There actually is no paradox if you think of this way:
Be tolerant of ideas that harm nobody.
Be intolerant of ideas that harm others.
“I’m gay.” <- Tolerable.
“I’m not gay, so I won’t date men.” <- Tolerable.
“I’m not gay, so I think we should kill all gay people.” <- Intolerable.
The dilemma is how you define harming others and what implies being intolerant to an idea rather than a person holding that idea.
Harm is a pretty solid metric. Not some imaginary “think of the children” harm, but the “this disturbs/literally harms me” kind.
Yes, some people are precious little weirdos that won’t want to see anything. The question then falls to society to determine if it was ultimately tolerable if they bring up grievance. Then the paradox comes in because the general vibes are always a moving target.
Sorry but no, it’s not in any way solid. Some think of what they see as sinful as harmful.
Beliefs and personal convictions muck that up a bit though.
There’s a sadly significant portion of people who truly believe that being gay is hurting other people.
Whether they believe it only because they were told to or for some personal reason, they believe it nonetheless.
A gay person existing doesn’t actually literally harm anyone though. A homphobe shouting slurs at a gay person, excluding them from vital social, economic or whatever activity or beating them up does very concretely harm someone. It’s not that difficult.
The problem with this is that people disagree about what harms others. Right wing insane people are not living in the same reality that you and I are. They genuinely believe that even seeing a gay person is harmful. They genuinely believe that the existence of gay people is harmful to others.
Well no, there are objective harms and subjective harms.
If I slap you that’s an objective harm.
If I’m gay and that’s objectional to you, that’s a subjective harm to some people.
Essentially physical acts v emotional harms.
It is much more nuanced 🙁
By your logic almost every human would be intolerant. Big example is eating and exploiting animals.
The paradox isn’t a paradox for where it begins. It’s a paradox for where it ends.
In a world where those expressing certain “bad” opinions get punished simply for expressing those opinions, the paradox of tolerance has been corrupted. It ALWAYS comes down to the definition of what “intolerant” means.
Who is “intolerant” first? Who is most rightfully offended when multiple wrongs have been committed?
This is indeed a simple question when judging Nazis for being hateful shitheads, but a much more dangerous question when judging someone stealing food or diapers from Walmart.
Again, it’s not a paradox because of where it begins. It’s a paradox because “intolerant” is a moving target of social norms.
Yeah, there are a number of philosophical arguments against this but I think it’s an interesting starting point.
A few of the arguments being that it’s subjective, it creates a slippery slope, and it steps on first amendment rights of free speech.
I think the biggest question might be “so if we’re not tolerating the intolerant, then what are we doing when we’re not tolerating them?” Right? Do they get punished? Do they get socially shunned? Also in doing this do we give up on trying to “convert” them or convince them otherwise that they are incorrect in their thinking?
It seems like an interesting thought and I don’t think I’d really thought of it that way before. Thanks for your feedback!
I think the most important thing to remember is: it is ALWAYS subjective. If you remove an action from its context, you will always arrive at the wrong answer. The most obvious example is punishment. A punishment is supposed to be bad to the punished. It is a negative that is supposed to be skillfully deployed like a hammer strike. The punished can always claim to be receiving a bad thing, because they are receiving a thing that’d normally be bad.
Punishment itself is not immoral no matter how much any specific person is unjustly punished. When analysing morals, you cannot confuse reciprocity or punishment for origination. Sure, there are plenty of situations where a negative punishment only succeeds in adding negative things to the world, but that’s why it’s a dangerous tool.
Sooo many people confuse axioms of, “do no harm” with, “I am completely against punishment and the concept of police and prison”. It’s … sad, really. So many people want to ignore the nuance, but moral axioms are fundamental pivot points, NOT hard and fast rules.
I think it’s a pretty simple question when we’re talking about someone stealing from Walmart. Babies need diapers and food more than Walmart does
Some people would argue the social offense of theft outweighs any personal benefit. Yes, those people are heartless morons, but there are MANY heartless morons (and worse) in the world. It only gets worse with actual gray areas, like self defense and assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide is especially hilarious to make “intolerant”. You don’t want to live? Well that’s illegal, and now we’re going to make your life even worse!
Joke’s on everyone else for being stupid, because I actually initially formulated this, the “but they did it first” theorum of social reciprocity, at the tender age of 3.
Every time you repost this meme, a philosopher weeps
A friend I know who has a philosophy degree got visibly angry when she saw this, because she hates it when complex philosophical/political quandaries are “solved” with a paragraph, especially since all of said paragraph-long solutions start breaking down the second you start thinking about them.
Paradox doesn’t mean there is no answer, it means the answer is unintuitive. Part of the paradox of tolerance is the given answer.
No, a paradox is an intrinsic contradiction.
There’s no resolving it without redefining the terms - if you traveled back in time, you broke causality, meaning time was never what we think of it as. If you spawn a new timeline, you never created a paradox - the apparent contradiction is from an alternate timeline.
But in this case, there never was a paradox - people made one up by misunderstanding tolerance for universal acceptance. That’s never what it meant - South Park even did an episode about it when the term was pretty new.
It doesn’t mean you like them or support their choices, it means you treat them with common decency according to the social contact. You can be a bigot deep in your heart, but you don’t make it their problem.
It’s about That’s all it is, it’s about “your freedom to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”. And conversely, if a bigot acts acceptably and they keep that between them and their priest, you tolerate them.
Ideally, you wouldn’t be prejudiced against them… I’m sure plenty of Nazis were decent people. Like Russians today - some support a horrible and unjustified war, because propaganda works. Many genuinely believe they’re liberators paying an enormous price for the freedom of Ukrainians. Show them the concentration camps from then or the war crime videos today, and they’d be instant converts the minute they’re convinced they start to accept they’ve been lied to
But you still stop them. They’re still wrong, and need correction, because they’re hurting others no matter what they believe.
You don’t let chistofacists abuse their children, and you don’t let klan members or fascist organize - you respond with counter-organization to their organization, you mock them for being a fucking idiot/asshole when they post dumb shit online, you argue them calmly when they push stupid beliefs respectfully and in good faith, and you respond with overwhelming violence to imminent harm.
It’s not a philosophy, law, religion, or ethics framework… It’s just the explicit form of the basic social contact for people who struggle to keep their prejudice in check
