Tolerance—From One Extreme to the Other
THE scenic beauty of the Vale of Kashmir moved a 16th-century philosopher to exclaim: “If there is paradise anywhere, it is here!” Clearly, he had no idea of what would later happen in that part of the world. Within the last five years, at least 20,000 people have been killed there in fighting between separatists and the Indian Army. The German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung now describes the region as a “valley of tears.” The Vale of Kashmir offers a simple yet valuable lesson: Intolerance can ruin a potential paradise.
What does it mean to be tolerant? According to the Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary, “if you are tolerant, you allow other people to have their own attitudes or beliefs, or to behave in a particular way, even if you do not agree or approve.” What a fine quality to display! Surely we feel at ease with people who respect our beliefs and attitudes, even when these differ from their own.
From Tolerance to Bigotry
The opposite of tolerance is intolerance, which has several shades of intensity. Intolerance may start with narrow-minded disapproval of someone else’s behavior or way of doing things. Narrow-mindedness chokes the enjoyment out of life and closes one’s mind to new ideas.
For instance, a straitlaced person may recoil from the bouncing enthusiasm of a child. A young person may yawn at the meditative ways of someone older than himself. Ask a cautious person to work side by side with someone who is adventurous, and they could both get irritable. Why the recoil, the yawn, and the irritation? Because, in each case, the one finds it hard to tolerate the attitudes or behavior of the other.
Where intolerance breeds, narrow-mindedness can escalate into prejudice, which is an aversion to a group, race, or religion. More intense than prejudice is bigotry, which can manifest itself in violent hatred. The result is misery and bloodshed. Think of what intolerance led to during the Crusades! Even today, intolerance is a factor in the conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, and the Middle East.
Tolerance requires balance, and maintaining proper balance is not easy. We are like the pendulum of a clock, swinging from one side to the other. At times, we show too little tolerance; at times, too much.
From Tolerance to Immorality
Is it possible to be overly tolerant? U.S. Senator Dan Coats, speaking in 1993, described “a battle over the meaning and practice of tolerance.” What did he mean? The senator lamented that in the name of tolerance, some “abandon a belief in moral truth—in good and evil, in right and wrong.” Such people feel that society has no right to judge what is good behavior and what is bad.
In 1990, British politician Lord Hailsham wrote that “the most deadly enemy of morality is not atheism, agnosticism, materialism, greed nor any other of the accepted causes. The true enemy of morality is nihilism, belief in, quite literally, nothing.” Obviously, if we believe in nothing, we have no standards of proper behavior and everything can be tolerated. But is it proper to tolerate every form of conduct?
A Danish high school principal thought not. He wrote a newspaper article in the early 1970’s, complaining about advertisements in the press for pornographic shows portraying sexual intercourse between animals and humans. These advertisements were allowed because of Denmark’s “tolerance.”
Clearly, problems arise from showing too little tolerance but also from showing too much. Why is it hard to avoid extremes and stay in proper balance? Kindly read the next article.
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Overreacting to the mistakes of children can be damaging to them
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Tolerating everything that children do will not prepare them for the responsibilities of life