Tolerance

Meaning: The ability or willingness to tolerate the existence of opinions or behaviour that one dislikes or disagrees with.

Characteristics: Accepting of other views and behaviours

Explanation: A rare and important virtue - it iterates the premise that no one has the right to tell another how to be or to act, provided that such being and acting does no harm to others.

Examples, illustrations, quotes and statistics:

- Example: Tolerance limit; drawn tightly and in wrong places - Judge in Madrid who refused an application by the city’s police to order prostitutes in the Casa de Campo to put on more clothes. The prostitutes there are scantily clad in suspenders, basques and the briefest of mini-skirts, which the police chief claimed is indecent. But the judge ruled that as that was the uniform of their profession, they were entitled to wear it. The ruling in this case is tolerance itself – applauded by prophet of this virtue - see below

- Quote: John Stuart Mill – book on liberty – ‘Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to lives as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest. Significant implications:

1.     Defines intolerant person: One who wishes others to live as he thinks they ought, and who seeks to impose his practices and beliefs upon them (moraliser?)

2.     Human community benefits by permitting a variety of lifestyles to flourish, because they represent experiments from which much might be learned about how to deal with the human condition

3.     It iterates the premise that no one has the right to tell another how to be or act, provided that such being and acting does no harm to others

4.     These are the tenets (beliefs) of liberalism (accept other views)

5.     Word of malediction (phrase uttered with the intention of bringing about evil) among those that fear that unless a tight grip is kept on human thoughts and instincts, earth will break open and demons will rise

- Quote: Alexander Chase - The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened with convictions (a firmly held belief or opinion) – These individuals do not want to budge and accept views that differ from their own

· LGBT, homosexuality, gay rights, Abortion, etc

- Example: Tolerance is not only the centrepiece but the paradox (a self-contradicting statement) of liberalism (accepting other views).

1.     Liberalism enjoins tolerance of opposing views and allows them to have their say leaving it to the democracy of ideas to decide which shall prevail

2.     The result is too often the death od toleration itself, because those who live by hard principles and uncompromising views in political, moral and religious respects always, if given half a chance, silence liberals because liberalism, by its nature, threatens the hegemony (leadership or dominance, especially by one state or social group over others) they wish to impose

- Quote: To the question, ‘Should the tolerant tolerate the intolerant?’ – The answer should therefore be a resounding ‘No.’ – Tolerance has to protect itself. It can easily do so by saying that anyone can put a point of view, but no one can force another to accept it. The only coercion should be that of argument, the only obligation should be to honest reasoning.

- Quote: Helen Keller said that ‘the highest result of education is tolerance’, and she was right; one can be confident that in most cases the unbiased reasonings of an informed mind will come out in favour of what is good and true.

- Example: Intolerance is a psychologically interesting phenomenon because it is symptomatic of insecurity and fear. Zealot (a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political, or other ideals) – who would, if they could, persecute you into conforming with their way of thinking, might claim to be trying to save your soul despite yourself; but they are really doing it because they feel threatened.

· The Taleban of Afghanistan force women to wear veils, to stay home, and to give up education and work, because they are afraid of women’s freedom

· The old become intolerant of the young when alarmed by the youth’s insouciance (casual lack of concern; indifference) towards what they have long known and held dear

· Fears begets (cause; bring about) intolerance, and intolerance beget fear: the cycle is a vicious one

- But tolerance and its opposite (intolerance) are not only or even invariably forms of acceptance and rejection respectively.

· One can tolerate a belief or a practice without accepting it oneself

· What underlies tolerance is the recognition that there is plenty of room in the world for alternatives to coexist, and that if one is offended by what others do, it is because one has let it get under one’s skin

· We tolerate others best when we know how to tolerate ourselves: learning how to do so is one aim of the civilised life