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Journal cyranoVR's Journal: On Intolerance 8

Journal by cyranoVR

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them...

We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

- Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)

This discussion was created by cyranoVR (518628) for Friends and Friends of Friends only, but now has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

On Intolerance More

On Intolerance

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  • total tolerance is ultimately self contradictory -- so the primary question is - who gets to decide what is tolerated and what is not?
    • Easy - you tolerate everyone except the the person who says "I can't tolerate anybody else: mine is the only way. All others are Evil."
      • it has to be more specific than that - or else you've missed the point. a slave trader can tolerate many things- but we need not tolerate that profession or anything that comes with it. there cannot be total tolerance. it leads to allowing evil to run unhindered and will result in the situation you bring up in the original post.

        of course it is somewhat simpler at the 'what actions will we tolerate?' stage - though not always. (the more we learn about how things relate to one another the muckier
        • I'm for *NO* tolerance of groups that are diametrically opposed to society. For instance, I'm for zero tolerance of fundamentalists- Christian, Jew, Islam, Shinto, or whatever else. Their wish for control over others is diametrically opposed to democracy.

          I'm also for zero tolerance of evil, but that makes me one of the people who shouldn't be tolerated- because it makes me a legalistic, fundamentalist Catholic.
          • i didn't laugh as hard at that as the cow abduction site that tuxette posted - but that did give me a real nice grin.
            • I wish I had written it as a joke. Unfortuneately it's the core cognitive dissonance for any American Catholic- stems from the fact that we've got an entirely definition of "Rule of Law" than Europe has, and Canon Law was written by Europeans. Well, that and America is a pluralistic society where laws are kept to a minimum (or at least are supposed to be) and thus moral relativism is the rule, not the exception....so the Church asks us to be tolerant of, say, gays, but forbids them from being married in t
    • Although it in other respects makes for some friction, the real answer is variable tolerance. Instead of asking "what is the right degree of tolerance for everyone to share", a variable tolerance across society yeilds a nice combination of carrot and stick, where people are drawn into normal society, rather than simply being wholly in it, or outside it.

      Thus we choose to tolerate different forms of intolerance so as to have a variety of dynamics, each with its own advantages. Pluralism of this type works

      • i like that too - and it's the mechanism to keep that going that is interesting to me. who gets control, how do they exercise it, etc.

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