sorry i got my rhetoric ™️ wrong last time i am just attempting to illustrate the thesis of Tolerance is not a moral precept by Yonatan Zunger so check that out if ur curious thanks babes <3
[Tolerance] is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact.
Dude the paradox of tolerance is literally saying we shouldn’t tolerate in tolerance.
But who defines what intolerance is or what subjects are ok to be intolerant of? Whoever has the most social or political power at the moment? That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Bro you’re thinking way too hard it’s literally just saying don’t be a bigot
Bro nobody in the history of mankind ever thought too hard.
I’d argue that others aren’t thinking hard enough. People want to establish these new rules to have things be the way they want them, even if it means suppressing free speech to get it. That’s all well and good until your side loses power and your speech is suppressed.
I agree, don’t be a bigot, but stop at equality for everyone, not suppression of those you may disagree with. That sends us right back down the bad path. I’m not saying you said that here, but I see it a lot these days and it worrisome.
Pretending that you can’t specifically outlaw explicitly violent and hateful bigotry without someone else outlawing your own peaceful ideology is the mother of all slippery slope fallacies and is almost exclusively trotted out by people who agree with a lot of the ideology of the bigots.
There’s nobody forcing us to go down any “bad path” just because we protect minorities from extremists. Just like there’s NOT always two valid sides to an issue (see for example flat earthers, young earth creationists and other science deniers), you don’t have to ban democracy in order to ban fascism.
Violent and hateful acts of bigotry are outlawed and have been for quite a while.
Intolerance is more vague and happens largely in the mind. Sometimes those things in the mind can come out as speech or actions. Actions that violate the law should be punished, speech or thought would be very dangerous to outlaw.
violent and hateful acts of bigotry are outlawed and have been for quite a while
Someone hasn’t been paying attention to all the laws deliberately victimising and discriminating against racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, poor people, unemployed people and all immigrants (not just the undocumented ones) coming out of Congress, the white house and the states for the last 250 or so years 🙄
We can only talk about today, not 250 years ago. What are the laws today which support racial discrimination, for example? Lets get rid for those if they exist. I don’t see how continuing to complain about stuff from 250 years ago, which was struct down long ago, is helpful for moving forward. We can’t change the past, we can only change the outlook for the future.
People conflate “ban bad actions” and “ban speech” when discussing tolerance; separating those is important. We should ABSOLUTELY ban violence and refuse to acknowledge laws and systems that advocate for those things. We should be both vocal and active in our rejections.
Speech is a separate issue. As stupid as antivaxxers are, as hateful as TERFs are, I don’t want government telling them they can’t speak. Any law we pass, we should ask ourselves how it might be abused by a bad actor. Better, at least to me, is to out and ruin anyone who expresses hateful, bigoted views.
To be clear, free speech does NOT protect from social consequence. Let them speak. Let them be ostracized, ridiculed, and demeaned for their hateful speech. Use your own free speech to ensure there are 10 voices of reason for every “loving” Christofacist telling them exactly what we took our stance for in 1865 and 1944. All humans are equal. All humans deserve life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness and every soapbox is at once a platform and a social noose.
100% agree, and this is where I come out. Speak your mind as a fascist and get wrecked with social censure.
try explaining that to eg. the terfs
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve argued with terfs about the stupidest of misconceptions, I’d probably buy a house…
You cannot have equality for everyone if you allow intolerance to exist. You have to be intolerant to the intolerant in order to preserve a tolerant society.
That’s one hell of a justification for intolerance.
Actions are what matter, and there are laws against actions.
I hate of glitter, I wish it didn’t exist, I don’t want it anywhere near me, and I don’t want people wearing it coming near me. One could call that intolerance of glitter. However, I’m not protesting and boycotting glitter companies. I’m not shouting at people in the street over it or harassing anyone. I’m not taking any action at all against glitter, except doing my best to stay away from it. I can only control myself, not the world. I’m still tolerant of the fact that it exists and there are people with a different opinion of me that like it. People being intolerant of my anti-glitter views by knowingly sending me glitter filled cards or whatever, isn’t going to make me more tolerant of glitter, it’s just going to make me think that person is an ass hole and I don’t want them around me. Meeting intolerance with intolerance is not a way to bring the world together, it just rips it further apart.
(While you can draw parallels, this is not a metaphor, I actually do hate glitter. There are dozens of us!)
but stop at equality for everyone, not suppression of those you may disagree with
Equality for everyone requires the suppression of those who would take away that equality, otherwise you eventually lose equality for everyone. This is similar to how maximizing freedom for everyone requires restricting your individual freedom to harm others, because in doing so you remove their freedoms. Your individual freedom is less, but the total amount of freedom in the system is greater for it.
Furthermore, it is not a moral failing, or even a difficult moral quandary, to suppress people for their actions and choices. We do it all the time to murderers and other criminals, or even people who don’t shower. This can be done in multiple ways, including ways that do not involve state power. We frequently use social means to suppress people, for good or bad. A society simply works that way. And if they don’t like it, they can simply choose to stop trying to take away equality; I cannot similarly choose to stop being the kind of person they want to take equality away from.
To protect equality we must win every fight; to lose it, they need only win once. Everybody is protected by equality so long as they believe in it. I do not believe that those who do not believe in equality should be extended its benefits, for they will seek to destroy it from within like a parasite.
Now hold on. Nobody said not tolerating meant suppressing. It means opposing.
That… that’s bigot rhetoric, and is full circle to the issue here. “You can’t call me out for using the N word because MAH FREE SPEACH”
I agree with you about free speech – and I would also argue that it extends to forums wanting freedom to choose what they contain.
There’s always other forums. Private forums controlling their content isn’t silencing. That’s not how it works.
40% of Millennials are onboard with limiting free speech.
That’s an alarmingly high number. I’m not “pro” offensive speech against anyone, but having the government limit it… that’s a whole different conversation. I think a lot of younger people aren’t making that distinction and are willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. That worries me. Free speech is there to protect ideas from whatever the prevailing status quo at the time is… Galileo was found guilty of heresy, was banned from teaching, and sentenced to house arrest, because he said the Earth went around the Sun. Without free speech, how would people speak out against and challenge what they see as wrong with those in power?
You’re trying to tie a different issue to the discussion here and it’s simply non sequitur.
We’re not talking about restricting speech at a legal level, we’re talking about opposing bad speech with good speech or by cultivating private fora where good speech is encouraged and bad speech discouraged.
You literally jumped down the pitfall of the rhetoric of the bigoted folks that I alluded to. Excellent aim, wrong target.
I think the distinction needs to be more clearly made, which is why I was trying to make it. A lot of people talk about opposing bad speech, and while you and I may believe that should only be at the social level, not a legal one, 40% of Millennials are missing that distinction, as it’s one that is rarely called and and just assumed people “get it”. Those assumptions lead to poor conclusions, those conclusions lead to action, and we lose our rights. I don’t think being clear about where the line is drawn is ever a bad thing.
People with less than pure motives can make a very compelling argument for suppressing speech to people who aren’t aware of the pitfalls. Schools used to teach this, but based on the statistics, it seems like the message is getting lost.
I’m intolerant of beliefs that harm people. That’s the line. If what you want to do or what you believe harms another person, it shouldn’t be tolerated.
That is equally vague. What constitutes harm, who defines what harm is?
If corporations are in change, they could argue that you not spending all your money on their product harmed them, because they didn’t meet their revenue targets this quarter.
A politician could say you not voting for them harmed their chances of getting elected.
Someone at the grocery store could say you harmed them by buying the last loaf of their favorite bread.
Also, believing something, devoid of any actions around it, is incapable of harming anyone. If someone believes cats shouldn’t exist, but goes about their life as a normal person, no one knows and no cats or cat people are harmed. Belief happens in the mind. We don’t want to go down the road or thought crimes.
That is equally vague. What constitutes harm?
Any action or inaction that physically, financially, or mentally damages another human being through malice or negligence.
who defines what harm is?
In a democracy? The people.
Belief happens in the mind. We don’t want to go down the road or thought crimes.
If you believe hurting a group of people, for any reason, is righteous you’re more likely to commit crimes against that group. If we’re going to start talking about slippery slopes, let’s talk about the slippery slope of allowing hate to take root and spread in any society and how that’s turned out in the past.
I thought the article did a pretty good job of addressing those points
BuT dIsAgReEiNg WiTh HuMaN rIgHtS iS jUsT aN oPiNiOn, So YoU aReN’t AlLoWeD tO bE mEaN tO fAsCiStS wHo ArE aDvOcAtInG fOr A fUcKiNg GeNoCiDe!1!
my first exposure to the paradox its ambiguity was being used as an excuse to platform literal nazis on the basis of “being mean makes you the oppressor ☹️☹️☹️”
i for one welcome a philosophy that is more concrete and specific and doesn’t allow for such openings. tolerance as a contract does that for me. though as this comment section shows trying to express this position gets you labeled as maga so huge L for me i guess.
Interestingly enough, international waters work by a similar concept. A lot of people think no laws apply in international waters, but that’s not the case. Anyone sailing there picks a country whose laws they will follow.
But what happens if you don’t pick a flag and just decide you’re not going to follow any laws?? Well then you’re not protected by any laws either. Your ship can be sunk or seized by anyone and there isn’t anything you can do about it because you decided you wanted to exist outside of any laws.
Tolerance works a bit like that. If someone choses to live outside of tolerance and just do what they want to others, then they forfeit their right to be protected by tolerance.
this is a cool fact and a valuable contribution to the conversation thanks homie ☺️
The side of intolerance will never extend you the courtesy of peaceful co-existence that you try to extend to them. If you give them a hand they’ll take an arm. Give them the chance to talk and they’ll take away your right to speak. You fundamentally can’t make peace with someone who wants nothing more than to see you disappear.
This sounds like some “trump being president is what the left gets gor being woke” bs. When we tolerate the people who want to obliterate other people, we find ourselves among the obliterated.
Tolerance as a contract feels like the logical conclusion to the paradox of tolerance
