Stefan Joest writes:
>>You can't be tolerant towards the intolerant, Mark. Else they will exploit
>>your tolerance until there's nothing left.

Mark Hovila replies:
>Sure you can.  It requires a lot of patience and ego detachment, but it's a
>valuable practice.   If they exploit your tolerance until there's nothing
>left, you weren't really being tolerant in the first place -- your
>"tolerance" was conditioned on their acting appropriately.

My gosh, since when is this kind of quote-unquote "tolerance" supposed
to
be some sort of absolute inflexible value or prescription for all
circumstances and behaviors, and who held the election to decide it
should
be? Even in the cradle of democracy like ancient Greece with the
Athenians,
imperfect though it may have been, they didn't fall for that kind of
theoretical trap. This is all very reminiscent of the new-age
propensity to
believe that just "accepting" everything and thinking positively will
cure
all the world's possible ills. Tolerance is certainly a very
worthwhile
value in its sphere (the realm of discourse over opinions, ideas), but
taken to an absolute level and applied to all behaviors (including
disruptive list behavior--not the same as merely expressing one's
opinion),
it becomes a ridiculous caricature. The problem with making tolerance
into
some sort of sacred inviolable value is that it, too, then becomes
just
another mindless, absolutist dogma--which is exactly the thing
tolerance
itself was supposed to do away with. (Whoops, uh-oh. :-) ) Things are
not
so one-sidedly simplistic as that in the real world, which requires
considerably more care and balance in our judgment than that.

--Ward Nicholson <[log in to unmask]>