The idea of tolerance is a very valiant one, aiming to accept those who are different. This, in theory, should include those who are intolerant. If one is to accept all humans, no matter their worldview, what would accepting someone with a worldview contrary to everything one stands for mean? Forcing our own ideals on others even if those ideals are good is still a hypocritical act. It's almost as if the world requires evil to erase other evils.
We do not live in a perfect society. We have exactly every type of prejudice in existence living and breathing the same air as the most unassuming of us. The main difference is that we recognize them as prejudices rather than as staples of our culture. For a very long time, subjugation of others for who they were was very common place, but it was accepted because it was tradition, it was how it was, because they knew no different. Erasing those "traditions" have done a good for bigger picture.
It seems the route of hypocrisy is preferable to the route of dehumanization.
This is an interesting concept in that it allows, however briefly, hatred/intolerance to breed more of the same. It's probably true that hypocrisy is necessary to eliminate all intolerance (I don't see it completely dying off on its own anytime soon), but you need to have less hate than the person you hate for hating has. This way each subsequent response has less hate and a decaying spiral off hatred is formed (this sounds really bad but its actually not that bad, because the hatred decays).
ReplyDeleteYes, I entirely agree. In our world hatred appeared through the perceived difference from one people to another. From that initial hatred only more hatred was bred, until hatred became passed on from father to son, mother to daughter. Hatred flows through time unfettered if it is not stopped. It only takes one individual to change their mind about another and accept them to begin, at first, a small change, but one that will grow with time. That is why a negative feed back loop of hatred would slowly work to minimize what is perceived as difference in our world.
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