I’ve read several explanations, but I think I need it really dumbed down to grasp it.
In: 7
The tolerance paradox is easily sidestepped in some situations.
The most common current example of this would be bigots getting called out and resorting to “so much for the tolerant left” as an emergency exit.
Fuck off bigot, I’m not tolerant and never claimed to be. By its very definition, tolerance means allowing behavior that you disagree with. I do not tolerate homosexuality, transsexuality, gender fluidity, etc. To tolerate those things I would first need to inherently believe that those are inappropriate behaviors. They aren’t. They needn’t be tolerated. Merely accepted.
I’m am very accepting of views and behaviors that I may not espouse, but at the same time incredibly intolerant of bigotry, racism, sexism, etc.
Allowing bigots to frame sexual orientation, race, or other culture war issues as something to be tolerated is the wrong move. Always turn the tables on them. Never tolerate their bigotry.
You have a buddy group who go play basketball every other Friday. Two of your buddies are gay. You bring a new guy, and it turns out that he’s pretty homophobic. Maybe you tell them to leave it alone. Your two gay buddies are uncomfortable but don’t want to cause problems, while the homophobe now casually jabs at them all game long.
Next two games, the homophobe brings one of his buddies. Now the whole energy is off. They spend more time insulting the two gay dudes in your group than playing. Maybe even a fight breaks out that you break up, telling everyone to chill.
One of your gay friends pulls you aside and says that he doesn’t feel safe playing with those guys, and you tell him that he’s overreacting because it’s just their opinion.
Next time? Neither gay friend shows up, and they start blowing off messages from you. Now there’s more homophobes there, and they either drop bringing up gay people at all, or now casually say homophobic things constantly.
By tolerating everyone, the only people really comfortable in that environment will be people who are intolerant. So eventually your whole group is going to be pretty hateful. Meanwhile, if you’d kept them out from the start, it would remain chill.
There is no paradox of tolerance
It is an agreement between two people. The two people agree to tolerate the other person. It is a peace treaty.
When one side breaks the peace treaty, then the treaty is broken and the other side is not required to keep following it.
So, if someone spreads hate towards you, you are not required to accept that hatred. You are entitled to keep your life peaceful. You have a right to life.
As an aside to all the other answers here, an important thing to consider is that in this discussion you’re often trying to make sense of the behaviour of people acting in bad faith, which complicates trying to logically understand the situation. My favourite way of understanding this is a john paul sarte quote about anti-semitism:
>“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
-Jean-Paul Sartre
Bob likes the color yellow.
Jane hates the color yellow and anyone who likes it. She calls them dumb.
Jane called Bob dumb, and he told her to stop.
So, Jane being more tolerant would mean she stops calling people dumb for liking yellow.
Bob being more tolerant would mean not complaining when Jane call people dumb.
If both people act more tolerantly, then things are okay.
But if Bob tries to tolerate Jane, but Jane doesn’t try to tolerate Bob, then that means she keeps calling Bob names and Bob pats himself on the back for not complaining.
In other words, Jane gets to continue behaving badly without confrontation.
Like everything, context matters. Tolerance is good. Tolerating intolerance lets bullies get away with being bad.
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