I can’t think of a title – tolerance?
But first! A teaser:
Now for the “tolerance”. I don’t believe in tolerance anymore. Oh, I used to. But it’s such an ugly word, isn’t it? Tawl-err-ants. Ptolerance? Anyway, whatever the media and various politicians, artists, and scientists say, I don’t think tolerance is a worthy goal for our society. I think it’s the very, very least we can aim for.
I guess it says something about my level of cynicism that sometimes I think it’s the most, too.
Here’s the thing about tolerance: I don’t generally “tolerate” things I understand, respect, and appreciate. I tolerate tomato sauce on pasta I’m served as a guest at someone’s house, but, if I had my choice, I’d choose pesto or alfredo. Read: I don’t like tomato sauce, but I value my host’s effort over my own discomfort. I tolerate the behaviour of an annoying coworker or professor or acquaintance. Read: I wish he or she would act differently, but I recognize that there’s nothing I can do about it if I want to have a cohesive work environment. You tolerate this post only if you wish it were funnier or shorter or more in agreement with your point of view.
“Tolerance” implies that, despite some feeling I have, I force myself to act in a socially acceptable manner. “Tolerance” implies that the person doing the tolerating wants things to change.
I don’t “tolerate” the existence of people who are ethnically, culturally, or otherwise different from me anymore than I “tolerate” the existence of my best friends and family members. And I hope people don’t “tolerate” me. Now, that’s not to say I think everyone should speak their exact mind when they’re annoyed or angry. I don’t think being aggressive-aggressive is in any way preferable to being passive-aggressive (or vice versa) unless there’s something you’re actively trying to communicate that isn’t coming through in hints. What that is to say is sometimes you can derail feelings of rage or hatred before they happen by cultivating understanding instead. It’s like you learn how not to hit as a little kid: don’t not hit someone because the teacher threatened to send you to the principal’s office. Instead, imagine how you would feel if you were the one getting hit. Even better, imagine how you would feel if you were on the other side of this fight. Maybe Tommy feels angry because you haven’t let him play with the dolls you promised you’d share; maybe Susie is jealous of your cupcakes because she never has any in her lunch. Then, maybe, your human understanding can transcend your selfishness and protests of “But it’s not fair”, and, with the understanding that your fellow human being’s feelings and dignity are just as important as your own, you can work out a compromise. Tolerance isn’t ideal: understanding, mutual respect, and generosity of spirit are.
The fact that that example sounded trite and impractical is probably why I still think tolerance is the best we’re going to get. Because there are some cases where people from different backgrounds just aren’t going to be able to grasp each other’s feelings. (Here’s where we get into last week’s hinted discussion of humour… bwahahahaha…)
Human interaction doesn’t happen on a timeless, ageless background of static TV-fuzzies. It happens in history and culture. And, as always, history determines culture: if you are from a social demographic that experienced power over the last hundred years, society is geared more toward your needs than to those from other backgrounds. If you are a North American white person (like me), then you (like me) are probably ignorant of the institutional and personal discrimination faced by members of visible minorities in the US and Canada every day. If you are a man (which I’m not) or a woman who prefers to maintain traditionally feminine appearance (which I haven’t always been), you probably have not experienced the social hostility toward women who prefer to dress differently from the social norm. If you don’t observe religion-based holidays other than Christmas and Easter; if you don’t date outside members of the opposite sex; if you don’t have allergies or dietary restrictions, you probably don’t generally notice the ways in which our culture makes it a lot easier to follow those “norms” than otherwise.
And, hey, that’s, well, normal*. Even if you were my identical twin sister, raised in the same house, treated the same way by the same parents, you’d have no idea what it’s like to be me, and I’d have no idea what it’s like to be you. You have to live your own life, not everyone else’s. We’re not Gibson Praise or Deanna Troi or the Borg collective hive mind. (Well… I guess, given what I was just talking about, the most I can say is I’m not. You might very well be.)
The trouble is, because the very same culture we live in is different to different people, the same word or phrase or action can mean different things to different people, because things have meaning only in context, not in and of themselves. Example? Why, I thought you’d never ask. (Isn’t it fun when I pretend to ask you a question and then go off on my own tangent? Yay blogs!)
Humour is a prime example of this. (Yeah, I know: you see what I did there.) Actually, humour is a pretty bad example, because it’s tied into a whole bunch of other things like “what do we take seriously” and “how do jokes work” and “is all humour really just someone’s pain”**. But I roped myself into this last week, so now I’m gonna give ‘er a go.
So, let’s say you’re at a comedy club, and the (male) comedian says, “Some guys worry every night about whether they’re going to get laid. I never worry, because I’m a rapist***”
To someone who’s ever been afraid to walk home alone at night or who’s dated someone who felt entitled to sex or who’s had to worry about someone slipping roofies in their drink, that comedian is saying, “Your fears are unfounded****. The suggestion that an average guy like me could be a rapist is ridiculous.” This comment follows a long history of de-legitimizing women’s fear of rape by insisting sexual harassment doesn’t exist and incidents of it are deserved punishment for “slutty” appearance or behaviour.
To someone who’s never had those worries, or who’s not in the mood to consider them, that comedian is saying, “I am juxtaposing two opposite ideas. Worrying about whether you’re going to get laid implies that you care about the woman’s consent; I purposely misunderstand the connotation and respond only to the physical fact of sexual intercourse occurring. The humour comes from the contrast between assumed meaning and actual meaning.”
Are both of these legitimate understandings of what the comedian said? I think so. People sometimes get confused here regarding the role of the comedian’s intentions. He may have been an ultra-uber-feminist who just happened not to have picked up on this issue – that’s not the point. The point is, some people in the audience understand it to have a meaning that is offensive. It seems the decent thing to do to try to understand why those people are offended, and, even if you don’t think it’s warranted, avoid using that joke in the future.
The trouble is, we still want to say that there are instances where someone’s offense is not legitimate. For instance, if the comedian had said, “Some guys worry every night about whether they’re going to get laid. I never worry, because I’m sure I won’t get laid!” and someone understood that to mean, “I’m certain I won’t get laid because I am a rapist and think that ‘getting laid’ is for chumps!” would we really want to say that such a joke ought not to be made? What if you have, for whatever understandable reason, decided that “smart” means “ugly and primitive”, and I, meeting you as a stranger on the street, say, “You look smart”? Contrariwise, what if you sneer at me, “You look smart”? It seems like we want to say you did something wrong in the second case, even though I didn’t take offense, and that I didn’t do something wrong in the first case, even though you did.
The problem situations like these pose for tolerance as the ultimate ideal is that they show how “treating everyone with their full human rights” isn’t really an option, because people’s rights conflict. Smokers and non-smokers both have the right to go wherever they want in comfort; but it’s impossible for both to do so at the same time. You might think it’s nice to wish me “Happy holidays!” and I might think you’re pretending my religion doesn’t exist by not acknowledging my specific festival; I might wish you “Merry Christmas”, and you might be offended because your parents have spent their adult lives fighting to get their Christian bosses to treat your holidays with the same respect they treat their own.
So, I guess my POV is this: if everyone could understand and sympathize with each other’s positions, we wouldn’t need tolerance. It is only because the (normal but still saddening) irreconcilable conflict between humanity as a whole that tolerance becomes necessary as a plan B.
Also, as usual, my blog entry has become less and less thoroughly thought-out the longer I keep typing. With that in mind… THE END.
* I think that’s the first time I’ve ever written a sentence with a comma after each word. Yay!
** My high-school drama teacher spent the better part of a class trying to convince us students of this. At the time, I argued against him; now, I think it’s probably true for the most part, and definitely true if you take a very broad definition of “someone’s pain”. But that’s another story.
*** This is a quote from a comedian at a comedy club I visited. Perhaps it isn’t representative, but a lot of people did laugh, and a lot of other people didn’t. So there are at least some people who find it funny and some who don’t. (In case you’re wondering, I don’t.)
**** You can judge for yourself, but statistics seem to show that a conservative estimate (based only on reported rapes) still indicates that more than one in ten women has experienced physical sexual assault in her lifetime.