The Paradox of Tolerance
^ It's just a meme, meant to be funny..
The land of Steemville is a strange and interesting place, some days I am excited to be here and other days I sit rocking and wondering why I've spent so much time here. (I don't rock or cry, . . . much)
I've talked about it before, but one of the first things I learned when I arrived here is I have no idea how Freedom functions. I've given it lip service my entire life, but I've never had much of a chance to practice it. I assume overtime and with practice we would get better at it. Many of you are like me, we were raised in families with Authority figures, went to schools with Principals and Teachers, and moved into a workforce with Bosses. In some ways we are out of our element.
How does a community without leadership, elected or otherwise make decisions? I guess we talk/fight it out.
My instinct is to let everyone find their own niche and when it comes to the the reward pool to use the tools the site gives me to curate up and down to the limits of my voting power after that I hope for the best.
Lately, I am feeling a bit frustrated and I guess if I were to be honest I'm surprised that a community filled with so many people who believe in Freedom having so little ability to let some of that play out, without trying to judge, critique, and moan about what others are doing!
I went to look for topics on Freedom, Tolerance, and Personal Responsibility and I ran into the Paradox of Tolerance, which is...
Ehhh.. such a paradox. lol
Reading it just made me feel more justified in being frustrated.
The paradox of tolerance was described by Karl Popper in 1945. The paradox states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Popper came to the seemingly paradoxical conclusion that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance.
A link to an article discussing the idea on LIBERTARIANISM.org
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. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, 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. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
After pondering and reading this a bit, I felt my frustration melt away, and the pleasure of the "Experiment" came back. (That is utter bullshit, I just got distracted)
These ideas have more meaning when trying to apply them to real life situations vs. when they are just a theory.
Are you here to practice Freedom? It's not a requirement it just seems we do have a lot of people who talk about it, and after all it is a nice fit.
If you answered yes to the previous question go on:
How should we handle intolerance? Should we tolerate it?
How would we define intolerance in this space?
Light Heartedly Serious
And this, from 1945? Brilliant.
Your post brings to mind some sayings I hold by:
You can't have a rational discussion with irrational people.
Your right to swing your fist ends at my nose.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. (a difference)
Don't go up against a crazy person who has no limits, they will out-crazy you every time.
I don't know enough about the inner workings, or politics, of this platform to make a meaningful comment about defining intolerance or if and where and how to draw the line. But I do know something about bullies and I hate to say that it seems that here, as in life, bullies have no problem exercising their power, while the people who just want to get along are reluctant to restrain them.
I'm sure it's more complicated than that.
haha, some great thoughts in this comment. I guess some are here for different reasons so we end up nearly fighting each other as we all try to reach our goal. Normally I have a high tolerance for conflict and disagreement, that is where the difference between theory and real life happens. In theory, I don't have any emotions about it. In this situation... Occassionally, I have feelings. :)
I like this post, it makes us consider what's important in life! What is freedom? In my humble opinion it is the absence of injustice and the presence of peace. Peace to do what you want, when you want, and how you want within reason. There will always be those who go against that sense of freedom, but all you can do is believe you are free.
Good connecting w/ you on Discord. Thx for welcoming me. You mentioned (in your post) "...so many people who believe in Freedom having so little ability to let some of that play out..." You've got a very good point, which so many fail to see these days. They want to be heard, but so often criticize others for their point of view. It's a 2-way street for sure. I've found that accepting others (and not imposing my views on them) brings a great strength in my heart. It keeps me from getting upset and also opens my eyes to see how others see as well.
I'm looking forward to more discord moments, as well as future posts from you.
First of all i want to talk about the Meme, ha ha it's really cool and for me it's saying Hard Fork 20 please come we want to catch up the green trend. And yes, many feel the same means, sometimes it's frustrating on this platform and sometimes it's fun, but it's nothing bad because life is also same. And my perspective towards Tolerant and Intolerant is, the community which is accepting the work of everyone and supporting each other, without any discrimination is tolerant and an community where people are suppressed or where no one is supporting each other and where everyone is ready for the war of words, then that's intolerant. Saying complete freedom will not be right but through Steemit we have started an thought which can encourage others to showcase their niche freely and for that you will get the rewards too. Thanks for sharing this post with us and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
Do you know anything about hardfork 20?
I know a couple of things.. What do you want to know?
I guess the couple things you know. lol
Regarding your questions, I do in fact believe that we should strive to achieve the most freedom we can, but it's really hard due to reasons already mentioned. These social paradoxes have always troubled me. If we don't censor anything, it may cause harm, but censorship in itself may cause harm, so it's hard to find the proper balances.
But this phrase got me thinking about something else:
I remember my father's teachings, and other people's teachings, about "decisions". If you don't make decisions, they say, they will be made for you by others or by circumstance. In a community without leadership, if we are eternally tolerant, our inaction will count as action promoting the action of others, action on which we will have no control or decision due to our inaction.
We always have preferences. I prefer freedom over not-freedom, but I also prefer beautiful over ugly, and I prefer content that makes me happy rather than content that makes me unhappy. I, therefore, think that we should strive not to "improve" Steem, because that implies that it can be good or bad and those judgements are against freedom. I think that we should strive to take Steem toward the place that we like the most.
This means that in a place without leadership, we must be the leadership, ironically, paradoxically or apparently contradictorily. If we don't act, others will act and we may not like what they do, so to be free and content, we must influence our surroundings toward our preferred outcomes.
Interesting thoughts, I got back to this late, more tomorrow.
Intolerance should never be allowed. Coming from Western Europe, I for example struggle with how people apply the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech to justify extreme right wing believing. Sadly even SCOTUS has said that hate speech constitutes of freedom of speech.
For me, I have come to accept that but it doesn’t mean I struggle any less with accepting intolerant and oppressive speech. Which IMHO needs be dealt with.
The problem with that though is who decides over what is intolerance. Currently the whole “last few years PC-brigade” has become so utterly intolerant that it is vomit inducing. Yet, it aren’t their views which are intolerant, it’s merely their modus operandi of shoving their views down one’s throat which induce revolt.
I think handling intolerance will result to more of it, and it will become more aggressive, for me, I tend to always stay away when I notice intolerance, you know focus on more other things because I have a rash way of talking when I'm angry
of course we have to tolerate that among humans there is no dispute to arrive at the argument and we can respect other people not distinguish status, religion, etc .
decentralization is a word that have different meaning and in that word lies many things that we want to see. Even if there was a leader who takes decisions for us there will be people who would say that that was not correct.
At the end everything has both positive and negative sides .We just have to cope up with it in my point of view , it is just a thought of mine.