Tolerance is not a moral precept
extranewsfeed.com
extranewsfeed.com
I'm always seriously surprised by how easily convinced people are of flimsy equivalencies. Every debate on the Internet, it feels like there's a swarm of people that believe that taking a stand against intolerance or bigotry is the same as bigotry itself.
I always encourage everyone to read MLK's Letter from a Birmingham Jail, especially his critique of white moderates: "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
To divide a people based on skin color is wrong. King, and my grandfather, were not lovers of one skin color over another; they were lovers of respect. It is respect that will break the chains anywhere they are found.
He genuinely just said a policemans actions during the Civil Rights era enabled MLK. You can't make this up.
And then to talk about respect in the context of race, when black people are routinely disrespected by individuals, institutions and the state in America.
"Holding people to account for breaking the treaty is not the same as breaking the treaty"
If you accept my rephrasing, then I would like to argue that many things which people claim as "taking a stand against intolerance and bigotry" are themselves acts which break the peace.
If tolerance is not a moral precept then it cannot in any sense belong to an ideology.
If so, do we really feel that the "manifesto", citing gender differences supported by scientific research, was intolerant?
Or is "intolerance" simply being redefined to mean "disagreement with a particular political agenda"?
The line about "mandating increases for women’s representation in the homeless, work-related and violent deaths, prisons, and school dropouts" was especially interesting to me, as I can't easily dismiss that point.
Maybe we should engage in discussion, rather than moralizing over diversity, as the piece said?
1. Tolerance isn't a moral value, but is a pragmatic value [why?]
2. Therefore, only people who abide by the terms of tolerance deserve to receive tolerance, else they're in violation of the treaty and excluded [why? where are these terms listed? who agreed to them?]
3. Suggests due to incompatible interests, constant peace is an impossibility [?]
4. From a speech from Patrick Henry [Appeal to authority?]
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What I find confusing is, to suppose that basic tolerance is subject to a treaty that I don't even know the rules of and never agreed to, then how can I know some stranger's differing ethics (e.g. pro-life) won't say I violated their ethical code and now have am no longer tolerable?
Perhaps this was heavily excerpted? It seems like social contract theory with all of the logistic details left out.
Tolerance is not an end in and of itself. It's sort of a game-theoretic equilibrium, equivalent to an iterated prisoner's dilemma where cooperation is enforced by punishing defectors.
Society is full of unspoken rules that govern how we interact civilly with one another. It's sometimes frustrating that the rules are tacit, but it couldn't really work any other way.
To your point though, there will always be those who use the tacit, emotional nature of the social rules to manipulate others. The "place their nose in the way of other people's fists" as it were.
Does not (always) follow. The point is a peace treaty between between who do not otherwise get along. Obviously some of the people you are talking about are provocateurs, but if by "fellow-travellers" you mean people who have principled objections to your own ideology, then you've missed the point.
Edit: also, please see https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c
The witches, the commies, the nazis, the apostates etc. that people feel morally justified to destroy at all costs. Moral superiority thanks to the ideology du jour is one of the most insidious and hard to fight social forces that brings the worst out of humans.
The Gulag Archipelago should be mandatory reading for contemporary generations that weren't born in a totalitarian regime and want to get a taste of where blind following of ideology can get them.
Surely you can pick the odd one out here.
While we're considering that, it's worthing noting that the author did exactly that, writing about James Damore:
> a good number of the people you might have to work with may simply punch you in the face
Should we accept lessons in tolerance from someone who appears to think violence is justified if someone holds a different opinion?
Yes, if their argument is sound.
Edit: of course, we may still ask if they are living up to such standards as they set for others.
(Whether it's true or not is irrelevant in that case; a hurtful truth is still hurtful.)
That would be my first objection to this theory. If tolerance is a peace treaty, then it's easy to argue that the slightest breach of the peace merits the severest response, as a diplomatic insult might lead to a shooting war.
Certainly some will act that way, but I don't think it necessarily follows. The definition he provides of tolerance rather matches my own intuition when it comes to the mundane form of "tolerance" that neighbors show to one another when putting up with each others quirks.
But in any case, my point is that Zunger's character is irrelevant to whether any particular idea he happens to espouse is good or not. We must judge the idea on its own merits. To judge the idea based on what we think of Zunger himself is to engage in an fallacy.
Something I said about that previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10571404
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
Of course, the problem then becomes figuring out whether someone has broken the treaty, and what the appropriate response should be.
There are also a lot of tactics around trying to provoke others into breaking the treaty while still keeping your hands clean.
(*reasonable by mainstream standards, which already allows for a lot of unreasonable stuff, like billionares polluting the environment in the name of profit, which is somewhat related in that not bothering to define what is okay and what isn't contributes to the persistence of some really bad problems)
While I agree with the thrust of the argument, if I'm reading it correctly, that damaging extremists are probably not worthy of tolerance, I find the chipping-away at fundamental values to be disquieting. Pushing the argument further, at what point is tolerance justified? Only when dealing with people who agree with you? In which case it's no longer "tolerance".
If we're going to chip away at values, why not question all kinds of other fundamentals? Why should people of all types get equal work opportunities, equal pay, when they may have other natural advantages/disadvantages in society at large? Why should talented/smart/beautiful/athletically-endowed people (and, of course, middle-class white males, naturally) get rewarded with much greater wealth-per-effort than others? To what extent should society try to "redress the balance" with taxes/benefits? Why should we reward mere ownership of productive assets, rather than only personal productivity? Then there's a step-back look at modern society, with the nuclear family, work-for-wages, etc, which are relatively new and untested developments in society relative to the age of humanity.
Etc, etc, etc.
I'm not advocating any position on these issues, merely that if we're going to start questioning fundamental assumptions about how society should be, we may as well be comprehensive.
by the author's definition, i think that this would be too narrow to qualify as tolerance. according to the author: "Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business."
for what it's worth, i generally go out of my way to give the benefit of the doubt and to be tolerant. and i very much support erring heavily on the side of free speech when it comes to legislation and government regulation. and while i have zero problem with requesting an explanation from someone as to why they believe what they believe, even if i agree with those beliefs, i also have zero problem lumping someone with strong racist or sexist beliefs in with climate change deniers and anti-vaxers. i'd say flat earthers, but flat earthers are harmless. whereas, people who deny climate change, think that vaccines cause autism, believe that women are genetically predisposed to be less talented engineers, or believe that black people are genetically inclined to criminality: these are people who hurt the rest of society via their idiocy. like anyone else, they deserve a chance at education, and we shouldn't suppress their ability to speak should some agree to broadcast them or to listen. but anyone with any sort of sense should do what they can to convince the rest of the world that those moronic viewpoints aren't worth serious consideration, because they've been refuted many times over, and no novel arguments are being made.
> If we're going to chip away at values, why not question all kinds of other fundamentals? Why should people of all types get equal work opportunities, equal pay, when they may have other natural advantages/disadvantages in society at large? Why should talented/smart/beautiful/athletically-endowed people (and, of course, middle-class white males, naturally) get rewarded with much greater wealth-per-effort than others? To what extent should society try to "redress the balance" with taxes/benefits? Why should we reward mere ownership of productive assets, rather than only personal productivity? Then there's a step-back look at modern society, with the nuclear family, work-for-wages, etc, which are relatively new and untested developments in society relative to the age of humanity.
fine by me. i am fine questioning literally every single one of those things, and actively evaluating how they fit into our social structure. "why should talented/smart/beautiful/athletically-endowed people (and, of course, midle-class white males...) get rewarded with much greater wealth-per-effort than others?" great question. i can't think of a good moral reason, but i can think of lots of unsatisfactory-on-a-moral-level explanations that sum up to those outcomes.
Hypocrisy.
Overall, this seems like a very insightful take on something that has been troubling me for a while now, namely how do you practice tolerance if you are intolerant of people?
I think there's more room for discussion than TFA goes into, but it strikes me as a very good starting point.
Remember kids, the left is the authority on all that is good and right in this world, and dissent will not be tolerated.
> This is why “white separatism” is, in practice, just a rebranding of white supremacy; white separatists never seem to suggest that they should be the ones who should leave their homes and lives behind.
nothing about that implies "white-hating antifa marxist" to me at all. i don't think a strong distaste for white separatism implies hatred of white people, and conflating those viewpoints is highly disingenuous at best (but it seems much more likely to me to be an attempt at trolling, or white supremacist apologetics).
https://twitter.com/yonatanzunger/status/888906855044403200
"I am unapologetically a Zionist. I believe that the Jews must have a state to exist safely in the world, and that it has the right to exist."
The implication is that Jews would be entitled to separatism because that's the only way they can be safe. Lets admit it is true. But how come, somehow, whites will always be safe and don't need a "white" country?
Pure hypocrisy.
Oh, and for the record, most Jews are "White" as far as my eye can tell.
Nobody is at war with us over our country's borders
>Oh, and for the record, most Jews are "White" as far as my eye can tell.
A lot of people disagree, actually. In fact, "white" doesn't refer to skin color, but ethnicity. Hebrews are usually considered to be non-white because of their ethnicity ("Jew" is just a colloquialism and doesn't refer to their religion, but ethnicity).
OK. But I still can't distinguish. I have no clue if a person is Jewish or not from just looking at her, unless she's wearing something indicative.
As for people not being at war, even if that was the case now, who's to say it won't be in the future? It was in the past. The Ottoman went all the way to Vienna. The Umayyad conquered the Iberian Peninsula. The Mongol hordes reached central Europe.
I'm sorry, I understand the desire for separatism even if I don't totally agree with it; but to want it for oneself while calling other's "supremacy" is just hypocrisy.
Uhh, that's a straw man. What your eye tells you means jack, and it's also not what I said.
>OK. But I still can't distinguish. I have no clue if a person is Jewish or not from just looking at her, unless she's wearing something indicative.
That's not how race works.
>I'm sorry, I understand the desire for separatism even if I don't totally agree with it; but to want it for oneself while calling other's "supremacy" is just hypocrisy.
This isn't even a straw man. You just threw a bunch of straw on the floor and started yelling at it.
You've got to move past your right vs. left thinking, there's more to examine.