The Paradox of The Paradox of Tolerance

Blender Dumbass
December 28, 2024

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#paradox #philosophy #freedom #tolerance #politics #TheParadoxOfTolerance #KarlPopper

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For me personally the word "Tolerance" means something akin to patience. Therefor I don't understand how we arrived at using this word to talk about Freedom. I have already written an article suggesting that it is perhaps a wrong word to use, and something like "Hate" or "Lack of Hate" would be a much better word to describe contemporary politics. But then I keep hearing about this concept called The Paradox of Tolerance which has to do something with the current way the word "Tolerance" is used. But if the word itself is incorrect, how should the paradox make any sense? It is like we are having the paradox of the paradox of tolerance here.

What is The Paradox Of Tolerance

For the uninitiated the paradox of tolerance claims something along the lines of this: If we tolerate everybody, we tolerate those who are not tolerating and therefor we allow them not to tolerate. Making the entire thing collapse in a way.

It is similar to when I talk about the impossibility of 100% freedom. There are always those who have the ambition for power. As in an ambition to take somebody's freedom away. And if don't stop those people from gaining their power, they will take freedom away and we will lose it. Therefor some sort of power, as in Police or whatever, should exist to limit the overall power, to increase overall freedom.

I've written a rather popular article where I observed that mass surveillance used for the purposes of stopping criminals is only a good idea in an extremely apocalyptic scenario. And a much more measured approached is needed when we want to have some net gains to freedom.

Potentially most today's governments, designed to protect freedom, are completely over-reacting. They are reducing way too much freedom to gain way too little of it in return, making everything be a net loss. Which I observed also in an article about spotting an evil law where evil laws are those that: Take a mild issue and try to fix it with absolute apocalypse!

My issue with the word "Tolerance"

In the context of net gains versus net losses to the overall freedom I can see how some mild intrusions could be justified. But if we swap the word "Freedom" with the word "Tolerance" all of a sudden the entire thing stops making sense. Because in the context of Freedom there is no Tolerance or Intolerance involved.

Say you are laying down on your bed and the sheets aren't perfectly straight. They have creases. They annoy you. You can fix the issue, or you can keep tolerating it. Talking about tolerance in relation to other people's freedom is presupposing that other people being free is automatically bothering you. And that you need to Tolerate it against your will. This is nonsense.

I have no clue what is my neighbor doing at the moment. I have not interest in that. Whatever that he does it doesn't bother me. There is nothing to tolerate, because there is nothing that bothers me.

The fringes of where "Tolerance" might make sense

There are situations that aren't particularly forms of power, where I can get the use of the word "Tolerance". For example. You may encounter a person that is exceptionally ugly, so that looking at the person is automatically bothering you. And not doing anything against that would be a form of respectful tolerance. But in this case the tolerance is not constant. You are not tolerating this person forever. Only now, until the person is gone from view. And then the problem disappears.

Another example of "Tolerance" would be when you are combating your violent urges during Norepineuphoria. The natural response to ideas you disagree with is to get angry at the person who presents them. There is an urge to violate that person's freedom. So there is some sort of Tolerance involved in not attacking that person for that feeling.

C in "Hate" stands for "Crime"

You can hate me as much as you want. If you don't take my freedom away, I don't care. Hate me. Why would I care? But if you do take my freedom away, whether you hate me or love me, now I care! Now this is a crime.

A meaningful crime is when one person takes a freedom of another person. Simply hating another person, without violation, is not an injustice. It is not a crime.

Tolerance as in refraining yourself from hate is meaningless in the context of freedom. It is not meaningless in the context of social norms, or whatever. But if you don't violate another person's freedom, hating that person is frankly your right. You should have all the right in the world to express your dislike or discontent with that motherfucker you hate.

The only tolerance you have to do here is the tolerance to not cross the line between Freedom and Power. Is to not cross into violating that person's freedom. As long as you can peacefully coexist you can hate each-other as much as you like.

The slippery slope and the conclusion of this article.

I often see references to "The Paradox of Tolerance" when it comes to recent political events. The stuff happening in the middle east. The killing of the CEO of a big company. Those are valid concerns, valid observations of real problems, real violations and real injustices that frankly have to stop.

When it comes to Luigi Mangione killing Brian Thompson, the math is on Luigi's side. Even if his reaction was out of proportions he violated only one person, hopefully causing a chain reaction of terror among people like Thompson to stop violating millions upon millions of people. Perhaps there could be a better way, a way that would violate less freedom, giving us even more net gains of freedom. In any way, this was, in my opinion at least, a net gain of freedom.

But what concerns me is the paradox of the paradox of tolerance that comes with these posts. It is like as if those people justify to themselves some extremely degenerate things, just because those things are targeted against people that violate other people. There is no logic in revenge, because revenge does not give any net gains. Net gain to freedom is to deal with a criminal in a such a way that his next crimes, that he will not commit because he is being dealt with, are worse than the way he is being dealt with. If we can not violate his freedom at all and still cause him to stop violating people, this is the best thing we can do. And only if that doesn't work, we could slightly turn up the heat. Because if we violate more than we make in return, we burn everything to the crisp.

This is what the original paradox is all about. And guess what?: This whole thing is why The Paradox of Tolerance is called a Paradox.

Happy Hacking!!!