Don’t empathy and compassion often lead you to do things for others that hurt yourself? True compassion will allow for forbearance. True compassion will lead to the realization that the worlds burdens are not your personal burdens, and your values are not the world’s solution. The idea that the world needs saving, and the individual should be the one to save it, leads to intolerance.

What if you value tolerance and the world’s values? If you value tolerance, then you will value your own weaknesses, your own limitations, and the world’s values are not homogenous, at least not between human beings. If you are looking for a moral ground to work from, then what more grounded point is there than action?

Well, we can abstract from the heterogeneity to common ground. Life is sustained by clearly identifiable behaviours, one of which is tolerance. All of the apex species on this planet are characterized by a capacity for tolerance. Crocodiles tolerate the birds that pick the parasites from their teeth. Wolverines for all their ferocity do not harass the honey bird that leads them to their favourite energy source. The capacity for genuine wilful intolerance is uniquely human. As much as people might think otherwise, your house pet does not, nor has it ever, laughed at you.

This shows that morality and self-interest “do” go together. Indeed, morality and self-interest do go hand in hand. You cannot contribute what you do not have. You cannot tolerate when you cannot allow your own being.

You haven’t met my dog. And humour is wonderful. The best comedians do use humour to underscore tolerance, and the foibles they speak of so openly are their very own. Intolerant comedians tend to fail quickly in their careers, evidence one Andrew Dice Clay. Anyone remember him?

He has a following in Sweden! Really odd, his movie is big here and nowhere else. What does that say about Sweden? Well, Sweden today has a reputation for being a tolerant culture, and tolerance embraces even the intolerant for the model they give us. You cannot practice tolerance and criticise the intolerant.

The “new world” appears to be the least tolerant in many ways. Yes. Having “ideals” that supposedly made them great.

I think you have to be intolerant of the intolerant, no inconsistency there. You have to be active in the face of intolerance. That’s where things get sort of paradoxical. Those who choose intolerance also choose the native response, rejection. You don’t have to make it a moral agenda, nor crusade against intolerance. I do not tolerate intolerance in my presence, but I will not reflexively force my intolerance on society as a whole.

Just stand by your actions and decisions? Exactly. Individual choice is the essence of tolerance. The idea that one must defer to a popular opinion, is that tolerance?

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~