Note to anyone who references the #ParadoxOfTolerance. What Karl Popper said was;
"If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant..."
With the exception of a few naive teenage libertarians, nobody is advocating *unlimited* tolerance. We're just arguing against abandoning tolerance to the point of dehumanizing people who hold intolerant views.
So the vast majority of handwaves at the PoT are slaughtering strawmen. The obvious response being to quote Nietzsche...
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"Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."
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@strypey out of curiosity, does your native language have a term (or terms) for tolerance?
English is an ... inadequate language (free/libre/open source software #FLOSS people know it!). Tolerance might mean different things to different people.
Personally, a native term close to tolerate I know basically means "withstand". I wouldn't make a virtue of people having to withstand too many things. With that background, tolerance (if different from withstanding) seems wholly artificial.
@tetrislife
TBH tolerance is a bit of a placeholder word. It doesn't fully fit any of the contexts where it's widely used. In general, we want to include, welcome, and celebrate people, not merely 'tolerate' them. For anyone that's not true of, because of hateful ideology or obnoxious behavior, the appropriate word might be 'patience'. Which I think is basically what forbearance means.
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@tetrislife
I've held space many times, for friends having psychotic breaks. It's not unknown for people in that state to become violent, even deadly. If I can be patient with them, in person, there's very few people online I can't be patient with.
Now some people can't do that, or just don't want to. That's needn't be seen as a failing on their part. But it is a limitation, and I'm glad not to be limited in that way. I suspect my friends and their families and communities are too.
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@strypey @tetrislife
"Tolerance" fits what was needed to keep English governance afloat when religious strife caused chaos. You're bearing the burden of putting up with heretics and apostates whom you tolerate. Also "shut up and follow the law" for those being tolerated. Nobody had to like it. So there's that negativity.
It may have been an early signal of the emergence of accepting religious practice among fellow citizens. (?)
It was limited to a handful of Protestant sects.
@Blob_Calder
> You're bearing the burden of putting up with heretics and apostates whom you tolerate. Also "shut up and follow the law" for those being tolerated. Nobody had to like it. So there's that negativity
If we posit that politics is the new religion, for a significant number of people, I guess tolerance is probably a necessary minimum condition for avoiding both Inquisitions (by whoever holds power) and civil war.
@tetrislife
> does your native language have a term (or terms) for tolerance?
English is my mother tongue. I only started to study Te Reo Māori - the indigenous language of the country - at high school.
But OTTOMH the word that comes to my mind is "manaakitanga"
https://maoridictionary.co.nz/word/3426
A search for "tolerance" in the some online dictionary offers a range of results:
https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?idiom=&phrase=&proverb=&loan=&histLoanWords=&keywords=tolerance+
The one that caught my attention was "forbearance"'.
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