Is tolerance intolerant?

[Dr H]

A couple of thoughts I had and wanted opinions on.

Are you really tolerant in your beliefs? Is tolerance something to strive for? Should we strive to be more tolerant as a society? Is it even worth it?

Pluralization ought to be the case and it is beneficial. I don't agree with pluralization extrapolated to relativism though.


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/0...51839.html

Even instrumental carols have been banned in some schools. Are people so weak in their beliefs that they can't accommodate someone else's belief?
I've told a muslim I hope your Ramadan goes well. I'd have no problem telling a Wiccan that I hope their Yule festival is well. It doesn't mean I support those beliefs.

I just don't know when "being tolerant" or "politically correct" became so much about what we don't want to see or believe or have, and less about respecting the sacredness of other people's beliefs?

I mean if we're truly an autonomous culture or striving for one, do we really respect the autonomy of the individual?

This is a touchy subject right now, and is entangled with free-speech, civil rights, and all sorts of other issues.  I can give you my own thoughts on the issue, but no prescription.

Various religious-related activities are a part of my culture; they pervade the society in which I live.  Religious beliefs will not be changed or eliminated by decree -- just look around the world where that's being tried right now, and see how well it's working.  Only time and increasing education and educational opportunity is going to effect that kind of change.  In the mean time, that I personally feel these activities are, at root, based on systems of absurd and mistaken beliefs does not change the the fact that I needed to learn, and my children need to learn how to navigate these issues.  

If I want to be treated well on a day-to-day basis, I need to treat the people around me well.  Sometimes that means tolerating what I may see as their bizarre beliefs, so that they will in turn tolerate what they see as my bizarre beliefs.  To try to eliminate all religious references from, say, public schools is pretty much impossible if you want to maintain a viable educational institution.  How, for example, can you possibly teach history without reference to religion, when religious motives drove so much of that history?  Acknowledging the existence of religion, and its impact on society does not mean subscribing to its tenets.

I draw a line where the beliefs of others impact my freedom, or where they begin to insist that I must share their beliefs.  But there's a lot of territory to be found between complete repression and theocracy.  

While I don't think prayer should be encouraged in schools, nor especially accommodated, neither do I think that a kid who prays in school needs to become a federal case or a media circus.  Public prayer does not harm me:  I steadfastly remain unaffected by magic words.

Likewise, I an not harmed by a Nativity display on the village green in December, any more than I am by a display of carved pumpkins in the same space every October, or red, white, and blue stars and stripes every July.  There should be equity, though, and if the town is going to allow a public Nativity display, it needs to also allow other displays, should someone want to put them up:  Jewish; Muslim; Hindu; Scientologist; Satanist; atheist; etc.  Some places don't really want to deal with all that, and thus ban all displays, which I think is unfortunate.

I grew up performing in annual Christmas pageants at school.  While I don't feel I was harmed by this, I'm not sorry to see them gone, because they did always make some kids feel excluded.  But I don't see the harm in carols, or any other music with cultural referents -- it is neither easy, nor necessary to separate culture and religion in music.  As a musician, I still like Christmas carols and have written arrangements and performed them: they are a part of my cultural heritage.  The words have no religious connotation for me:  singing "Hark, the herald angels sing" puts me no more in danger of believing in the Christian God, than reading Little Red Riding Hood to a kid puts me in danger of being waylaid by a talking wolf.

Banning instrumental carols is ignorance-based silliness.  A lot of Christmas carols use melodies borrowed from earlier non-religious folk songs, and some of the most popular seasonal songs aren't even about Christmas (Jingle Bells and Deck the Hall come to mind).

I think "PC" has run amok, a lot of people are very easily offended, and some people have come to believe that they have some kind of Constitutional right to not be offended, regardless of the cost to everyone else.  That is not tolerance, it is itself a form of bigotry.  Understandable, perhaps, in some cases, but non-productive.  Van Jones has made a very powerful statement that is relevant here, and one with which I fully agree.

One has to choose one's battles.