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Can someone explain the point of tolerance to me ?

Rebe

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I read the first post carefully and the next few posts quickly, but not the entire thread, yet.

I am a pretty radical thinker and this topic is a big, radical idea, which I find interesting but adamantly disagree with. I have recently developed more anti-tolerant views of religion, especially as it interferes with the progression of humanity in some ways and the resolution of important issues that affects everyone, not just the believers of a certain religion. I don't think religion has any place in politics or big decisions. I won't go as far as condemning religion as a social practice and eliminating the entire group to radically change the status quo and the way everything works.

And this is why: We will all disagree with one another at one point or another. Just because a majority believes one idea doesn't mean the four groups of minorities are wrong. This is the danger. It is presumptuous to think that the majority will always be logical or that the group of extremely intelligent, logical and innovative people will be the majority. That's the problem. It is seemingly progressive and unproblematic if the group who is Right gets to eliminate the group who is Wrong, but who is the judge of right and wrong?

Civilization does not belong to one group or one person or one idea, it belongs to all of us. How we will progress belongs to ALL of us, the strong, the weak, the average, the religious, the anti-religious, the short and the tall. It is not logical to wipe out the opponent because there will Always be opponents to wipe out. If there is one threat to civilization, then sure, eliminate it for a stable, peaceful and radically different future. But there isn't just one threat, the number of different ideas and people is immeasurable. If we all stick to one idea because all other ideas have been removed by force, we actually will also reach a stagnant without fresh batches of ideas, even threatening, competing, completely insane new ideas.

Life means something different to each person; it doesn't necessarily have to be logical to be a legitimate perspective. We are not robots. We differ tremendously by principles. If we don't tolerate each other, we will all end up killed by another group/idea ... eventually. No one can be the ever lasting winner if we refuse to tolerate. Unless we stop thinking of new ideas, which is pretty disturbing in itself and obviously not good for humanity anyway.

That's my general perspective on why tolerance is important; it's for everyone's safety. But nothing is 'always' the best solution.
 

the soulless one

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Tolerance is merely a utility to safeguard against needlessly bothering people via harassment, violence, etc. for something about them which is legit though contrary to something you might relate to. It's basically seeing that one person does things for reasons as legit as yours, to understand that, and respect that, even though you may not agree with it. You don't have to like it or think that it's okay in your line of values, but you shouldn't use that as an excuse to force people to be like you. Persuasion is one thing if you so strongly believe in a mode of life, but force is generally regarded as being detrimental in these regards and hence why people get all up and arms about tolerance, though many tolerance advocates like to pick and choose what and who they tolerate just like the behavior they advocate against, making them hypocrites, in a sense, but as long as they aren't using actual means of force (violence, harassment, legislation), I guess it's not all that hypocritical, now that I think about it as they are still practicing tolerance.
 

spin-1/2-nuclei

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The way I see it tolerance is crucial to a peaceful existence. Being tolerant doesn't mean that you can't defend yourself against your enemies, it's more applicable when making decisions to go to war or create legislation against a group of people that are merely annoying you with their lack of enthusiasm and willingness to submit to your way of life. You can be a tolerant society with the most advanced military, there is nothing that says those things must be mutually exclusive....

The way I see it we run into problems when we seek out war on other cultures simply because we do not agree with them. Tolerance has everything to do with who starts the fight and says nothing about who finishes it. For example, countries like Nazi Germany forfeited their rights to sovereignty when they began to attack other nations, since they are not respecting the rights of others why should their rights be respected? However, declaring war on another country simply because they are communists, or muslim, or do not follow christianity are stupid reasons to wage war, and this is where tolerance is important...

War should be used to defend ourselves not as a means to convert everyone else in the world to our way of life. Sometimes defending oneself requires offensive action, this is true, but I just don't see the logic in waging war against someone because they don't believe in the same things as you. Violence over stupid things like that should be the exception not the rule, in my opinion.
 

Virtual ghost

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I read the first post carefully and the next few posts quickly, but not the entire thread, yet.

I am a pretty radical thinker and this topic is a big, radical idea, which I find interesting but adamantly disagree with. I have recently developed more anti-tolerant views of religion, especially as it interferes with the progression of humanity in some ways and the resolution of important issues that affects everyone, not just the believers of a certain religion. I don't think religion has any place in politics or big decisions. I won't go as far as condemning religion as a social practice and eliminating the entire group to radically change the status quo and the way everything works.

And this is why: We will all disagree with one another at one point or another. Just because a majority believes one idea doesn't mean the four groups of minorities are wrong. This is the danger. It is presumptuous to think that the majority will always be logical or that the group of extremely intelligent, logical and innovative people will be the majority. That's the problem. It is seemingly progressive and unproblematic if the group who is Right gets to eliminate the group who is Wrong, but who is the judge of right and wrong?

Civilization does not belong to one group or one person or one idea, it belongs to all of us. How we will progress belongs to ALL of us, the strong, the weak, the average, the religious, the anti-religious, the short and the tall. It is not logical to wipe out the opponent because there will Always be opponents to wipe out. If there is one threat to civilization, then sure, eliminate it for a stable, peaceful and radically different future. But there isn't just one threat, the number of different ideas and people is immeasurable. If we all stick to one idea because all other ideas have been removed by force, we actually will also reach a stagnant without fresh batches of ideas, even threatening, competing, completely insane new ideas.

Life means something different to each person; it doesn't necessarily have to be logical to be a legitimate perspective. We are not robots. We differ tremendously by principles. If we don't tolerate each other, we will all end up killed by another group/idea ... eventually. No one can be the ever lasting winner if we refuse to tolerate. Unless we stop thinking of new ideas, which is pretty disturbing in itself and obviously not good for humanity anyway.

That's my general perspective on why tolerance is important; it's for everyone's safety. But nothing is 'always' the best solution.


People here talk about safety of individuals. Which is OK.
Also the other hand the minority can be antitolerant about majority. We can turn the argumnet around since I don't mind looking at the things that way either.



But in post 32 you have something that will likely cause I major problem for ideology of tolerance. In other words the number went up for about 7.5 million since this thread was created and for about 75 million during last 12 months. What is equal to one new USA every 4 years.



The only thing I am asking here is what will we do when tolerance becomes very impractical or even impossible solution ? Since it seems that this is exactly where we are going.
 

Rebe

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Are you saying that further overpopulation will make the policy of tolerance impractical and impossible? Or that tolerance is leading to this massive overpopulation? Or both?

If the minority is anti-tolerant of the majority, it doesn't mean that the minority's point is invalid and illegitimate just because they are a smaller group. On the other hand, you can't wipe out the majority in favor of the minority no matter how valid their point is because then, you'd be taking away say 10 million lives to satisfy the core values/needs of half a million people. If that's what you are saying.
 

spin-1/2-nuclei

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In my opinion overpopulation crosses into the self defense category. Eventually we will hit a point where we will have to control population or nobody will be able to survive. Tolerant does not mean that you cannot act in self defense, if people cannot agree that population control should be enforced, then at some point a war over resources like clean water will be unavoidable (because the life of nation X (with a reasonable population) will depend on keeping nation y (which is vastly overpopulated and showing no signs of slowing down) away from more of their share of the natural resources. In a situation like that it will be likely that the UN or some organization like it will decide what each nation's ration of the world's natural resources should be, and those nations that do not control the size of the population to stay within their resource limits will suffer....

The tolerant approach would be to let them overpopulate themselves as they see fit, while still protecting your nation's ration of the world's natural resources... meaning the overpopulated nation will likely suffer from disease, famine, and death and nothing will be done to help them, hoping that eventually they learn to live within the means of their natural resource allocation or face the potential of killing themselves off slowly. Only declaring war on them if they try to take the natural resources of another nation to satisfy their needs rather than learning to live within their means.

On the hand, you could march on that nation and enforce population control through war at the fist sign of noncompliance.

In my opinion that would be the difference between a tolerant nation and warmongering nation.
 

Virtual ghost

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Are you saying that further overpopulation will make the policy of tolerance impractical and impossible? Or that tolerance is leading to this massive overpopulation? Or both?

If the minority is anti-tolerant of the majority, it doesn't mean that the minority's point is invalid and illegitimate just because they are a smaller group. On the other hand, you can't wipe out the majority in favor of the minority no matter how valid their point is because then, you'd be taking away say 10 million lives to satisfy the core values/needs of half a million people. If that's what you are saying.

1. Both.


2. I think you can wipe out the majority in favour of minority. Also I think that many of the worlds problems come directly from the fact that it can be done.




In my opinion overpopulation crosses into the self defense category. Eventually we will hit a point where we will have to control population or nobody will be able to survive. Tolerant does not mean that you cannot act in self defense, if people cannot agree that population control should be enforced, then at some point a war over resources like clean water will be unavoidable (because the life of nation X (with a reasonable population) will depend on keeping nation y (which is vastly overpopulated and showing no signs of slowing down) away from more of their share of the natural resources. In a situation like that it will be likely that the UN or some organization like it will decide what each nation's ration of the world's natural resources should be, and those nations that do not control the size of the population to stay within their resource limits will suffer....

The tolerant approach would be to let them overpopulate themselves as they see fit, while still protecting your nation's ration of the world's natural resources... meaning the overpopulated nation will likely suffer from disease, famine, and death and nothing will be done to help them, hoping that eventually they learn to live within the means of their natural resource allocation or face the potential of killing themselves off slowly. Only declaring war on them if they try to take the natural resources of another nation to satisfy their needs rather than learning to live within their means.

On the hand, you could march on that nation and enforce population control through war at the fist sign of noncompliance.

In my opinion that would be the difference between a tolerant nation and warmongering nation.


Yes, but nation that is out of resources will surely attack its neighbours if they have resources. Or it will fall apart before anyone has enough time to act. What is once again a problem since today there is technically only one market - Global market.


So if some of the countries fail you will have a serious global problem.
Especially since developing countries with large populations are actually the ones that are producing things today.


However if you decide to control the number of biths you will be in direct violation of human rights and the right to practice your religion in all of its aspects.



I mean, it looks like the chain will brake somewhere, not the only question is where?
 

Rebe

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1. Both.


2. I think you can wipe out the majority in favour of minority. Also I think that many of the worlds problems come directly from the fact that it can be done.


By pure logic, yes it does make sense and yes, it would be efficient if you have a specific objective. But...what is humanity? If one is focused on making the future better, what about the present and the present population of people. If the world population can be stabilized and controlled by violent force, what do you hope to accomplish aside from stability? If you introduce and approve this logic, then this logic can be applied to many different objectives and stability will not be a guarantee. You can't just rationalize away humanity. Humanity means sympathy for each other even though we disagree, we respect each other's right to live, no one has more right to live, and definitely it'd be odd to think about the welfare of a future generation that doesn't even exist at this point in time rather than focus on the present generation who is already on this Earth.

Even if you can stabilize the world for the future, what do you want for the future? What do you hope for humanity? What are humanity's huge objectives? Our progression is dependent on our sympathy for each other (vaguely) and our active battle for our equality, freedom and right to happiness. How do you think humanity can improve if we resort to such a cruel policy of elimination, of anyone? Most importantly, what does humanity mean to you? We can be the most efficient at survival and preservation but what we are preserving and what are we surviving for? There is logic and then, there is the human spirit, however vague and abstract that is. The human spirit will not survive such a concept. Without the human spirit, we are nothing, what would our lives be about?

It would be highly hypocritical to sacrifice a part of humanity to save humanity. If we look at numbers alone, sure it'd be a major difference. But everything else will fall apart.

If we let the huge population of Africans to die from AIDS without any intervention, we would be less populated and Africa wouldn't be such a problem on the world news. But we can't do that, we can't watch them suffer without feeling guilt. Some of us feel a basic sense of comradeship with other humans that does not take into consideration civilization-constructed differences. We don't eat our young no matter how efficient it may seem because there is a boundary.
 

spin-1/2-nuclei

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Yes, but nation that is out of resources will surely attack its neighbours if they have resources. Or it will fall apart before anyone has enough time to act. What is once again a problem since today there is technically only one market - Global market.


So if some of the countries fail you will have a serious global problem.
Especially since developing countries with large populations are actually the ones that are producing things today.


However if you decide to control the number of biths you will be in direct violation of human rights and the right to practice your religion in all of its aspects.



I mean, it looks like the chain will brake somewhere, not the only question is where?

This all depends on how things change in order to adapt to the loss of resources. You are free to defend your own resources without seeking out a confrontation. You simply wait for the nation in need of those resources to try to take them from you and then you strike (this is a tolerant way to handle the situation)

As far as controlling births go, that was basically the point of my original post... some nations will be responsible and try to live within their alloted natural resources and some will not...

yes those who do not will suffer, but that will be their own choice... war is not necessary unless one of these countries decides take by force the natural resources of someone else to meet their needs (as I already stated before)....

As far as the global market goes, countries will rise and fall in the future (this is a fact), the global market will have to adjust as the countries that refuse to control their population begin to fail. There is no reason to resort to war to do this, strategic planning and altering alliance is a more reasonable approach....

as I said before, you cannot always avoid war... but it should be the exception, not the rule... if the world encounters a society which holds within it's territory most of the natural resources needed for the survival of the rest of the world (and they are unwilling to share those resources) then there will be war, but most of the wars we have fought up to this point have had some pretty superficial motives.

As I said before, tolerance and self defense are not mutually exclusive... you can defend yourself while still being tolerant. This is accomplished by making violence against those that do not agree with you the exception and not the rule. You shouldn't force another nation to institute population control, but you can force them to survive on their alloted resources or suffer the consequences of war...
 

Virtual ghost

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By pure logic, yes it does make sense and yes, it would be efficient if you have a specific objective. But...what is humanity? If one is focused on making the future better, what about the present and the present population of people. If the world population can be stabilized and controlled by violent force, what do you hope to accomplish aside from stability? If you introduce and approve this logic, then this logic can be applied to many different objectives and stability will not be a guarantee. You can't just rationalize away humanity. Humanity means sympathy for each other even though we disagree, we respect each other's right to live, no one has more right to live, and definitely it'd be odd to think about the welfare of a future generation that doesn't even exist at this point in time rather than focus on the present generation who is already on this Earth.

Even if you can stabilize the world for the future, what do you want for the future? What do you hope for humanity? What are humanity's huge objectives? Our progression is dependent on our sympathy for each other (vaguely) and our active battle for our equality, freedom and right to happiness. How do you think humanity can improve if we resort to such a cruel policy of elimination, of anyone? Most importantly, what does humanity mean to you? We can be the most efficient at survival and preservation but what we are preserving and what are we surviving for? There is logic and then, there is the human spirit, however vague and abstract that is. The human spirit will not survive such a concept. Without the human spirit, we are nothing, what would our lives be about?

It would be highly hypocritical to sacrifice a part of humanity to save humanity. If we look at numbers alone, sure it'd be a major difference. But everything else will fall apart.

If we let the huge population of Africans to die from AIDS without any intervention, we would be less populated and Africa wouldn't be such a problem on the world news. But we can't do that, we can't watch them suffer without feeling guilt. Some of us feel a basic sense of comradeship with other humans that does not take into consideration civilization-constructed differences. We don't eat our young no matter how efficient it may seem because there is a boundary.


Very nicely said but your logic leads to nowhere. Since you are not offering any real solution. The trend is pretty obvious and it needs to stop before we get to critical levels.


Basicly toward your logic every one in Africa will get killed and here is why I think this is the case.



It is normal that people support aid to sub-Saharan countries but I can't understand the mechanism how that can be a right thing to do.


If you are providing some aid there will be more and more people living there every day since birth rate is out of control and you can't raise them over the poverty line since that would require huge amount of material and energy.
That would be like you are trying to build an entire infrastructure of US or EU in just a few years.

Basicly building such an infrastructure so fast would be the biggest job in history. Not to mention that the biosphere probably can't even support civilization as it is.
So in the end this means that you will just feed them and aid them until you will not be able to do so any more since there is too many of them. Also the aid I am talking about does not have to be food in can be cloths and equipment as well.


Since you are aiding there is more and more people who need more food then in the case you are not aiding since population is in expansion.
Also Tech-level, transportation system and climate create environment that is not good to organize huge farming system.
So the only thing those people can do is to turn to their own ecosystems for food.

Because of this we are already loosing huge number of species all the time since those people are consuming the entire system by consuming animals and destroying ecological balance what destroys wild life rapidly.
Also they are chopping the forests for fire wood, house construction and local crop production.

So what will happen when they spend their finite supplies? Guess.


Also by doing things like this they are permanently destroying the system that is piece of the puzzle of a greater system that keeps world as it is.


This region of the world has population of about 750 million people.
What means that you need huge amount of vegetables and proteins to support so much people even in so poor state such as this one.
In the last 50 years the population has tripled and is growing faster and faster since there are more potential mothers. What means that you must send a lot of aid or they will turn to their environment and destroy it. (Or both)
Someone could say "fu** environment" but that does not change anything since the process is still going in the direction of catastrophe for them.



Odds that you will stop the increase of population is low because even if everyone will have only one child, that is still 50% increase. On a scale of a few decades. Since parents are still alive after birth.
However three children per mother is minimums there so we are far away from any real stop in population growth. Plus you must strip them of their religion if you are to have any chance of saving them. Since it favours birth.
So even if you manage to do that alot of people around the world will think of you as an Antichrist that is seducing masses.



(This is a simplified and localized example of course)


So to be honest I don't think that humanity has a option of doing things your way if we want to prevent something you would probably call "total disaster".


It would be nice that we can just live in the world where we don't have to deal with this kinds of things and respect each other. But unfortunatly this is not the case, in my opinion.
 

Rebe

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I am not saying my way is a solution, but I see my way as the basic law of being human. I rather humanity perish because we can't sustain ourselves anymore than allow some people/group decide half of us needs to die in order for the other half survive and keep the human race going. We are a civilization, it may be 'efficient' and 'logical' but it is also barbaric. No matter which way you spin it, it is allowing, even hoping for, mass massacres and there is no justification for that, absolutely none.

Damn, I just remembered, have you watched Watchmen? It's a superhero movie, one of the more gritty ones. In the end, one (rational, entj I'd say) superhero decided to personally murder his superhero colleagues so that they wouldn't stop him as he planned to destroy all the major cities of the world to stop nuclear warfare before it destroys humanity. He saw that as the solution, to unite the world against a common supernatural power/enemy instead of each other and thus, bring everlasting world peace. I think you should watch the movie, it's idealized and simplified and clearly anti-xntj rationality, but it went over some basics of both arguments.
 
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