Practicing Tolerance Means Sitting with the Things that Upset You

The paradox of tolerance and how it affects us as a society.

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.” — Joseph Fort Newton

In college, I had a very religious friend. He is a smart and well-behaved person. It’s not just my opinion, many other people — especially religious people — in my department looked up to him as some kind of “role model”.

Surprisingly, we became closer due to some circumstances.

During our friendship, I found out that he didn’t want to be close friends with people with different religious beliefs. He said he’d still befriend “them” just fine — he just didn’t want to get too close.

I wasn’t one of them, but it was still shockingly unsettling to hear him say that. When I asked him why, he had his own pretty valid reasons — the reasons that I can’t easily interfere with (hint: it consisted of fears).

Eventually, I tried to accept his point of view — even though I earnestly disagreed with him.

But I kept asking myself, was he — someone that many people looked up to — being intolerant? And if I could not stand still and tried to oppose his decision to differentiate friends based on their religious aspects, would that, too, make me intolerant?

The Paradox of Tolerance

I wasn’t alone with this kind of thought.

Back in 1945, the philosopher Karl Popper tried to find the limits of tolerance. He found the answer and came up with something called “The Paradox of Tolerance.”

It goes like this:

If everyone is tolerant of every idea, then intolerant ideas will emerge. Tolerant people will tolerate this intolerance, and the intolerant people will not tolerate the tolerant people. As a result, the intolerant people will take over and create a society of intolerance.

Therefore, according to Popper, to maintain a society of tolerance, the tolerant must be intolerant of intolerance… hence the paradox.

If you’re as confused as me, basically, the notion of this paradox says that:

It’s okay to treat other people like crap because they, too, are a piece of crap.

Now, the problem with this reasoning — if not understood correctly — is that it can quickly turn us into a cascade of egoistical and self-righteous behavior.

Imagine a simple scenario:

Let’s say you have a friend who doesn’t support gay rights. You think their behavior is intolerant and a threat to society. You then decide that it is morally correct to be intolerant of them and treat them like crap.

Then, another friend strolls by and notices your intolerant behavior toward your first friend, so they think it is morally correct to be intolerant of you and decide to treat you like crap.

And then, another person — at this point, maybe a random stranger on Twitter — comes and notices this person’s behavior towards you, so they decide to treat them like crap… on and on and you can see where this is going.

The problem for a sensitive issue such as tolerance is, most of the time, it’s not crystal clear what defines “tolerance” and “intolerance.”

Thomas Mann once said, “Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil.”

The Paradox of Tolerance doesn’t really work when you don’t have someone who is so obviously evil to unite against.

As a result, the definition of an “intolerant person” becomes blurred and loose to the point where it might as well mean, “a person who believes in things that make me feel bad.” And, as we can see, that’s not a very useful definition.

Genuine tolerance demands discomfort

Intolerance may be the seed of hatred, and in many cases, intolerance is based on irrational fear and ignorance — where it may be hard to draw the line. But having an intolerant friend does not mean having a hateful friend.

Someone becomes “lactose intolerant” because their system can’t digest lactose — not because they necessarily hate milk.

The same applies to someone who is “homosexual intolerant” — they don’t necessarily hate homosexuals. It’s just that their system can’t digest the idea of people living homosexual lifestyles.

Of course, I’m not saying you should just let intolerant people be hateful and narrow-minded. In fact, I want to encourage you to speak up — and you need to speak up.

But it doesn’t give you full rights to treat them like crap. Not if you are a tolerant person — not if you want to break that chain of egoistical and self-righteous behavior.

The way we treat people is always our choice, and if we choose to be disrespectful, it can come back to bite us.

The irony is that practicing genuine tolerance means to be willing to sit with the things that upset you or make you uncomfortable — and be okay with it. It means to accept other people’s opinions and preferences, even when they live in a way you don’t agree with. It means to have openness and curiosity, accompanied by deep knowledge and understanding.

In the case of my religious friend, I eventually just let him be. Unfortunately, he squandered some potential good friends because of the line he drew for himself. I honestly think differences in religion should not be a deterrent to true friendship.

But hey — he has his own reasons. And so do I. Unless he wants me to change my belief through intimidation, force, or violence, we can always agree to disagree. I respect his principles, just like what he does to mine. As Voltaire said,

“Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so, too.” — Voltaire

Final thoughts

The Paradox of Tolerance admonishes us that tolerance of the intolerant leads to intolerance. Therefore, as paradoxical as it may seem, defending tolerance requires to not tolerate the intolerant.

But people are complex creatures with complex minds. If we’re willing to take more time to learn about other people and their cultures, we’ll understand that as a matter of course, we don’t have to be so careless, prejudice, or treat others like craps on one occasion.

If other people cannot break their walls, why don’t we start building bridges instead of building more walls? We can start with ourselves. Let’s educate ourselves better, let’s avoid stereotypes and embrace individuality, let’s set healthy respect for differences, and let’s agree to disagree.

After all, we are all just humans, trying to live together peacefully. As to how Albert Einstein put it,

“Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.” — Albert Einstein