the problem with “tolerance”
Introduction: I am a Western-raised, middle class, light-complexioned female. These facts mean I was raised with a specific set of beliefs about the world. I have lived in no other skin.
The shape and texture of my life does much to determine the way I see life, and there is no escaping this. I have also lived in several other countries, been wrung out by the difficult, precious experience of being submerged in cultures not my own, and I believe it has been transformative.
I recently returned to the United States after another year abroad, this time in the Middle East, and while everyone seems ready to ask me “how was it over there?” the context of casual conversation rarely affords me the chance to really answer that (very vague!) question.
Because I’m not much of a fan of small talk, and some of what I have to say might actually have some value to others, I’ll be publishing a series of my reflections on my time “over there.”
Who knows — perhaps someone out there will even read them.
Lesson #1: Assume nothing.
Living in a foreign culture invites us, or forces us, to view the world from a posture of uncertainty. If our eyes are open, we will see that we have in fact slipped into a new universe, one in which systems of value, personal relationships, modes of belief, and measures of meaning are often radically different than what we’ve known. In fact, these layers of difference will only grow more defined as we remain in this new place, as we allow our lives to sink deeper into our surroundings. We notice that those around us parse their days according to unspoken rules to which we are not privy. We will watch their human bodies, so like ours, moving in inexplicable ways — observe a few interactions on the street, or in homes or businesses, and let the subtleties rise before your eyes.
If you dare, pay attention to the way others react to you, The Foreigner. Brace yourself, and look into their eyes — you’ll see their puzzlement, their intrigue or disapproval, and you’ll feel your own skin crawl as you realize, “Oh God, they think I’m the strange one.” It’s all different here, you’ll see. As obvious as it sounds, you cannot recognize the depth and profundity of this truth until you’ve lived it, at some length.
you’ll feel your own skin crawl as you realize, “Oh God, they think I’m the strange one.”
The mundane — what to eat for breakfast, how to discipline children, the pace at which to walk down the street — is different. Words that you once thought universal — “love,” “work,” “mother,” or “God” — take on a strange new life in this world. What does it do for us, to have it all destabilized, questioned, jarred? Stay long enough and you’ll feel the fatiguing, bewildering effects of this constant de-centering of your assumptions.
Human interactions inevitably give us the chance to discover our own rigidity, our own obsession with “our way” of doing and being — an exponentially so in the case of “intercultural exchange.” It is the slow, painful breaking down of this rigidity that makes living abroad so difficult, and so potentially valuable.
In the case of Westerners abroad, for example, the issue of time is often a hot button. While countless Americans have felt the frustration of the “lateness” of their non-Western counterparts, what would it mean if they realized that the “lag” was due to the fact that the host culture runs on a completely different clock? Rather than counting their days in 60-minute increments, many people on the planet relate to “time” by the number of relational obligations to fulfill. For them, one’s sense of duty to Family and Community trumps most individual desires or pursuits.
While the West sanctifies Punctuality and Productivity, someone operating on a relational clock will consider it acceptable to be “late” to an appointment or deadline if their relational/communal priorities require. Their American counterparts may judge their “slow” output as evidence of disrespect or inferiority, blind to the fact that these individuals are acting according to another value system. It is up to us, as the outsiders wishing to operate in another’s world, to recognize that our own “absolutes” are only absolute in a certain context.
And is this not a profound wisdom? A writer I enjoy once said, “the greatest lie I ever believed was this: life is a story about me.” It is in fact an incredibly healthy exercise, I think, to allow ourselves to see our own assumptions shaken. There are other ways to be human. It is a fact, I think, that the majority of people on the planet believe that there are greater and lesser forms of human-being-ness. We may not hold this as an explicit philosophy, but left unchallenged, we all grow up to believe that our “normal” is the baseline for what people ought to be.
“the greatest lie I ever believed was this: life is a story about me.”
Raised in the West, these norms might include being on time, refraining from favoritism, direct communication, individualism. Move into another culture, however, and the world may be run according to radically different corollaries, such as communal identity, honor and shame, religious observance, or saving face. When living in another’s context, we will to some degree need to operate under these values, resulting in a profound philosophical and psychological stretch. This will undoubtedly cause distress, at least at first — and if we cling only to our norms, we will read their difference as rudeness, as wrong. We will reject and disengage with the host culture — robbing ourselves of an incredibly enriching experience — or we will try to impose our own norms, causing misunderstanding and frustrations all around.
However, if we relent to the difference, if we reach humbly towards understanding in these moments of strangeness, we may come to understand that these individuals possess a specific, often beautiful, logic to their actions. Cultures emerge from particular people in relation to a particular history and context, as arbitrary as they may seem to the Outsider. The “strangeness” may lie within our own faulty understanding of our surroundings — we are likely to find out that many of our Western-grown values, if applied in this context, would be unequivocally “wrong” — ill-fitted, nonsensical.
This perspective is one of the most valuable gifts I’ve carried back with me from my years overseas. It is a conscious practice of mine, now, to cultivate a posture of humility, aware that my supposed “understanding” of the world is in fact just one slim, slanted glimpse of what it means to exist in the human family. I know, irrevocably, that I am one small and specific member of a vast, milling mass of souls. And I believe, fundamentally, that those souls are at least as competent as I am in determining what is the right way to live and be.
I know, irrevocably, that I am one small and specific member of a vast, milling mass of souls.
[[All this goes for the person across the street, across town, across political or socio-economic or religious divides too. Could it be that Republicans/gays/Muslims/immigrants/____ are as worthy of dignity as you and me? And that “weird,” unpleasant coworker? Perhaps she lives in a world where she faces hardships I have never known, perhaps she sees a different world than I do, perhaps she has reasons for being the ways she is?]]
This is the root of the truest form of respect, I believe — so much more than the tight-lipped “tolerance” that seems to be the most that some can muster. I can trust my fellow humans. I breathe more easily, leaning into the freedom that comes with accepting that my understanding is not a prerequisite for validity. They are thinking, feeling, longing, and loving in their own ways, to their own rhythm, and isn’t that sacred in itself? All of us are here for just a few short years anyway.
We might take the time to talk and love across the gaps, trading morsels of insight, nibbling and even feasting on the richness that exists in the spaces between us. But in the meantime, I’m at peace. It is not necessary to conform others to my own image. It is not necessary to fear their “strangeness,” as I know that I am just as peculiar. I have, in fact, arrived at that cliche assertion that “we’re all human” — but, I hope, I grasp it with a more honest nuance. We are “all human,” not in our sameness, but our strangeness — and in moving beyond our fear of this lies the hope for us to truly meet.
