So I am a part of the LGBTQ community and work in a big city in middle europe. A lot of my coworkers are religios and have a foreign background. They are mostly very nationalist and homo-/transphobic. I hate them for their blind hate and bigotry, which wont change. I have realised, that I have become a bit bigotred towards people like them in the last few months, which is, even tho my biases often revealed to be true, just unfair to them. How could I stop that?
It sounds like you’re describing the Paradox of Tolerance.
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
I don’t really have a good answer other than follow your heart, I guess.
It’s not a paradox, it’s a social contract. Tolerance is only deserved by those who are tolerant themselves.
In philosophy, “paradox” often doesn’t mean that something really is self-contradictory, but rather that it seems self-contradictory. There are what Quine called “veridical paradoxes” which seem at first to be contradictions but actually turn out to be true but non-obvious. That’s the case for a lot of “paradoxes” arising from math, for example the birthday paradox.
(In any event, “deserve” is much more complicated than “paradox”!)
It is a paradox because there’s no objective, universal definition of tolerance. It’s literally impossible to be tolerant of everything. So you’re left with different forms of what intolerance people deem acceptable.
People make the same mistake about bigotry. It’s impossible not to be a bigot. You just don’t want to be the wrong kind of bigot. Now if only we could all agree on exactly what that was.
The “paradox” here is that by being tolerant of intolerance, we are actually decreasing the overall level of tolerance when normally we’d expect tolerant behaviors to increase tolerance.
Compare it to the “death wave.” When someone stops in a multi lane intersection to allow someone to cross in debt of them, the pedestrian/vehicle can’t see around the stopped vehicle and this can result in them being hit by a motorist in the adjacent lane. It feels like you’re being safe and considerate, but you’re actually putting the other person in more danger than if you had simply followed the right of way. It happens often enough that a name has been coined for the phenomenon.
Tolerating hate increases hate, not tolerance. Tolerating hate in the extreme decreases tolerance not only relative to the hate, but because once hate takes over they eliminate tolerance (see Florida).
The word paradox has too many meanings, alas. I like jan Misali’s explanation of the word: there are five definitions of paradox. https://youtu.be/ppX7Qjbe6BM?si=Lnkao0t0qFLi9tjj
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OP is describing their own growing bias towards an ethnic group based on opinions they have encountered in a few of them. They want help with their own biases. This isn’t really the kind of answer this post needs. It’s becoming cliche.
Being religious or homophobic isn’t a ethnic group. OP is basically growing a hatred for bigoted/sexist/xenophobic people because they’re forced to interact with them on a regular basis, which sucks for sure :-(
You have no reason to believe that. That’s a nice interpretation but all you heard is “People like them”. It’s uncomfortable to say they are stereotyping based on race. But that’s probably what’s going on.
Why else would you look for advice? “I don’t like bigots, what do I do?” I guess if that’s the only problem you are equipped to talk about then better to stick to it. I’m trying to help someone navigate out of bigotry because that’s the more important interpretation.
I may have read it incorrectly but I didn’t see anything about an ethnic group in OPs post. The only distinguishing factor they provided was “blind hate and bigotry”. Which is not an ethnic group.
a lot of my coworkers are religious and have a foreign background
I think this where the bias settles in that he wants to remove.
I don’t think so, as I stated earlier I hate my nationalist coworkers, but my problem is, that I have the same feelings for people like them that I don’t know.
