The Curious Paradox of Modern Tolerance
In a way, the internet is the greatest champion of public opinion there is and its inherent probation toward an assimilation of ideas is virtually unique in a manner that enables even the most docile or the most virile of ideas to have recognition in the public sphere, performing the role of the great leveler in a time and place where discussion is tantamount in the establishment of the rules of a society; except when it does not do what it is supposed to. In the collective curation of human thought, by replacing the natural method of expression with a substitute that is far more efficient than anything natural evolution could comprehend, hijacking into the very dispense of communication and validation as a whole. While I am not one to say the internet has destroyed the family and/or conservative values, there is a dangerous element to empowerment that makes it a rather uncanny armament, if one’s warped sense of duty was to collectively annihilate any resistance.
By posing as a grand alternative to opinion, the internet has warped our sense of duty to an unfathomable extent; but it is not the extent of the internet that holds us wary but the bemusing factor itself, and how the demarcation of subjective opinion is exaggerated to a point of ludicrousness. The problem is not that people have recognition per se, but the fact that people believe everyone is entitled to their opinion. If by opinion one means the right to express oneself, then indeed, you have a right to opine that the earth is six thousand years or a trillion years old, or to prefer astrology over astronomy, or if you prefer homeopathy to pharmaceutical medicine no matter what the proof against it would be; but by opinion you mean a serious contender for truth, then to no avail is that proposition tolerable.
There is a rampant double standard when it comes to opinion as illustrated in the inability of a person to recognize what it means to be bigoted. Further, bigotry is turning into an orthodox standard on its own where entire arguments can be realistically shut down simply because they are not the majoritarian voice. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines a bigot to be a person who obstinately devotes worth to subjective opinion and regards members of a differing opinion with hatred and intolerance; notice that bigotry is not intolerance to another person’s opinion but hatred toward the person, it is not the disapproval of another opinion but the aversion to the person because of the opinion he holds. Naturally, the discussion presumes that there are indeed objective morals to be found otherwise there would be nothing wrong with bigotry; why would someone call a line crooked if he did not know what a straight line was?
Under the orthodox view of epistemology, we have held that there are always truths that are objective, under the new epistemology we no longer hold the same. People no longer believe that there are any truths and that all knowledge is subjective and hence equally true — the radical brainchild of nihilism. It does not take a philosophy major to understand that the statement, “There is no objective truth; only subjective opinion.” is also a truth statement that is objective. Hence, if relativism is true, then relativism is false; not so startling a conclusion. This relativism is a curious idea and when applied to realism, gives way to what we now define as post modernism, post modernism rejects that there is a metaphysical realism and also asserts that veracity is a social construct. Under the influence of post modernism, a new tolerance has arisen, one that does not have any truths and treats all statements as categorical equals. Sophists who have pushed forward for this definition have successfully injected the doctrine into culture itself, resulting in a harem of individuals who have no idea what right and wrong is.
A persuasive case is to be found in the new sexual liberation movement. Some people hold that homosexual behavior (homosexual behavior, not homosexual identity) is destructive and immoral. Their view being the natural complement of the penis being the vagina, trying to replace a natural function (teleological nature, not biological nature) with a lesser substitute is harmful and often fatal over time. Others hold that sexual identity should be treated with dignity and that everybody has the right to do what they want to do and be respected in doing so on the inviolable basis of a human right. To them, an attack on gay rights is an attack on the human animal as a whole. What is off putting about the two statements is that under post modernism, both the statements are inherently true and equally moral. Yet only one of them is being criticized for discrimination; while post modernism rejects the basis of objective epistemology, it acts as if there is one and looks upon anyone who questions this foundation with an acrid, savage ridicule.
“I might disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
D. A. Carson
Traditionally, tolerance was defined in a radically different way. Firstly, that every person has right to belief and a right to express in public his belief and be met with dignity; and secondly that a belief had to be verified for veracity and then contested upon depending on whether it was true or false. Theologian DA Carson opines, “I might disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” Every person had to be treated equally bot not every opinion. While a person could say that another is to be treated with hatred and disdain, there is absolutely no reason to hate that person simply because he holds an incorrect belief. Disagreeing with what a person says is radically different from bigotry toward the individual; there is a difference in type between a person and the beliefs he holds and while every person has the right to speak his heart out, there is no good reason to hold his views as true unless he elicits enough evidence. While beliefs can be discriminated against, people cannot be as a statement is nothing but an expression of a psychological state. It is also evident that there exists some conclusion that is true; and that the best way to achieve this virtue would be a pursuit of honest debate, mutual exchange of information, introspection and systematic reflection. The most laudable virtue is the pursuit of truth and while there could be conflicting views, there cannot be conflicting truths.
Under postmodernism, the nucleus of this structure fails and careful reflection would shine light on the hideous mask with which intolerance disguises itself. Postmodernism recognizes that there are no truths, only opinions. Working onward, sophists emphasize that to be truly tolerant one has to accept every alternative view and treat the individual with self-respect. The breaking point being that you can simply no longer discriminate against the belief of a person but the person as a whole, however wrong he is. It is true that some opinions are obviously false; nobody believes that square circles exist or that an immovable rock could be moved by an infinite force as such ideas are ridiculous fallacies. It could be astonishing to say a person could hold views that defy rationality, like when somebody says he believes that arithmetic is wrong and you are obliged to respect him in spite of his daunting (not to mention untrue) conclusion. His view is about as true as yours is, just like his preference for fresh juice (melons, not lemons) is not to be discriminated against. Notice how absurd the conclusion is — every person has a right to belief and society should be willing to accept his opinion as true no matter how preposterous it could be. This fashion statement of unmitigated niceness is a detriment for humanity as a whole. There is not any good reason to believe that periodic, overdosed inebriation is a contribution to the greater good to a person or the society he is a part of, yet we are indebted to accept the choices a drunkard makes and treat him with the same kind of standard a teetotaler would.
People are required to go out of their way to describe a certain regulation of niceness where they are also not supposed to correct a mistake. “No, you are doing something wrong” is seen with the visceral lens of meanness and not an extension of concern. When the only truths are subjective, ignorance is a virtue and is an important one at that because you it means allowing someone else to do what they want to, also that it entails the supposition that truth and virtue do not matter. In letting me to do what I want to, I would let you do what you want to also because when preferences are the only commandments then an unmitigated tolerance is an antecedent. This shallow definition of niceness has come out of its closets to make a herd of people who would not question anything, are afraid of remark, always care for correctness and essentially destroy the case for the pursuit of truth because an inadvertent truth could end up hurting a person. Again, I do not advocate hurting people but it is only rational that person who makes a choice should also deal with the consequences of that choice but he should naturally be informed of the dangers of said pursuit. The cult-like emblem of niceness is not civility but a jaded insensitivity toward truth and reason, just like relativism’s untenable logical premise, not caring what your friend does even if it destroys him. Tolerance is a central facet to post modernism, not because of an eclectic desire to do good but because there is no seeming alternative.
This paradox scantily clarifies itself when people who propound tolerance also say that reject dogmatic absolutism (God help you if you believe gender is an equivocal function of physiology) and then claims they are not being dogmatic themselves. By affirming that every person has the freedom to believe in what he wants to and then setting the ideal of tolerance as a sacrosanct commandment, tolerance is refuting itself. If every view indeed has an equal voice, why is it that intolerance does not? How difference is intolerance from a worldview that outsets some opinions as blasphemy and then believes in equal representation to all, and calls itself tolerant? The rejection of orthodox dogmatism as intolerant is the very definition of intolerance. In spite of critical aplomb, what you think of as fairness is no different from bigotry simply because you have emphasized so; the puritan notion of overthrowing the conformist regime of classical morality is bigoted at the start and internally incoherent also. By diluting the distinction between a person and his conviction, tolerance (or its new definition) believes that disagreeing to a person’s beliefs is not distinguishable from disrespecting him. It denies the logical and implies that pointing out a falsehood in a divergent opinion is akin to saying something hurtful to the person which makes no sense given an abstract description of an idea is not what makes a person who he is.
According to the new bigotry, disagreeing with a person is intolerance to his character and the polite idea of rational debate is essentially neutered. So instead of people discussing the epistemology of a religion we have laws to protect religious rights (like how the whole pastafarian debacle was addressed), instead of people discussing women’s rights there are errant calls for sexism checks, instead of understanding how the Trump phenomenon works we have an utter condescension of conservative values as stupid. When an orthodox moralist talks about the regress of sexual liberation, the exact liberal interpretation would be the rejection of people who hold those beliefs and in the incoherent paradigm of the new tolerance manifesto, this kind of a bigotry appears justified.
In the landmark Obergefell vs Hodges case, Justice Anthony Kennedy, imploring to the dignity of a gay individual to be treated as everybody else, set the precursor to redefine marriage to include same sex couples believing that nobody deserves to be assaulted upon based on a lifestyle choice. Intolerance then, is a cardinal impurity and one that needs to incinerated because it is the very contaminant to the dignity of a person. A passionate denunciation of sexual liberation is impossible now because sexuality is what defines the human animal as far as public opinion is concerned; logically, anyone who disagrees is a bigoted homophobe, an enemy to the human race. It is here that a dangerous precursor to public opinion (mostly religious liberty) is at stake and is detrimental, in a way that it is the natural precedent for an authoritarian militant state like you would have recognized in one of the post-apocalyptic movies. To reject no belief as untrue, immoral or correct would be a direct assault on the dignity of a person who holds that opinion and hence a person who holds a bigoted worldview should necessarily be dealt with as a threat to human liberty; to be a politically correct individual would then be impossible and the government at hand would have every reason to ridicule and then ostracize a person whose opinion differs from what the majority holds making it impossible for a citizen to be bot virtuous and tolerant. Under the voice of the new tolerance, there would be little reason for a person to follow his conscience and any effort to do so would amount to a malicious act of dissent.
“It is one thing for a society to elect change; it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race.”
Moral relativism and by extension nihilism, postmodernism and moral skepticism is the retribution of the future; put into the smorgasbord of modern thought with a disproportionate hold into subconscious human thought. It means that every individual who holds to the traditional moral figure would be reviled, then seen with revulsion (like it is already) Postmodern liberals who have a very diminutive understanding of what they believe in propagate this worldview with an irenic lust but unaware of how to distill a person from what he believes in. Isn’t it the foundational understanding of even the most reluctant of the sciences that evidence needs to be objective for it to claim any confirmatory value, then why is it that we grow into a population that perpetuates the notion that every human being is who he is on the inside and that society should be willing to accept this as a whole? These delusional values of modern relativism should have been treated as they actually are, a league of extraordinary but unfalsifiable dogmatic assertion that cannot be warranted.
In claiming to be more progressive, we have destroyed the very armament of reason that asserts that truth is evidentially true; such is the state of intellectual poverty to a modern progressive whose best argument would be one of emotive value alone. The new tolerance insists that true tolerance is wrong while also saying it takes all claims to be at par, founding a slope that could only end up in a gratuitous tyranny; in a way the new tolerance is the impoverished notion that displays elaborate bigotry toward the old tolerance, intolerance in wolfskin. To supplement, it also extinguishes any criticism by a detailed claim of bigotry, imposing a partisan conformity over the human individual, reducing him to a mere carnality and commanding vacuous oversight over every detail of social instance.
There is no easy way out because the damage is already done; I am free to believe I am a hulking man of six foot, born to aristocratic parents in an island in the Bahamas, Jewish by birth but a Scientologist at heart, fluent in twenty-three languages (including Klingon and Dothrak) and my spirit animal is the honey badger and were I to express this opinion in the public, I would not be asked for proof but lauded for my bravery in rebellion against the self and none would be the wiser. To destroy the inherently bigoted nature of the true tolerance, the best antidote is to expel the basis of new thought as whole, not with a contemptuous ego but a loving passion, signifying the impotence of moral relativism and demonstrating the importance of moral idealism, dispelling the datum that disagreement is hatred or that deviation is bigotry, with love and a genuine warmth to bring out the best in a person and constantly criticizing them for when they avow to be what they are not. By defending the serious case of traditional tolerance and then launching a frontal attack on the hypocritical morality (and the ontological foundation) of relativism as a whole, what is left of the little humanity in us can be kindled into a gentle bonfire. For it is not people we discriminate against but the ideas they hold, because ideas have consequences.
