Notes on the Paradox of Tolerance
Part of the continual churn of death and destruction in human history is from the paradox of tolerance, which too few people are aware of.
Frank Herbert has an excellent statement of it in his 1976 novel 'Children of Dune': "When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."
Babington Macaulay gives some good little examples of this type of error in volume 3 of his 1860 'Critical, Historical, and Miscellaneous Essays': "It would not be very wise to conclude that a beggar is full of Christian charity, because he assures you that God will reward you if you give him a penny; or that a soldier is humane, because he cries out lustily for quarter when a bayonet is at his throat. The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by all bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words, and stripped of rhetorical disguise, is simply this: I am in the right, and you are in the wrong. When you are the stronger you ought to tolerate me; for it is your duty to tolerate truth. But when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you; for it is my duty to persecute error."
This is a major problem. Karl Popper explains it well in his 'The Open Society and Its Enemies' from 1945: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
He continues: “In this formulation, I do not imply that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.”
Another way Popper puts it, and with the label of the paradox of freedom, is: "The so-called paradox of freedom is the argument that freedom in the sense of absence of any constraining control must lead to very great restraint, since it makes the bully free to enslave the meek."
This is not a recent thing. Plato talks about it in book 8 of 'The Republic' from 375 BC: "Indeed, the excessive freedom seems to transform simply into excessive slavery, in the individual and in the city."
The philosopher John Locke, whose writings influenced the Founding Fathers, talks about this in his 1689 'A Letter Concerning Toleration': “No opinions contrary to human society, or to those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society, are to be tolerated.” This brings up an obvious question. What are the moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society? Locke makes a case for several things that should not be tolerated, such as religions which make one loyal to another law or government, or people that don't have a religious foundation to keep oaths.
The Indian Buddhist emperor Ashoka recognized the problem in his 250 BC 'Rock Edict 12': "One must not honor only one’s own religion and condemn the religion of others, but honor others’ religions for this or that reason. But if one acts thus, one is hurting one's own religion."
Jean Bodin in his 1576 'Six Books of the Republic' puts it as: "Toleration must be granted, but if it is given to those who seek to destroy the state, it is no longer toleration, but negligence."
This is the same idea as Hugo Grotius in his 1625 'On the Law of War and Peace': "Liberty must not extend to those who use it to remove the liberty of others."
Pierre Bayle stated it in his 1686 'A Philosophical Commentary on These Words of Jesus Christ': "A society must not tolerate those who claim the right to intolerance."
Montesquieu, another strong influence on the Founding Fathers, says in his 1748 'The Spirit of the Laws': "Liberty is not unlimited; it must be constrained by the liberty of others."
In his 1924 novel 'The Magic Mountain' Thomas Mann expresses it as: “The problem of tolerance, my dear Engineer, is rather too large for you to tackle. Do not forget that tolerance becomes crime, if extended to evil.”
This is a much more difficult problem than people realize. A lot of people just respond by saying, "Just don't tolerate the intolerant then, problem solved." Nope, because by not tolerating the intolerant you're being intolerant, and it's difficult to determine which intolerance is to be tolerated and which not tolerated to allow for continued tolerance.
The writer Voltaire sheds a little light on this in his 1763 'Treatise on Tolerance': “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.” Along with George Orwell in his novel '1984' from 1949: "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
So, we should tolerate the true and not tolerate the absurd. Yet, who is to determine that? We still aren't even close to solving the problem. Someone still has to decide who and what to tolerate and who and what to not tolerate.
As an example we can use gender dysphoria, which has been a fairly obvious sign of a growing general delusional insanity in many parts of the world in recent years. The philosophical foundation of this is social construct theory applied wrong. If you and I are standing in a room with a table and I say, "Put your jacket on the table." You know exactly what to do. Our communication is working because we're using the same symbol and referent, the word table and the table itself. We're both acting sanely and coherently. If I say, "Hey, this table, I actually call elephant. It's just a thing, just go with it.", and you say, "Okay." Then I say, "You can put your jacket on the elephant.", you know what to do. We are still sane and coherent. We're in contact with the reality of the referent and with each other through our shared symbol. If someone else walks into the room and sees me say to put your jacket on the elephant and then you throw your jacket on the table and we both walk off like nothing happened, they might think we're a bit off, but we could just explain to them that we switched the word. This is how languages work, they are socially constructed, as long as the people using the symbol system know what referents are being referred to, any symbol you want can work.
However, when the symbol is mistaken for the referent, then we become insane because we've lost contact with reality. If I say, "You can put your jacket on the elephant.", and the other person looks around confused and says, "What elephant?" If I'm thinking that the table is actually an elephant, I'm also going to be confused. I might say, "The elephant, right there in front of you. I gave him some hay earlier on the floor there. I'm going to take him outside later and ride him around a bit, but getting him through the door with those ears is tough." We're not having coherent communication because we're using different symbols and referents. Now, the other person has some choices. They can tell me I'm insane and the table is a table, not an elephant, and we could argue over it. They can play along and help me get my elephant through the door, at which point their symbol may now align with mine, which means that we're coherently communicating, but we're both insane because we're not aligned with reality. Or, they can still be sane if they know the table isn't actually an elephant, then they're just playing pretend by using their imagination, but if they believe the table actually is an elephant then they have a delusion too, and at that point the delusional insanity has spread like a contagion. Or, they could call someone for help. They could just leave. They have to make some kind of choice.
We can see from this that symbols and words are socially constructed, but the referents of reality that we're referring to are not socially constructed. Gender dysphoria does this in a specific area that humans are susceptible to. It's more common than confusing tables and elephants, but the same basic idea.
The question then becomes, to tolerate or not? In American culture for quite awhile if a guy dressed as a woman or a woman dressed as a guy, no one really cared. The US military even implemented don't ask don't tell, to basically ignore the problem and tolerate some gender confusion. The basic attitude being that if someone is confused about their gender, or wants to pretend to be the other gender, then it's not really hurting anyone. It's a personal delusion. Over time this delusion grew. The basic argument being that if you don't accept the delusion then you're being intolerant. You have to call men women and women men, or you're intolerant and therefore shouldn't be tolerated. If you won't pretend that men are women then you will be fired, fined, or jailed. The delusion becomes part of the norm of society in certain areas, and the delusion can even gain the force of law behind it. The delusion is not tolerant of sanity, but requires all people to join in the insanity. So toleration of delusion leads to oppression by delusion.
It seems like there should be a simple and easy answer to this, but it's more difficult than it at first appears. To be intolerant of people with gender dysphoria would stop them from gaining enough power to be intolerant of sane people, but there's a danger there too. In his 1948 book 'God in the Dock' C. S. Lewis says: "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies." People on both sides could be considered moral busybodies, so there's danger all around.
Another example is Sharia Law in Islam. There are different types of Islamic Law and Muslims have fought many wars over that, but there is a fair amount of agreement among the various versions. Some Muslim groups don't tolerate non-Muslims at all. That's a simple application of the paradox of tolerance. Anywhere that happens the society that tolerates those Muslims, as soon as the Muslims are able to take power, will do away with the non-Muslims.
A more common version of it is a bit more complex. Let's say a society is tolerant of Muslims moving in. Over time the Muslim population grows to 20 percent of the area. Muslims hold some political seats, they run various businesses, they have some power and influence. If those Muslims are not tolerant of the law of the land and support Sharia Law, they may start to implement small things. They may approve the holidays celebrated in Islam, have prayers broadcast over speakers, these types of things. If the society tolerates that, then they can go further. The problem is Sharia Law does not agree with basic fundamentals of American and European tradition and law. For instance, there isn't equality before the law in Sharia. If a non-Muslim kills a Muslim, that's probably the death penalty. If a Muslim kills a Muslim, that may be the death penalty or a long prison sentence. If a Muslim kills a non-Muslim, then that may be some jail time, or maybe just a fine. There's also a special tax that non-Muslims have to pay for not being Muslim, non-Muslims can't be judges, and a bunch of other things. So, by tolerating the support and growth of Sharia Law, the tolerant society eventually becomes oppressed under an intolerant law and culture. Tolerance leading to intolerance.
If, however, a society doesn't tolerate Muslims, then you naturally have religious oppression against Islam, which means whoever has the power to do that also has the power to oppress other religious groups, and so by attempting to be intolerant of the intolerant you become the intolerant. By attempting to stop religious oppression you must oppress the religions that believe in religious oppression, which means you believe in religious oppression, which means you should oppress yourself. There's a reason it's called a paradox, it's an unsolvable beast of a problem. And yet, it has to be dealt with continually everywhere, and has been dealt with everywhere at all times in history.
The unsatisfactory answer is that there are judgment calls to make on where the balance is. "If we allow this, will it lead to our oppression?" If yes, then maybe some limits are needed. If not, then tolerate it. How far is too far? How far isn't enough? That's the history of humanity and its churning.
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