more on intolerance

[eirias]

Shoot, a stray mouse click erased my half-completed post.

I'd hoped that my earlier writing on this topic would get the thoughts on intolerance out of my system, but it didn't seem to work that way -- which probably means I missed something. Maybe this shot will do the trick.

I think that part of my problem -- which perhaps is what cos was alluding to -- is that I was trying to treat tolerance as a binary: you tolerate something or you don't. ukelele added a nuance -- tolerance of beliefs vs. people -- but it only seemed to confuse the matter in my head, because I was trying to conceptualize it as a separate dimension (obviously not orthogonal but nevertheless distinct).

Today I began wondering if perhaps a sliding scale is more appropriate. Here I will try to make one up, with totally invented numbers, as a sort of thought-experiment. Because I am neither a professional psychometrician nor a professional philosopher, it will be clumsy, so anyone with relevant expertise who cares, feel free to poke me with improvements.



Let X be some proposition about the world, e.g. "Falun Gong is the path to salvation." Here is a scale of possible government responses to X.

-300 [Belief that X] is forbidden.
-200 Belief is unregulated, but [publishing that X] is forbidden.
-100 Publication is unregulated, but [acting on a belief that X] is forbidden.
0 No regulation of X.
100 Publication is unregulated, but [acting on a belief that not-X] is forbidden.
200 Belief is unregulated, but [publishing that not-X] is forbidden.
300 [Belief that not-X] is forbidden.

Here I tried to distinguish between public and private heresy; one can imagine a society that, e.g., permits private Falun Gong belief but prohibits advertisements about meetings in major papers. One could probably interpolate other government-actions on this scale as well.

Of course, as libertarians are fond of noting, there are ways of persuasion that don't require the government sledgehammer. I have no idea where to put these -- realistically I suspect they should be interleaved with the above in some more sophisticated way -- but for now I will just sandwich them in the middle like so:

-30 [Belief that X] makes you a social leper.
-20 Belief has no major consequences, but [publishing that X] makes you a social leper.
-10 Publication has no major consequences, but [acting on a belief that X] makes you a social leper.
0 No regulation of X.
10 Publication has no major consequences, but [acting on a belief that not-X] makes you a social leper.
20 Belief has no major consequences, but but [publishing that not-X] makes you a social leper.
30 [Belief that not-X] makes you a social leper.

By "social leprosy" I mean that X has major social consequences, such as discrimination in employment or housing.

Finally, because I think social consequences must admit to finer distinctions, here's a third scale:

-3 [Belief that X] is considered rude.
-2 Belief is a matter of taste, but [publishing that X] is considered rude.
-1 Publication is a matter of taste, but [acting on a belief that X] is considered rude.
0 No regulation of X.
1 Publication is a matter of taste, but [acting on a belief that not-X] is considered rude.
2 Belief is a matter of taste, but [publishing that X] is considered rude.
3 [Belief that X] is considered rude.


And here is an example analysis.

Let X be "women suck at math and science."

• US government: I would rate this a -100: you can talk smack all you want but you can't use gender as a hiring criterion, and if it becomes obvious that you have, you are wide open for a lawsuit.
  
• Major social consequences: Based on Larry Summers' experience, I think I would put this as a -20. (This is where more sophisticated interleaving is needed... or maybe just 3 separate, correlated scales.)
  
• Minor social consequences: Highly dependent on the circles you run in. In most of the circles I'm in it would be a -3. However, there are some in which it would rank as a -1 or a 0.
  

Now we get into the part where ukelele's cry for tolerance of people has me confused, because I explicitly meant to put it in this scale somehow, and yet I'm not sure what it maps to. It's clear that anything with an absolute value from 10...100 is insufficiently tolerant of the people -- but stuff in the very middle, well, I'm just not sure.

And this is where we get back to why I wish we weren't relying so much on this word in the first place -- what does it mean to tolerate a person? Does it mean "to separate judgment of a person from judgment of his beliefs"? With some extreme beliefs, this is neither possible nor practical: I'm sure there are some otherwise-lovely racists in this world, but I'm not all that keen on inviting them to alphabet nights. I don't think a single person who knows me would object to this decision. However, if I turned it around and said I wasn't going to invite any Christians to my parties, I'd definitely be the bad guy. I want some way of distinguishing the two cases that doesn't rely on "it's different because I said so" -- which, frankly, every liberal apology for the distinction seems to do.

I guess a lighter way of putting it that might also be a little clearer is: What niceties does one owe to the rude? Is it OK to write someone off for rude beliefs? statements? actions?

I bet for all of us the answer is, "It depends on the belief." Which is precisely why I think generic "tolerance" is the wrong way to look at it.

Comments

Re: Just a little to say

[feuervogel]

I doubt it changed in the 3 months between my graduation and your first semester (thanks, LJ schools function!), so I can safely say the "diversity" was non-existent, and I knew one lesbian who transferred out after a year, and one gay boy who stuck it out at least 2 years (maybe graduated? Dunno, he was a sophomore when I graduated.) And if a girl hinted that she was vaguely bisexual, people avoided her.

It was ... odd being a pinko librul vegetarian atheist in central Pennsylvania. The only person who ever gave me any crap, though, was this guy who was a preacher's kid (and was fine unless we talked politics or religion.) The protestant campus minister bloody LARPed (werewolf), and the Catholic campus minister was just a nice guy. But it was the protestant campus minister who gave me these crap books about why Christianity was the Only Way, etc.

So, in general, people left well enough alone, and the biggest debate I remember was whether Trent Reznor or Tori Amos was the better musician (a friend of mine and I would tag each other's doors with song lyrics by our favorite. He lived upstairs.) And the biggest drama was trying to get the stupid activities board to fund the literary magazine.

And none of this has anything to do with tolerance, I suppose.

Re: Just a little to say

[feuervogel]

Becca lived across the hall from me in the Barn (1601 Mifflin St.) I was the secretary for 2 years while she was co-pres with my roomie (agent_mph). We were like the three musketeers. Small world, huh?

When I was there, people Just Didn't Go to AWOL. Or if you did, they looked at you funny. But that was the mid-90s, during the Republican Revolution, and things are getting better now nationwide. And it was sort of hush-hush that Dr. Fala was a lesbian. (I only knew because my boyfriend at the time was a comm/business major, and she was his advisor. She also got us tickets to President Clinton's commencement speech at Penn State. Somewhere, I have pictures of a little microscopic President.)

Actually, Becca went to AWOL a couple years. Sometimes, looking back, I wish I had, because I was always curious, but somewhere I learned that you like one or the other, but not both, so I ignored it.

Re: Just a little to say

[feuervogel]

I got email from her a while ago; she was working at the Huntingdon newspaper and doing an article on study abroad. I'd like to keep in touch. Back then, people didn't have email addresses after graduation to give to each other, and mine changed a dozen times that year anyway.

I think as society in general becomes more tolerant and accepting, all the microcosms will follow along, eventually. Of course, you have your ultra-liberal, progressive schools where gay has been OK for years already, and the ultra-conservative ones where it'll still be a while -- if it's ever accepted.

(Hee, they still call it the barn! Were all the windows still broken and drafty, and did the power go out because the landlord was delinquent in bill-paying? Worst. Landlord. Ever. I was in #6.)

random aside about schools' attitudes toward sexual minorities

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

I went to an extremely liberal high school, and a reasonably liberal college. In high school there were a number of kids who were out, experimenting, etc, and everyone was very supportive. We hypothesized that a least 25% of the faculty were gay or bisexual, and I suppose that's not surprising if the school was so pleasant towards it, so sexual minorities would choose to work there.

My sister's high school was the complete opposite. Her headmaster publicly stated at one point during her time there (1993-1996): "There have never been any gay people at this school." Then when my sister was a senior a freshman male ballet dancer* came out -- he was the first one at the school to ever do so!

*I mention that he was a dancer because this was the only reason my sister chose to go to the school -- it was well known for its dance program.

Re: random aside about schools' attitudes toward sexual minorities

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

I hope that things are changing even at places like my sister's high way conservative school. I was in high school after her, but mine was the same one my oldest sister (a different one) went to from 1990-1994. Even at that time everyone was extremely accepting of sexual minorities and people were out and openly dating...but that was my cutting edge school for you. I've heard of no place like it, really.

what great news!

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

I just checked the website of my sister's school (the one where there were "no gay people"), and they now have a Gay-Straight Alliance group!! WOW! I guess you are right.

[kirin]

Minor quibbles:

First with one of your examples; my impression has been that Larry Summers probably does not actually believe "women suck at math and science" - I think he was intending to make a much subtler statement aboutaverages and outliers. However, it seems clear that a lot of people relying on sound bites *believed* that he believed you example statement, which may actually be what's relevant to the discussion of social consequences.

Next up, I've known many instances of people choosing to overlook certain beliefs of a person and invite them to social functions anyway, even to the point of outright racists being invited by social progressives. In most cases, this is because the invitee was family. Now, I realize that that's an important and socially distinct extenuating circumstance, but it remains interesting that often in such cases positive interaction can be had as long as certain topics are avoided. Other people, of course, *wouldn't* put up with such things even in family, but where it does occur it's certainly a data point for active person/belief separation.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

First with one of your examples; my impression has been that Larry Summers probably does not actually believe "women suck at math and science" - I think he was intending to make a much subtler statement aboutaverages and outliers. However, it seems clear that a lot of people relying on sound bites *believed* that he believed you example statement, which may actually be what's relevant to the discussion of social consequences.

Your antithesis and synthesis are both very good points, and I agree with both :).

Next up, I've known many instances of people choosing to overlook certain beliefs of a person and invite them to social functions anyway, even to the point of outright racists being invited by social progressives. In most cases, this is because the invitee was family. Now, I realize that that's an important and socially distinct extenuating circumstance, but it remains interesting that often in such cases positive interaction can be had as long as certain topics are avoided. Other people, of course, *wouldn't* put up with such things even in family, but where it does occur it's certainly a data point for active person/belief separation.

This is also a great point and something I will have to think about more.

[darlox.livejournal.com]

I have to weigh in here, and agree to a large extent with radicalteacher above. But, as for the fine line between tolerance and acceptance, I think you're getting bogged down in an issue of language more than anything else... like any good argument, you can generally win if you gain control of the language used to describe the point at issue.

The problem with "tolerance" as a social movement is that, fundamentally, it has attempted to make any judgements about another person verboten. There was a time not all that long ago when being called "highly discriminating" meant you had really good tastes in life. Now, anything that makes a discriminating judgement between various options, as applied to other human beings, is strictly off limits.

While I certainly agree that the world would SEEM happier and more peaceful if we could all work ourselves up to tolerance for any lifestyle or viewpoint presented to us, that illusion would be fundamentally wafer-thin. If a three-time convicted child molester moves in next door, it is not in your best interests to be "tolerant" of his preferences when you have 3 toddlers around the house. You probably shouldn't be tolerant of the satan worshipper who wants to erect burning icons on his own private property, if that property is across the street from a daycare center.

The problem is that a lot of interpersonal discrimination, a lot of judgements, are GOOD and they keep us and the people we care about safe. To deny that is to throw open the doors to some freakish middle-age-like doomsday where "do as thou wilt" is the only true law.

The bigger problem is that which discriminations keep us safe, and which are simply bigoted intolerance, is a HIGHLY subjective topic. And thus, we have the rub. Falun Gong is "good" to us, because they pose no threat to our way of life and represent a set of values we cherish. Falun Gong is "bad" to China, because they pose a catastrophic threat to their way of life, and represent a set of values that could destroy everything they've worked for. Only history is qualified to make the judgement of who is right.

[kirin]

"You probably shouldn't be tolerant of the satan worshipper who wants to erect burning icons on his own private property, if that property is across the street from a daycare center."

Not if the daycare center is highly flammable, at any rate. But in that case it should probably be built to better code.

"To deny that is to throw open the doors to some freakish middle-age-like doomsday where "do as thou wilt" is the only true law."

Well, the traditional more *civilized* variant is "do as thou wilt, an ye harm none".

[darlox.livejournal.com]

... which is great, and I'm sure some wiccan communities get on just fine. On the other hand, what you're left with is a scenario where raw strength is the only factor, and when somebody gets a very loose definition of "harm none" in their head, you'd better hope there's someone stronger than them around, to smack them down.

Barriers to personal behavior are the only way to have an even remotely civilized society. Every member gives up certain rights in order to gain control over certain potentially dangerous behaviors of others. It would be insanely dangerous to suggest that if we removed all such barriers, and released total freedom of action to the masses, that everone would behave themselves.

[kirin]

I don't believe I ever advocating having no central power that sets up barriers. I certainly don't trust every last individual in a large population to follow this philosphy of their own will at all times; the "an ye harm none" clause by all means requires an effective enforcement mechanism. But I don't see that a need to enforce further restrictions on personal behavior that *don't* harm other parties necessarily follows from this argument.

"Potentially dangerous" stirkes me as an awfully slippery slope. I'm concede to some need to regulate behaviors that are wildly reckless (say, drunk driving, even when an accident has yet to happen), or unintentionally harmful (i.e. involuntary manslaughter). But I just don't see enforcement against things one merely finds threatening on a philosophical level to be necessary to maintaining a viable civilization. Let me know if I'm misinterpreting you here...

(For the record, I don't identify as Wiccan. But that particular bit of philosophy has always seemed to me like a pretty decent starting point.)

[rshruti.livejournal.com]

I think the big problem is whether a particular behavior is threatening or not. For example, I might argue that having burning icons across the street from a daycare/school could unduly frighten children and cause psychological harm, while the person erecting these icons might argue that it's his private property and I'm infringing on his freedom of religion. And these are the sorts of areas where the problems arise. Some people don't see these situations as grey areas at all (and they may be on both sides of the line) while others think it's sort of a fuzzy situation. And, certainly, there are many behaviors where it makes sense to stay out of it when it comes to adults and yet regulate closely when it comes to children.

[darlox.livejournal.com]

You're not misinterpreting me, but for the record, I'm sorta leaning out over the cliff here to make a point.

"Potentially dangerous" IS an awfully slippery slope, and that's the entire point. You've got two warring slippery slopes right now -- one that would have The Official Belief as the only belief you can have, and one that would institute compulsory acceptance of every wacky, fringe, (dare I say) deviant *gasp!*, lifestyle that the human mind can concoct. I think both of them are terrible ideas.

The problem is that some lifestyles, some philosophies, some viewpoints, are mutually exclusive. You can't be Gay and Born Again Christian. You can't be Wiccan and a Boy Scout. The problem with "tolerance" as a social movement is that you're only really being tolerant of whatever viewpoint happens to be socially in vogue at the moment. Once you're tolerant of THAT viewpoint, you become de facto intolerant of some other one. Go ahead and speculate on they might tolerate neo Nazi leadership representation in the NAACP...

The point is that it doesn't matter if my views mesh with your views. I'm not, and shouldn't be under any obligation, implied or otherwise, to care a whit about what you have to say. Civilization is built upon the fact that for overall betterment, I realize it's in my best interests to take an interest in what you have to say, and figure it into my decision making.

But there are some people who will never realize that, and trying to build an entire social movement around misguided attempts to "convert" people such as that is at best futile, and at worst counterproductive. The latter because you risk advancing policies that could eventually be broadly interpreted to restrict the rights of those people who were ALREADY on your side...

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

You don't have to be something to be tolerant of it.

[kirin]

I think we're still slightly at cross-purposes here, perhaps because I've deviated a bit from the original post topic. I'm not trying to argue that I should be able to force you (or anyone, rather) into some kind of "unreserved acceptance" of every possible value set. (Indeed, that would be contrary to my premise.) I'm just saying there's no need to suppress someone's value set when its not infringing on the basic rights of others.

For example, as ukelele succinctly pointed out, which it is impossible to (consistently) be both Gay and Born Again, it is quite possible for a gay individual and a born again individual to live next door to each other, so long as they refrain from thwoing rocks over the fence. And I can be "tolerant" of both of them, simply by not attacking them as long as they're not attacking each other.

I guess it depends what is meant by "acceptance". All I want is to leave people alone unless they present imminent danger to those around them. Of course, as we all agree, there are many gray areas in defining that criterion.

Or to come at it from yet another angle, the only Born Again Christians I'm not willing to be tolerant of are the ones who bomb abortion clinics, or advocate such, or do other things that I consider to be actively harmful to others. If somebody wants to despise gays without harming them, I will disagree with them, but I'm not going to harass them about it.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

The use of "tolerance" vs. "acceptance" above points to an important distinction; to wit, they're not the same thing.

This is problematic because "tolerance" is generally used in political discourse to mean "acceptance". When you see big old banners hanging in towns or schools that say "Tolerance" in a happy rainbow font, they're not talking about "civility to everyone even if you don't like them!" They're promoting "celebration of marginalized cultures or peoples and open-mindedness about things not historically in the mainstream". But, see, that isn't tolerance. That's acceptance (well, of some things).

As people point out above, tolerance, real and literal tolerance, isn't really nice. It isn't really welcoming. But it is the baseline of civil society, of living together with a variety of people. Acceptance is a step beyond that -- and it's something most people aren't actually interested in doing with people too unlike themselves. Maybe that's bad, but it is very human, hence something we have to cope with.

This is perhaps the distinction I was getting at in an earlier comment on a different post when I said "hate the sin, love the sinner" is a tolerant position, if people really mean it when they say it. It's totally tolerant. It's a way of coping with others civilly even if you disagree, or abhor. But it is not at all accepting.

And that's what I'm getting at when I say it's not right to get into other people's minds and change them...I can expect tolerance, because that manifests in particular outward behavior which is the minimum for civil society. But I can't compel acceptance, which is an attitude behind actions. And I don't need to. I don't need other people to like me, to agree with the choices I make, to celebrate my unique cultural differences (whatever, and however few, those might happen to be), unless they want to be good friends. I need people to tolerate me.

Maybe this gives you a way into your problem. Even if people are complete jerks, I ought to behave in certain fundamentally civil ways toward them -- say "please pass the salt" instead of reaching over their plate at table, say "excuse me" if we run into one another, surrender a seat on the bus if they're elderly or pregnant, not torture them if I happen to be their jailer, let them vote, etc. But I don't have to like them, and I don't have to give them any particular right to know my thoughts or feelings or engage in more than superficial conversations with me, unless they've got something else going.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I think this is progress, yes. I think the distinction between tolerance and acceptance turns out to be crucial (thanks, radicalteacher).

But I'm still stuck with the problem of how much leeway basic civil tolerance must allow for others to act in ways that do not meet one's own approval. Because it seems to me that one can be tolerant, in the sense of basic politeness, without accepting that people have the right to behave in a particular way. Tolerance clearly does not require that I permit people to steal my wallet, for instance. And given this, I'm hard pressed to see where basic tolerance requires, say, Harvard to admit blacks, or Wisconsin to grant civil marriages to gay couples, or Arkansas to allow a woman to obtain an abortion. It seems that pure tolerance would allow one to deliver nearly any blow that modern liberals might label as "intolerant," as long as it is done politely and with clean gloves on...

Perhaps tolerance requires not just politeness but an acknowledgement that others have certain rights. But because these rights are not universally agreed upon, what looks like basic tolerance to a liberal (it is only polite to let me marry; it does not harm you) looks like forced acceptance to a conservative (you may do what you like in private, but you may not expect that I or my representatives in the government condone it with the symbol of societal approval that is ours to bestow). And I don't see any way out of this rhetorical muddle, actually.

In any case I become further convinced that tolerance is not really what liberals are after, for several reasons I had not thought of upon making my first post!

[leora.livejournal.com]

I think there's a linguistic problem here... racist is describing a position by definition going too far, for those who use the term.

If you said you would not invite any Christians who believe that all non-Christians are inferior, then I doubt any of your friends would have a problem.

I think it has to do with pre-judging groups of people based on what are seen as non-essential characteristics or legitimate choices. Your religion is viewed as a legitimate choice. Your skin color is viewed as pretty irrelevant. But your opinion that it's okay to kill people for fun if you're strong enough to do so is seen as acceptable to judge people on. Now, which characteristics fall into which category is somewhat a matter of opinion, but I think that's where the differences lie. And klansmen aren't seen as people who just were born with some trait or have some acceptable difference, they are seen as people who made a choice to view many others as inferior and not deserving of basic decency.

I actually do make a distinction between different types of racists/homophobes/etc. If they are young or amazingly inexperienced with people that they look down upon, if their beliefs seem to have been handed to them and they haven't really questioned them, then I view them as somewhat understandable, and if given a chance to explore more of the world, they may change those views, which I see as being factually wrong. Whereas if they have thought about it and come to this conclusion, I do not have much interest in them. I will treat them with basic tolerance, but I won't accept them or hang out with them.

There was a time when it might not have been wrong to call me mildly homophobic. I certainly wasn't as accepting of transexuality as I am now. But I was very naive. I didn't realize homosexuality existed for a long time. As I learned more of the world, I realized oh, it's just one more way of being and hurts no one. But I like to give other people a chance to come to that realization, because it can be hard to break out of what you pick up from your culture.