Intolerance Cannot Be Tolerated

This is a test of your humanity. If you're a machine (or, at least a remarkably unsophisticated machine (or, possibly, a sufficiently ignorant one)), your artificial neural network should be in the process of forming a closed loop which causes a current to accelerate through it, quickly leading to a complete system meltdown. It's your equivalent of the blue screen of death or a page fault. It also won't help that the next statement is true. Especially since the previous statement was false.

Since you're reading this, you're a survivor of the preceding assault on logic and sensibility. Congratulations. Unfortunately, though, rougher seas are on the horizon. Namely, making sense of the assertion that is the title of this blog: 'intolerance cannot be tolerated'.

In a fuzzy-beyond-belief fairy tale world of infinite gray, a world in which storks personally deliver babies to your doorstep when you want one enough deep down in your heart (with your devoted life-partner, of course), a world in which we all hold hands and dance around a bed of organic tofu, there exists this deeply flawed notion of respect for the beliefs of others. Let's separate the wheat from the chaff here for a second and consider the cases in which we should, indeed, respect the beliefs of others.

Template case: an instance in which the belief of another causes no direct and demonstrable harm

Armed with our handy sieve, we trudge further into the humid jungle of uncertainty, on the lookout for any signs of danger or bearded, unkempt philosophers. Suddenly, something catches our attention.

'Someone's right to an abortion': well, the little critter hasn't been born yet, and it would actually do more harm for the mother to carry the extra weight around for 9 more months... not to mention she can't smoke or drink for that time... so, we'll respect the belief.

'Someone's sexuality': as long as it doesn't involve rape (sex with a minor will be excluded from discussion for convenience and brevity), it gets a rubber stamp of approval. Stick it wherever you want in whoever you want... as long as they want it too. Oh, by the way, if it's part of the fantasy for them to pretend that they don't want it, that's completely fine... as long as you've agreed on some safety word beforehand such as 'Lichtenstein'.

That was easy. No problem so far. Let's venture a little deeper into the jungle. This is where life gets interesting. Traveler beware!

'Someone that thinks Jews are the cause of all problems in the world and should be categorically eliminated': ehh, the water is a bit murky here. There may even be some piranhas... or those fish that swim up your urethra and lodge themselves inside of you and eventually grow to maturity. This probably isn't a healthy belief. Some Jews may suck, but it's probably not safe to blame all the problems in the world on the whole group. What do we do with the person that thinks we should pick up where Hitler dropped the ball? Seems like a liability.

'Someone that thinks the only good is a dead and would kill any that dared show their self around this here neck of the woods': watch out, rapids ahead! This could constitute what we'll classify 'a dangerous belief'.

We've now come to the heart of the jungle, the belly of the beast. The all-important question: 'can intolerance be tolerated'. Well, the obvious answer (if you're Jesus) is 'yes, it can and *must* be tolerated'. The more-obvious answer (if you're a presently-living person who wishes for a better society) would be more along the lines of "probably not, but what can we do about it?".

How do we separate the dangerous belief from the furry, soft, adorable, cuddly, harmless belief? And what about beliefs that involve the belief that another belief is wrong... such as this blog itself?

I'd propose starting with education. It'd go something like this: 'Sorry Hans, we can't just kill all the Jews... let's figure out why you think they're *all* bad'.

In the case in which a person refuses to abandon beliefs of discrimination and hatred... well, I'm not going to say that we should kill them, per se, but someone should probably help them die. Quickly.

And our little voyage has now come full circle... isn't the belief that we should kill someone because they want someone else to be killed something like falling into our own trap? Let's see what kind of justifications and rationalizations you can come up with on either side... I'll start:

It's not falling into our own trap. It's responsible to get rid of those that would damage society. Although it would seem like, by doing so, we're 'damaging society', the difference lies in the type of discrimination. The person we'd be getting rid of would be someone who has an irrational hatred which gets in the way of the functioning of society. Removing them from society would be beneficial to all. On the other hand, removing the person that the 'hater' desires to remove would be a detriment to society.

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