Tolerance: An Antidote to our Cultural Fragmentation
I am intrigued by the role tolerance plays in the functioning of our society, and the role I believe it has in reconciling the cultural and ideological rifts which are emerging across the Western world this decade. One might have thought that the Internet would bring forth a shift in our collective consciousness, given that our line of sight has been extended beyond our physical borders to encompass people from all four corners of the world who, it turns out, share a lot more with us than we may have previously thought or been led to believe. Our propensity to care for and consider the wellbeing of our fellow human beings could be attributed to a variety of factors, particularly the Darwinian explanation that that our inherent capacity for empathy and compassion for the weak is seen as a mechanism for maintaining the propagation of the species. I think it can also be explained at a spiritual level. The oneness of our shared consciousness means that, if one can transcend the self-imposed and socially conditioned separateness and egotism, then caring for one’s neighbour makes as much existential sense as caring for ourselves.
Yet this is not how things operate, at least not if social media can be considered a modern-day barometer of our culture and society. I hesitate to make such an assertion given that social media is not consumed by everyone as in insight into culture. Yet over the preceding couple of years I have observed how underground cultural shifts, which emerged in the corners of the Internet, eventually blossomed into mainstream news events and coverage. In this sense social media offers a microscopic insight into the shifting dynamics of broader cultural movements.
One need only sample the forums of Reddit or the comments section of YouTube for (albeit anecdotal) evidence of the fragmentation of society, with the level of vitriol and hate amongst opposing ideological groups exacerbated by the rise in identity politics across the political spectrum. Based on my own subjective interpretation, which of course is open to repute, the problem with identity politics is the de-humanisation of individual personality traits in favour of a specific, socially constructed categorisation — be that race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity et al. Breaking human beings down to their biological, constituent parts and identifying them through this method is not necessarily representative of how most of us actually interact with one another in the world. That is not to dismiss the institutional and personal biases minorities and historically oppressed peoples face on a daily basis, far from it, but to pigeon-hole them based on the very categorisation by which they are often oppressed in the first place seems inherently disempowering and, in my opinion, perpetuates such discrimination. This movement is, amongst other things, a manifestation of the materialist foundations of our society and our propensity for reductionism. Consider the emergence of the concept of intersectionality: despite being driven by collectivist ideology, intersectionality is an attempt (whether that be conscious or sub-conscious) to transcend one’s group identity and to cast oneself how one likely wishes to be, and ought to be, perceived — as an individual. Our biology is merely a sub-component of the whole.
An essential counter-acknowledgement at this juncture is provided by the statistics which indicate that simultaneously, and across a range of metrics, our society is progressing beyond even the grandest optimists’ imagination. These developments are portrayed, quite excellently, by Steven Pinker in Enlightement Now. The statistics show that life expectancy has more than doubled over the past 150 years. War, famine and disease are all rapidly declining. Literacy and access to education is increasing while female emancipation liberates women across the world. Despite the disproportionate media coverage to the contrary, there has never been a better time to be alive.
Tolerance
As flawed and imperfect human beings, the extent to which only we ourselves can ever truly appreciate, one would think that we would all denounce the idea of someone judging us from afar without any knowledge of the intricacies of our nuanced and complex lives. Yet this kind of illogical reductionism is what we see through the verbal warfare on social media platforms, on mainstream television and in newspaper columns. Labelling people or groups as “deplorables”, “snowflakes” or “racists” abdicates all responsibility for thinking on the part of the assertor. The use of a simple, all-encompassing word allows the assertor to bracket their adversary in an orderly manner without ever considering the subtleties and subjective experiences of that individual. It also affords the assertor the comfort of signalling their virtue and ignore their own unconscious biases and prejudices. Such behaviour is intellectually lazy and morally weak.
The consequences of such a blasé use of language has serious real-world consequences. Nowadays an accusation is becoming as socially damaging as an indictment. ‘Guilty until proven innocent’ is replacing due process. The risk of being labelled something awful induces a sort of self-censorship of one’s public use of language. Over-use of such loaded terminology dilutes their effectiveness when they need to be assigned to people in justified and necessary circumstances.
We must engage with those with whom we disagree. The answer does not lie in silencing those individuals who hold views in opposition to our own. Acceptance of their reality is a good starting point. Yet such acceptance does not entail an acceptance of the perceived justification or consequences of such views, an apathy that the inevitable cannot be changed. Instead this knowledge can assist us in dealing with the root cause of our intolerance, rather than merely trying to address its symptoms. Disagreement is where the beauty and nuance of human discussion and intellectual progression emerges and blossoms.
The Duality of the Psyche
When I witness people on social media attack each other so vehemently with ad hominem arguments, it reminds me of Carl Jung’s concept of the unintegrated shadow. People fear what they don’t know, and very often what they don’t know most of all is themselves. Jung’s contention was that a fully actualised, virtuous individual knows precisely their own capacity for instinctive and primitive behaviour and that such self-knowledge induces a vigilance against that kind of irrational behaviour. As Jung observed, what irritates us about other people can often lead us to a greater understanding of ourselves. You might feel good about yourself after signalling your virtue and impulsively calling someone a ‘racist’, but it is inconceivable to think that that same ‘custodian’ of politically correct language navigates their life without a single prejudice of their own. This is what differentiates a tolerance based on empathy from one based on naiveté and wishful thinking. It is a tolerance derived from the realisation that we ourselves possess uninformed and ignorant viewpoints, an acknowledgement that we would prefer not to be linguistically outcast in a situation where our own ignorant fallibility or unconscious prejudice might become exposed. The problem is that we tend to view everyone around us through an objective framework, while applying a more subjective criterion to ourselves. This creates a vacuum for hypocrisy and double standards. In the words of Soren Kierkegaard, we must view other people subjectively while simultaneously applying an objective framework to ourselves.
We need thought leaders who encourage and promote the best aspects of humankind, not those who manipulate our primal fears for their own personal and political gain. On an individual level we have an obligation to deploy empathy and tolerance towards those who surround us, both literally and digitally. Although the methods which may heal the rifts and resolve our cultural fragmentation are potentially many and varied, there are a few core principles which I believe can aid us during this time of relative chaos and turmoil — tolerance being a cornerstone to this approach. Tolerance does not imply something passive. It is a daily commitment to open-mindedness, non-judgement in the first instance, empathy for others and a willingness to change our thinking in light of new information.
