The non-hypocricy of tolerance
Dec. 3rd, 2015 12:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackDid I talk about this before?
Sometimes people you share a society (or a household) with are wrong about really important things. But it's usually best to say, if they're not harming *other* people, to allow your views to be known, but mostly simply let it go. For several reasons:
* Partly practical reasons, that changing someone's mind is often a difficult or impossible, so haranguing them is likely to make you feel better but not actually help, and mutually agreeing to suspend the haranguing unless you have time to talk about it properly is better for both of you.
* Partly humility, you can't be right about EVERYTHING, and how are you going to improve if you don't listen to other people?
* Partly morality: that imposing your opinion on someone else, even if you're right THIS time, erodes people's right to decide for themselves in lots of other cases.
Unfortunately, it's rarely that simple, because often people ARE harming other people, and you SHOULD try to fix it, but sometimes you're forced to compromise for now anyway just because there's only one of you and lots of other people and you can't overpower all of them instantly, and it's hard to find an acceptable compromise, but necessary to try to live in a society with other people at all.
However, whenever I recap the argument for tolerating opposing viewpoints in my mind, I always ask myself, "But what about people who DON'T agree to let it go and allow people to decide for themselves, people who insist their views MUST be imposed on you (whether for good reasons or not)?" As a practical matter, if you don't want to capitulate, you have no choice but to resist. But only recently did I admit, I basically had to accept, tolerating OTHER views as long as they didn't harm anyone else, but that itself was an exception, you had no choice but to impose "tolerate other views as long as they don't harm anyone else" on people if you can, even if you disagree...
Sometimes people you share a society (or a household) with are wrong about really important things. But it's usually best to say, if they're not harming *other* people, to allow your views to be known, but mostly simply let it go. For several reasons:
* Partly practical reasons, that changing someone's mind is often a difficult or impossible, so haranguing them is likely to make you feel better but not actually help, and mutually agreeing to suspend the haranguing unless you have time to talk about it properly is better for both of you.
* Partly humility, you can't be right about EVERYTHING, and how are you going to improve if you don't listen to other people?
* Partly morality: that imposing your opinion on someone else, even if you're right THIS time, erodes people's right to decide for themselves in lots of other cases.
Unfortunately, it's rarely that simple, because often people ARE harming other people, and you SHOULD try to fix it, but sometimes you're forced to compromise for now anyway just because there's only one of you and lots of other people and you can't overpower all of them instantly, and it's hard to find an acceptable compromise, but necessary to try to live in a society with other people at all.
However, whenever I recap the argument for tolerating opposing viewpoints in my mind, I always ask myself, "But what about people who DON'T agree to let it go and allow people to decide for themselves, people who insist their views MUST be imposed on you (whether for good reasons or not)?" As a practical matter, if you don't want to capitulate, you have no choice but to resist. But only recently did I admit, I basically had to accept, tolerating OTHER views as long as they didn't harm anyone else, but that itself was an exception, you had no choice but to impose "tolerate other views as long as they don't harm anyone else" on people if you can, even if you disagree...
no subject
Date: 2015-12-05 06:27 pm (UTC)But to me, there also examples where acting is just clearly better than not acting. Think of something really blatant, like lynching people because of what race they appear to be. That used to be effectively legal. Then it was made illegal, and there was a long, very painful process of actually enforcing that. But even if some murders got put in prison, that CLEARLY seems better than the previous situation. Would Jesus rather we just TOLD the murderers not to lynch anyone? I'm worried that if I were a better person, I would find a better way of persuading them they're wrong. But arresting them is clearly violence, but seems clearly better than just letting them go on killing people.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-05 07:50 pm (UTC)The passage speaks to several issues, but in this respect my thinking structures roughly as:
Did Jesus condone the actions of the crowd by telling the disciples not to stop them? No.
Did Jesus in turn physically prevent the disciples from attacking the crowd? No.
When the crowd wasn't stopped, did they go on killing people? Yes.
Is this story a special case, specific to the passion narrative, or is it an example with broader applicability? I'd say the latter.
Now the difficult bit: when Jesus told people not to attack the crowd, did He "let them go on killing people"? In the short term, plainly yes. Taking the two-thousand-year view, what happened that night had lasting implications, making the world a considerably better place.
On a less epic scale, that kind of story has played out many more times in many more places.
So. On one level, Jesus said "whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it". If people come to kill you, and you have a gun, put the gun down. Meeting violence with violence doesn't help, and there are more important issues at stake. Yes, even more important than your life.
On another level, that's a hard teaching, and one I know I'll find it very difficult to put into practice if push ever comes to shove. When someone opens fire on the mob that's come to kill them, maybe we try to take the middle path between condemning and condoning. That middle path is one Jesus exemplified, yet is missing from a lot of moral thinking.
Meanwhile, I personally know someone who did, in apartheid-era South Africa, step between the black protesters and the white police officers who were about to attack them. "In the name of Christ, I ask you to stop." And, well, they did stop. She's here to tell the tale. That sometimes making oneself vulnerable is the greatest form of strength isn't just a hypothetical from the land of fairy tales.
no subject
Date: 2015-12-08 03:09 pm (UTC)But if someone asks "if you have the power to prevent A killing B at a small risk of hurting A, should you do so?" it seems to be dodging the question to say "if you CAN'T stop A, you shouldn't hurt them"..?
no subject
Date: 2015-12-08 05:54 pm (UTC)It's somewhat worrying how short the Bible is on guidance when it's someone else's life at stake. It would be really easy to use B's plight as an excuse for selfish deeds, especially if you got to choose which of B,C or D you fancied protecting. But if it's a straight choice between "stop A from killing B, at no cost" or "omit to stop A from killing B"… my instinct is clearly to stop A.
But that's the kind of crack into which Satan can introduce a crowbar. "Ask God on a case by case basis" seems a good option, for those who have that kind of relationship with Him.