Some thoughts on tolerance.

"Traditions deserve respect only insofar as they are respectable."
- Amin Maalouf

I was accused today of being intolerant. I'm ok with that. I welcome criticism if I can use it to become a better person, and this particular criticism did make me want to dig a little deeper and find out if I really was that way, because I don't want to be intolerant. Love. I want to love. As much as I can.

I took a philosophy class my freshman year of college and I can still hear my wild-eyed professor demanding, "DEFINE YOUR TERMS!" Because a startling number of disagreements begin when the parties involved don't take a moment to define their terms. Sometimes we use words that mean one thing to us and another to someone else, but we both think we are talking about the same thing, and then problems occur.

So I decided to do a little research on the word "Tolerance." That's how I found that quote up there. And really, I agree with that. Tolerance isn't the same as indulgence, deference, or respect. Tolerance, to me, is basically accepting the existence of something even if you don't like it.

Size XXXL bikins, for instance.


As far as religious tolerance...if you think that people who disagree with your religion should indulge your beliefs, defer to those beliefs (or even, maybe, enshrine your religious traditions in law), and respect things that sound, to them, a little crazy, I think you are being quite unfair.
If you just want people to let you believe what you believe, and they can believe what they believe, I'm ok with that.

But trying to silence criticism by calling someone intolerant, when they are simple expressing their misgivings about something they find questionable in their own safe space? Especially if it is quite evident that the person has really done some research and tried incredibly hard to understand.
That's cowardly.

I think that "intolerance" has become a scapegoat for people. If you don't like what someone says, you can cry intolerance and thus invalidate their thoughts for your comfort rather than truly think about what they said and why it made you uncomfortable in the first place.

That being said, I'm finding that when I was accused of intolerance, the accuser and I ought to have defined our terms. Was I being intolerant by the standards herein? No. Was I being intolerant by their standards? It would appear so.

But I don't want to live in a world where dissenters are silenced by words like intolerance. I want to live in a world where people share ideas, where people say things that may be hard for others to hear. Critical thought is a staple of a freethinking life, and without dissenters, challengers, heretics...well, that's just kind of impossible.