THE PARADOX OF TOLERANCE

The Paradox of Tolerance

If you ask anyone who knows me, I am fairly obsessed with Trump and his administration. It is such a common phenomena that we even have a psychological syndrome used to describe us, Trump Derangement Syndrome. The term refers to both groups of people who are deeply distressed by the Trump administration as well as those who still hold an unwavering support of him. In other words, except for those who are checked out, we all suffer from TDS. 

We are often told to look for common ground between supporters and oppositionists. Lately, I have been giving some thought as to how we move forward as a nation as two disparate groups of people. There are those who say that we need to look for common ground between us and if we reject people because of their lack of tolerance, that means that we are acting equally intolerant. But there is another concept and it comes from the philosopher, Karl Popper who wrote about the paradox of tolerance in 1945. 

Popper’s theory is that tolerance for those who are intolerant end up creating an intolerant society. Tolerance for intolerance allows the intolerance to dominate and take over the culture. In other words, we behave with tolerance (even those with whom we are diametrically opposed) because we think that is the right thing to do. But doing so creates the opposite of the type of culture we wish to live in. 

By way of illustration, let me provide an example from the classroom. I teach my students about paradoxical intentions. I see it happen often in cases where we act and speak in ways that are not in alignment with our intentions. For instance if a parent is talking to a teenage child, the teenager may tune out the parent (especially the mother). The mother, frustrated by the child’s capacity to tune her out, begins to yell. The yelling only pushes the teenager further away. The mother is pushing away the very thing she most wants, her child’s attention. The more she raises her voice, the more she loses her audience and her power. In Popper’s schematic, our tolerance of people’s intolerant actions make us all complicit in creating an intolerant culture which is the opposite of what most people want.

I offer this comparison only to suggest that the cliche of finding common ground may not be the best way to go.  I think that all of us need to ask: what do we wish to create at this moment in time? In other words, what is our intention? Once we discover the answer to this question, we then need to ask if our actions and words that we are offering are the best way of realizing our intention? 

 Each person needs to decide for herself/himself on how to engage or not engage with others. Personally, I feel that now is the time to choose which side I am on.  You may not feel the same sense of urgency or may not wish to deal with the social consequences that will inevitably come. Socrates once said: “Better that the world be against me than I be against myself.” I hope that these philosopher’s words (Popper’s and Socrates’) provide food for thought for the journey we are all currently on.