⇥ Maybe we should all be a little more intolerant

Like most other people I know, I’ve been taught that the right way to respect other people is to tolerate them. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, beliefs, choice in religion, sexual orientation, and political ideology.

That might be true, but it’s not a productive way to lead our lives. Tolerance is but a feeble excuse that allows us to keep wallowing in our misogyny, racism, and homophobia while presenting a progressive, modern façade to the outside world.

Tolerance, when you think of it, is a mightily ugly world. You “tolerate” pests; the very dictionary definition of “to tolerate” includes words like “endure,” “put up,” and “stomach.” Is this the way you want to relate to other human beings? I certainly hope not.

More than anything else, tolerance doesn’t make us better human beings. It simply makes it possible to ignore the fact that someone around us could have a better outlook on life and close in on our own beliefs without ever needing to question them.

I grew up in a fairly conservative environment: Catholic upbringing, spent a lot of time around priests and nuns. And, despite what I keep hearing about the Catholic Church, I don’t regret one bit of it. But I also grew up in a progressive environment, in which my family and teachers always pushed to keep a critical eye on the world around me.

As a result, I have developed a somewhat eclectic system of beliefs in life. I am against organized religion, and very much pro-science¹; I wholeheartedly support gay marriage, and look forward to the day when the words “who is openly gay” are going to sound as absurd as “who is openly human.” I am generally against abortion, and think that Affirmative Action is a bad idea. And so on, and so forth—many contradictions that make it difficult for me to say “I’m conservative” or “I’m liberal.”

This doesn’t, however, mean that I think that people on the other side of these (and many other) issues are stupid or evil. Wrong, maybe, but never beneath me, and always worthy of discussion and discovery. Some of my best friends and colleagues have outlooks on life that are far different from mine, and I enjoy nothing more than understanding why together with them.

I don’t expect that they will change my opinion, or that I will change theirs: dig enough into any person’s moral and ethical systems, and you’ll find that they are anchored in beliefs—which, by their very nature, resist logic. But, by understanding another’s point of view, you can learn more about them, and, most importantly, you can learn to empathize with them, transforming your society-enforced “tolerance” into respect.

This kind of intolerance—call it intolerance of tolerance—can be very beneficial to society. You can either be Richard Dawkins and proudly proclaim that the 75 percent of the world’s population that believes in some sort of divine presence is stupid, or you can ask them why and try to understand where their beliefs come from. In the first case, you’re simply peddling religion by another name; in the second, you might just enrich your life a little, and maybe the lives of others.