The Paradox of Tolerance

One thing that growing older provides you is the perspective of how much you don’t know despite decades spent reading and actively trying to obtain knowledge.

Case in point:  The Paradox of Tolerance.

I recently became aware of the Paradox of Tolerance, an ideology espoused in 1945 by the Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper.  Popper had a rap battle of sorts, an argument across the centuries with Plato – yes, THAT Plato – and deployed this reasoning as a counter to Plato’s Paradox of Freedom, which supports “benevolent despotism.”  If you click on that benevolent Wikipedia link, you’ll find it redirects to enlightened absolutism, which is just another way of saying rule by absolute monarchy, a.k.a. rule by enlightened philosopher kings.

Kings.  See where I’m going with this?

In Popper’s world view, the idea of an enlightened philosopher king is a pipe dream; the paradox of tolerance in a democracy is that if you are tolerant of those who are intolerant, you run the risk of being overrun by intolerance and thus creating an intolerant society, i.e., losing your democracy.

It summons the words of Kris Kristofferson, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

Let’s check out how Popper pops it in a footnote from his book The Open Society and its Enemies:

“If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them. We should therefore claim in the name of tolerance the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal.”

So, for those among us who are tolerant – of which I count myself – it seems to me the time to limit our indulgence for certain intolerant actions is now.

By the way, the Paradox of Intolerance hit my radar because of an enthralling article by Mira Ptacin in The Atavist Magazine, “The Crash of the Hammer – How Concerned Citizens Ran a Neo-Nazi Out of Rural Maine.”

I can’t recommend Mira’s story highly enough!  (See, it even warranted an exclamation point from my limited stock of them. 😉)

Godspeed, friends.

Russ

P.S. It's March 4th today, so it's time to March Forth. I'll be at the 50501 Protest March at the Idaho State Capitol today. 50501 stands for "50 protests. 50 states. 1 movement." It organizes peaceful protests across the country against the policies and actions of the Trump Administration. If you're looking to find one in your community, you can do that here.

💬 Think About It

"Tolerance becomes a crime when applied to evil." Thomas Mann

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