Those who practice Tolerance celebrate its hidden qualities. Tolerance is a dance. Tolerance is clever. Tolerance is strong. Above all tolerance shows the wonders of flexibility.
We may think that being rock solid is the best posture. But there have been plenty of indications that being able to move is the essence of strength.
Intolerance is constant in a binary world
In a world where many do not think at all, where people blindly follow, intolerance is easy to spot. It is a means by which popularity is maintained when popularity depends on mass prejudice.
Few countries have been immune. In the US there was a time in the early 20th century when it was actually respectable to be a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the wake of Trump's rise, many partisans of intolerance came out of the woodwork.
Ethics and aesthetics
The binary basis of intolerance needs explanation. If one pauses and admits ethics and aesthetics into one's mind, one moves toward being a universal person. One sees that all are precious, all valuable, all endowed with potential. This is tolerance as the universal value it is. Only the capacity to see things this way protects one from the evils of blind following and prejudicial acts.
Ethics is the universal values one consults on a regular basis.
They include tolerance, democracy, and helpfulness. Why these? Any analysis of actual human progress, not war but the slower and more important movement of people toward a better life, features these values. Democracy is founded on universal rights. Helpfulness is the great commandment.
A binary, my-way-or-the-highway way approach to life, cannot even acknowledge the reality of these key values.
Binary Thinking makes conflict the norm.
Hungary: Jewish Group Asks Orban to Halt Anti-Soros Campaign https://t.co/0hdle4ozGr
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) July 7, 2017
We now live in an era when men like George Soros, who is committed to a universal perspective, is skewered by the global right wing, with a strong push from nativists in the US.
You do not need to know what he has done with his wealth. You just need to know is he is liberal. That makes him the enemy.
Slow or fast
There might be an interesting dialog between people who want to move slow and those who want to speed things up, but that is the only basis for discussion in a world that is always in motion and where time past is over, done, irretrievable. Binary thinking is based on fantasy and the acceptance of harm and conflict as the cost of life itself.
Going forward
Tolerance is strength and flexibility. It can dance around obstacles and smooth rough pathways. It can disarm with surprise and impress with courage. It insists that all have value, all have a chance. It champions the oppressed and besmirched. It deserves to be seen as among the very highest and essential Universal Values going forward.
