Universal Acceptance? Absolute Tolerance?
The following is a message I sent on a forum, in response to a community organizer who said his "goal is to get involved in a social community which is first built on friendship, comradery, and universal acceptance. ... In an age where people are killing each other over religious beliefs, economic constructs, and sexual orientations, I think we have something very unique to offer: absolute tolerance." Here's what I said.
There is no surer way to create a tooth-and-throat fighthouse than to say an organization is formed around universal acceptance and absolute tolerance. In order to enforce that, you have to declare a certain level of intolerance to be itself intolerable.
Enforcing tolerance means being intolerant to intolerance. And that's not as clear-cut as you might think. Pretty soon group members have two differing opinions about where the line is drawn for excluding someone else. Or criticizing someone else. Or merely speaking mild disapproval of someone else. Or snubbing someone else. The conflicting opinions will be plausible and reasonable. Neither are absolute. Neither can be, because there's no such thing.
And then, acceptance of someone who is supposedely "intolerant" of them, means the whole group is supporting an atmosphere of intolerance toward them. The most vehement supporters of tolerance will require you to apply the strictest standards of whom you should not tolerate.
But because the group charter says acceptance is "universal" and "absolute", its telling everybody to seek out a line in the sand which is godlike in perfection. Those words create excessive expectations which rapidly defeat themselves in a vicious cycle. They came there to be loved, and for subjective reasons, they will not feel accepted enough. There is never enough.
But the charter says there is. I can guarantee there is no fight so prone to ripping each other's souls out and crapping into them like the hypocrisy of trying to find standards for tolerance and acceptance that are absolute. There is no-one more hypocritical than a proponent of so-called universal tolerance. Get ready for a permanent hate-fest of total earth-scorching war.
You probably thought I was going to say universal tolerance means accepting Neo-Nazis. Technically true-- but I'm not arguing linguistic semantics, I'm arguing practical results. They will dislike each other's perfume. Or preference for Pepsi over Coke. Or the wrong favorite "Dr. Who". Or taste in music. You cannot create universal acceptance because people rarely like other people. There is currently no war on the Moon because there are no people on the Moon.
Emotional support, and an environment in which to disagree and speak what is really on one's mind, are almost completely irreconcilable. The truth is too insulting.
Comments
todfox on Feb. 12, 2010 6:28 PM
I am in a subculture which practices 'radical inclusivity', but what this means is 'we'll try to welcome you no matter how weird you are', not 'you're always welcome always and forever no matter who you are'. For example, you might be able to get a ticket to our annual, 2500 person festival but that doesn't mean you are welcome at every house party ever thrown by one of those 2,500 people (this has actually come up).
bob921 on Feb. 12, 2010 7:57 PM
I think the better goal would be to create an environment where we can examine the ways in which we are intolerant, and help each other to overcome them. Most of us have some biases, racial, sexual, political, even if we don't want them. This is does not mean that we are bad people. But we can work on those, help to process and overcome those biases. This sounds like a good environment in which to be.
fiat-knox on Feb. 12, 2010 8:44 PM — Herd
Are you certain that those seeking "tolerance" aren't actually just trying to work out the rules of the game on the most fashionable - i.e. the "most tolerant" -side?
Most people I've encountered are too lazy to change their lives, or to address their little petty bigotries; and instead, in order to fit in, they just learn to say the proper, politically correct slogans and parrot the ritual calls and responses of the team they perceive as the winning side.
In a crisis, they'll happily defect to the next "winning side" that comes along that looks as if it has a chance for surviving the crisis more or less intact. As long as they're part of a group that will prevail, they'll happily bleat the same songs as that herd's leadership. Anything to stay in the herd, where they'll be safe.
Even if that herd is all jackboots, armbands and swastikas.
lorddraqo on Feb. 13, 2010 6:40 AM
I believe in practicing Unconditional Acceptance, which is a bit different from what was proposed by your organizer. The challenge is not to look for any absolute, or universal anything, but simply to grant everyone the right to choose to be who they wish to be, and to accept their choices, whether or not you agree with them. Once you are doing that, then the rest will come, if it is ever going to come, in its own time.
darmawink54 on (None)
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