posted
One of the bedrock principles of modern western thought is an emphasis on Tolerance of your fellow person.
Tolerate their differences, whether they be religious, political, economical, or racial.
To be intolerant is to be evil, selfish, brutish.
Some religions have started to fight this notion, saying that too much tolerance is a bad thing. Sure Jesus was tolerant of the poor and the sinners, but he was not tolerant of the greedy or the sins.
Others have become intolerant of those who have faith, because they do not understand it, or have it themselves, they assume it is the result of delusion and they do not tolerate the deluded.
Marches and votes have lined up against being tolerant of homosexuality, crimminal history, evangelical Christians, and even the poor since some believe that poverty is equal to laziness.
They all yell, "Tolerance is good, but too much Tolerance is dangerous."
I disagree.
I think Tolerance is failing because it does not go far enough. I do not want to be tolerated. I want to be accepted.
Tolerate seems to be defined as, "will allow their existance for now."
I don't want to tolerate people of different beliefs, different faiths, different genders or heritage.
I want to accept them.
I want to accept them as people with the same flaws and promise, the same rights and the same responsibilities as I have.
I've learned a secret about acceptance. To accept others as equals, you first have to accept some things about yourself.
You have to accept the fact that while your life revolves around you, the rest of the universe doesn't.
You have to accept the fact that you can never truly know how deep another person loves, fears, hates, or feels pain.
You have to accept the fact that one persons JUSTICE is another persons VICTIMIZATION.
You have accept yourself for who you are, embrace it and hold onto it. You don't need to lose it when you accept someone else who is different. You can argue divinity with someone of a different faith, and still call them friend.
You have to accept the fact that, when you finally can accept the differences in other people, they may not be able to accept the differences in you.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Things that activiely hurt and destroy another person? At the supermarket I saw a book written by one of the Dobsons called Intolerance or something like that. I paged through it a bit and thought, I ought to just read Junie B. Jones instead. Why can't we have compassion and respect for each other? Or educate ourselves about differences to completely understand them better...?
*is not very clear because I am trying to listen to Bush*
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Where does the call for acceptance end and the call for indoctrination begin? The LDS minority is as bad about this as any minority, I'll grant. P.S. Speaking of our minority status in "Western civilization" and not on Hatrack.
posted
Indoctrination? Explain. We have got to deeply understand each other, do research, read in the perspective of a person you'd normally never read about.....
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Indoctrination: Because part of the church doctrine is that it is the only true and living church, is it really possible to accept it without believing that?
I run an exercise in this every week because I have been studying with the Jehovah's Witnesses for close to a year. As much as possible, I try to draw consensus with them. But there are some things that were I to accept, would not permit me to be me.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I grew up Seventh Day Adventist. They said they were the one true church. I got confused, because how do you know if you are right? I ask myself this question when it comes to wanting to fight for gay rights or, pretty much everyone's rights. How do I know if I am right? Is it because of the research and just the pain that people go through when they are opressed? If even one group of people is oppressed, the whole world suffers and feels the pain of it.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Tolerate their differences, whether they be religious, political, economical, or racial.
To be intolerant is to be evil, selfish, brutish.
Actually, what "tolerance" has come to mean, IMO, is that as long as you agree with whatever is the latest "in" cause, and disagree with whatever is "out", you are tolerant. Otherwise, you're a bigot, evil, selfish, close-minded, and a hate-monger.
It is hardly tolerant what Michael whatsisname was doing to try to get the prayer eliminated from the Inaguration ceremony. It was hardly tolerant of him to pursue removing the words "under God" from the pledge of allegiance. Tolerance means "The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others." No one would ever hold this guy down and force him to say "under God", or to make him lead the nation in prayer. He can abstain from saying the pledge of allegiance, as can children in school. But no...it's not the "in" thing to respect religious difference or belief if it dares to emerge from behind closed doors.
There was some local criticism of the government's choice to give anti-Bush protestors a prime spot on the parade route. I think they were wrong to criticize -- to me it was an illustration of great tolerance and freedom of expression. This, one of the pinacles of celebration of a peaceful continuation of power not only accepts public criticism but welcomes it. I find that remarkably tolerant. Somehow, I don't think I would have invited my enemies (for lack of a better word) to my wedding, encouraging them to sit in the front with big signs saying what a loser I am.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
You know, this campaign against tolerance among certain strains of fundamentalist Christianity really isn't all that new. I remember that I heard a radio commentary at least ten years ago (and probably a little longer ago than that), on a Christian radio station, by Charles Colson (the Watergate guy who went to jail and found religion, for those not familiar with him), in which he stated that tolerance was a "wishy-washy" concept and not a proper thing for a real Christian to have. I can't remember his exact wording, except that that "wishy-washy" has always stuck in my mind - as has the general tone of the whole commentary, because it shocked me so much.
Posts: 2454 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Take heart in the fact that the system of public education will always tend toward attracting liberal individuals as teachers. That is, people for whom the satisfaction of helping others outweighs not making a ton of money. Those values don't always line up. Indeed, there should be nothing more Christian than putting contribution over remuneration. Many do. But I don't know. It's all kind of mysterious to me.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Dan's right about tolerance... it is a wishy-washy, I'll allow YOU to be the disgusting thing you are, kind of feeling.
Acceptance, however, has a feeling of resignation. It says, "I know you are wrong and I know I can't change you, so I will just throw up my hands and accept who you are."
What we really need is respect. To quote Aretha, "R-E-S-P-E-C-T find out what it means to me..."
Our society does not put any value on respecting anyone else for their accomplishments (and sometimes just surviving is one Hell of an accomplishment) or even simple respect for a fellow human being. Our society even openly embraces the idea that disrespecting society, offices, people is to be saluted. We cheer the rebel, even if sometimes the rebel isn't rebelling against something, but is just being a jerk.
Do you respect the traffic cop who is trying to keep the roads safe or do you think of him/her as some predatory species just waiting to write you a ticket?
Do you respect a lawyer for being an advocate for the wronged or for attempting to get a fair trial for the accused (even if the accused is blatantly and unquestionably guilty?) Or do you view the lawyer as an ambulance-chasing parasite on society?
Do you respect the person who hands you the Big Mac and fries through the drive-thru window for the fact that they are working (no matter how menial the job is) and that they have spent a wee portion of their life making you the sandwich? Or is it just another loser in a paper hat?
Do you respect the prisoner in jail as a human being caught between redemption and damnation for the rest of their life? Or are they just some parasitic drain on society?
Do you respect the hard work your favorite band put into their most recent album? Or do you jump online to download a pirated MP3 so that you can enjoy their tunes?
Hey, stick it to the man, screw you copper, hang all the lawyers, get a real job loser, can't do the time -- don't do the time -- they oughtta just shoot you and get ya out of the gene pool. It's all good, right?
But then again, who really respects you? Who respects that you're struggling to make it in this world, that you try to take care of yourself and those around you.
Put tolerance away for the sham it really is. Lose your ego-trip that empowers YOUR acceptance of others. And try to respect the others that share and struggle with this world, this life.
Posts: 2848 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I don't see anything manifestly facetious about that quote. Human justice is imperfect. It will usually either not be enough or be too much. Even if a murderer kills someone and is executed, the execution will have been deliberately humane. And the murderer will have been guilty while the victim was not (assuming a capital murder situation which generally presumes that the murder was egregious- multiple victims or a child or for gain etc.)
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
"It was hardly tolerant of him to pursue removing the words 'under God' from the pledge of allegiance."
Will you concede, Jeni, that adding "under God" to the Pledge was itself an act of intolerance in the first place?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Tom: Since it was done relatively recently, yes. If it had been part of the Pledge since it was originally written, no.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Do you respect the prisoner in jail as a human being caught between redemption and damnation for the rest of their life? Or are they just some parasitic drain on society?
Just want to point out that while I do not always agree with Chuck Colson, his work in supporting prisoners in jail, treating them with respect and caring for them as individuals is enormously worthy of respect, IMO.
Posts: 5948 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Tom said: "I agree in principle, Dan, but here's the catch: what things do we agree not to accept?"
I try to accept the person, and I'm still fishing with thier actions. I can't blanket it with I don't accept thier actions because they probably do good things I would accept. Maybe I should say, I don't accept thier actions that would demean or prevent other people from accepting, or progressing in thier own acceptance of others. (If I were to go that far.)
I accept my friends. I however don't drink alcohol, most of them do. I used to think they were 'bad' or 'bad' for me to be around them, but the more I am around them when they drink the less I think they are bad, and I accept that they do drink, and that they are not bad people because they drink (This is however my own personal problem with alcohol, I was brought up to think of alcohol as bad. I know that it isn't, yet I know that it can bring out the worst in some people. I look to not using blanket statements for people, but for situations or actions of other people. While still accepting the person.)
Posts: 1132 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Take heart in the fact that the system of public education will always tend toward attracting liberal individuals as teachers. That is, people for whom the satisfaction of helping others outweighs not making a ton of money. Those values don't always line up. Indeed, there should be nothing more Christian than putting contribution over remuneration. Many do. But I don't know. It's all kind of mysterious to me.
I'm not sure I like this characterization here.
So only someone with liberal political leanings would be willing to accept a job for lower pay that helped people? I, as an extremely conservative person working right now on getting her teaching degree, find that more than a little personally insulting.
Not to mention my husband works at a job that averages 52 hours a week and starts at a starting salary much lower than public school teachers start at. He could quit that job tomorrow, devote himself to our side business full time, and make a lot more money. He doesn't because he loves the job. He derives more satisfaction from being a firefighter than he does running a plumbing company, even though the plumbing company bring us in far more money.
You think conservative Christians don't take jobs that pay little because the importance of helping people outweighs the lack of money? Then you haven't met many foreign missionaries, have you? Or pastors?
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Get over it, this isnt' about victimization - it's about you mis-characterizing conservative Christians in a way that is insulting.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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The thing that really disturbs me about a lot of the rigidity I see in this country is the complete lack of humility. Whoever they are, whatever they are railing against, they can't conceive that they might be wrong. It bugs the hell out of me and is the beginning of intolerance, in my opinion. Though I could be wrong. Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Yeah, I think there is something in the bible about pride not being good. But maybe it's just my wishy-washy PC-ness showing again.
Posts: 2010 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Why would they consider tolerance to be wishy-washy? South park once did a cool episode about that. It's stupid to tolerate EVERYTHING. To accept every single thing that people do. but, there are a lot of things people consider wrong and I still don't understand it... Perhaps I could be wrong about it, I don't know... It's just that some people think or have thought- That blacks are inferior to whites That Gays are degenerate That women are not as smart as men.
And I never quite understand where people got those notions from.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
Yanno, maybe it's just me, but I can't stand South Park anymore. Formulaic, adds heat but no light, satire without heart.
Posts: 472 | Registered: Aug 2004
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