, racist, xenophobic, dictatorially structured, scapegoatism, corporatist, all the boxes checked. It's been my experience people complaining about the term being "watered down" have dipped their own toe too much in that pool, i.e., they think some elements of it are excusable, sympathize with the actual fascist figures, and hence rush to their defense.
Fascism never caught on anywhere with the public in any country because the whole population was all suddenly cartoon villains. The public got sold a belief system that was appealing to them, that made sense to them, that's how they fell for it. They'd put in elements of truth into what they were saying, or appeal to basic grievances that the population had.
Thank fuck someone reasonable.
Yes the term is 1000000% watered down and means nothing anymore, it's lost all the terrible insult it used to carry.
If twelve people sit at a table with a Nazi, you have thirteen Nazis
For those that haven't seen it, the speech in Team America discusses adjacent nuances of this in the most eloquent and poetic way possible.
Thatms why I always say that i'm intolerrant towards intolerrant people
That's not what Popper is talking about. He's talking about maintaining the option to be intolerant of the act of intolerance, not of people.
I sometimes make fun of reactionaries by saying "Anti-Racists are intolerant of Racists. They're the true racists!". Didn't know there was a point to be made in that joke!