You must show tolerance toward culture, religion, and individuality. It is the only way human civilization can achieve harmony.
REMEMBER: concrete moral standards are EASILY used as a guage by which OTHERS are JUDGED.
Control over others SHALL NOT be your goal. Individually perceived, mutually beneficial, cooperation amongst man shall be the HIGHEST VIRTUE.
Any unpleasant variations which deviate from the above mentioned and you will suffer eternal misfortune by means of FIRE!! SCREAMING!! DEMONS WHIPPING YOU!! SCRATCHING YOUR FLESH WHILE YOU’RE SCREAMING!! SCREAMING!! SCREAMING!! for MERCY for EVER!! EVER!! AND EVER!!! AHA! HA! HA!!!
So just be nice to one another. See ya soon.
-------THE EVERYTHING THAT EVER IS, WAS, AND WILL BE---------
------------------THE CREATOR OF EVERYTHING-----------------------
-------------------------YOU’RE FRIENDLY-------------------------------
----------------------------ALL GOOD------------------------------------
------------------------------NO BAD--------------------------------------
-------------------------SUPER FRIENDLY--------------------------------
------------------------PERFECTLY GOOD-------------------------------
-------------------THE SINGLE ONE-AND-ONLY------------------------
GoD
gOd
GoD
Note from the author:
I would predict that if a statement like this would have been the doctrine embraced by a mainstream monotheistic religion, the world would be a drastically different place today. It would be interesting to see if a religion based off of this approach would split into sub-religions. Surely a different relgion would come about that worshipped why it said God’s name three times, when he was only really going for a certain level of coolness with the effect produced.
Umm, I think that stuff is in the bible but, it just keeps getting skipped over by preachers, priests etc…, sort of like all the bibles have sticky pages.
Every empire that flourished throughout the history of the world did so because of tolerance toward the cultures and religions of the people whom they conquered. When they became intolerant and forced others to assimilate to their way of life, language, or religion, that’s when the empire came crashing down. Persia… Rome… Mongol… Dutch… English… every empire. Every time.
This policy may not seem reasonable on an individual level. You may wonder “how can we expect everyone to behave this way when it clearly wouldn’t work?” What’s the difference between implementing this way of thought, and the way of thought prescribed by the bible? Not a lot, it’s just that those who follow the bible already have the monopoly on morality, and how well is THAT working? Psh.
Lastly, I never said “love eachother” That’s just stupid and unreasonable. Love thy enemies? Dumb. I said tolerate. Tolerate thy enemies… THAT seems a little more reasonable, and it’s truely the only way humanity will acheive harmony.
I’m not sure where you studied history but I don’t think you’ve been reading same books as I have. Empires and nations have never flourished by exhibiting tolerance. Take the 2nd WW. Did the Allies respond to Nazi Germany with tolerance or with aggression? And which would have been the better response? I think most would agree that in the face of Nazism, aggression is more appropriate than tolerance. Do you disagree? Where would tolerance have got us today.
Or take the US war of independence. Does the US have it’s roots as a modern prosperous nation in tolerance? Well, it rose up and asserted it’s independence in violent conflict didn’t it. So, unless you think that post-war western Europe and birth of the US are not good examples of “flourishing” civilizations, it would seem that your idea of tolerance has little to do with reality. Why don’t you give me 2-3 examples of civilizations that have flourished by exhibiting tolerance?
Policy? What you have said so far is so ambiguous that it cannot be described as a policy. How is “being tolerant” a viable policy for individual or public life? Please explain exactly what you mean and provide examples of how it would differ from what we currently experience.
Fair enough. But I go back to WWII. Should the Allies have attacked Germany or not? How would a tolerant person deal with this kind of aggression?
Well, if that’s your understanding of WW2 then we have no disagreement about the role of tolerance in history, we simply have a disagreement about the definition of the word “tolerance”.
If someone attacks a friend of mine, and I retaliate by killing them, then by your definition I could still be a very “tolerant” individual. My seeming “intolerance” was simply my inability to accept the intolerance of another and therefore I am a “defender of tolerance”.
However, I doubt that most people would accept this definition. And to go back to the original post, this changes the call to “tolerance” considerably.
If someone attacks my friend, that is an act of aggression. Laws against agression deal with that. The originator of the aggression was not taking tolerance into account. He / she used physical means to force an outcome. If I kill the person who attacked my friend, that’s not in defense of tolerance, it’s revenge. That is why impersonal laws which protect individuals are needed.
When we fought the Nazis, we weren’t fighting for revenge. We were fighting a force of intolerance. When we fought the Japanese, it wasn’t necessarily revenge, but for survival. They were the agressors. They were the intolerant ones. The US has also been the agressor to many countries, that’s why I believe it’s on the wrong track… and I think Christian values can take a lion’s share of the blame.
I disagree. I would think retaliation is exactly what Jesus preached against when he said to “turn the other cheek”. WWII wasn’t about retaliation though - it was about protecting peace. To think about it in general terms, how could there be peace with Hitler’s politics controlling the world? It would have been more aggressive to do nothing at all about it.
Imagine if Hitler’s politics controlled the whole world. That would mean the world would be populated with ONLY white people. Those white people would be free of blacks, asians, muslims, hindus, jainists, and all the other cultures / ethnicities whom there might be conflict. Talk about the closest man would be to ever achieving peace. Genocide works. The results of genocide yield no need for tolerance. With no enemies, there is no other alternative than peace.
The question is: Can a group of people who use violence and intolerance as the primary means to rid the world of their enemies truely ever be peaceful, even if they are the only ones left? Probably not.
Can the world be at peace if tolerance was the universal doctrine amongst all people? Inevitably.
99% of the world could subscribe to this ideology, and the other 1% could be stubborn and stick to tradition, and there will still be conflict.
I accept that world-wide tolerance will never ever happen. There is too much bad blood, revenge to be had, hate, perceived evil in the world. It’s how it is. The ideas that this life is the prelude to the next better life, man is naturally flawed, and the earth was created for us to use and abuse are to blame.
Christianity, Islam, and all the others are the problem. They create “in” and “out” groups. They are standards to judge oneself and others. Nobody likes being judged, especially those that live by different standards.
All religions need to be embraced equally by an impersonal governing body if peace is ever to be achieved.
I think you are playing games with the definition of the word “tolerance” to suit your argument. Isn’t “fighting a force of [anything]” by definition “intolerant”? Here is the dictionary definition…
Tolerance
1: capacity to endure pain or hardship : endurance fortitude stamina
2 a: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own b: the act of allowing something
Notice that, tolerance by the dictionary definition is (by external observation) a passive response to another action (hence the words, endure, sympathy, indulgence, allowing something…etc). If, in response to another’s action, an entity responds by using physical force, then by definition it cannot be called “tolerance”. It may be justifiable, and it may be the right thing to do, but it is decidedly NOT tolerance.
Thus, you seem to agree with me that the intolerant response of the Allies to the Nazis was justified. But, this argues directly against your original argument that tolerance is always the best option. The Allies were decidedly NOT “tolerant” when they invaded France, bombed Germany, and killed German soldiers and citizens. To argue otherwise is simply playing silly games with the english language.
Whatever justification you use for the response by the Allies doesn’t really matter. The fact that the Allies ACTED by using force means by definition they were NOT behaving in a tolerant manner.
If you think the Allies were justified in their response, then you have now modified your original claim that “tolerance is the best policy” to something more like “tolerance is the best policy, unless someone does something I don’t like; if that happens, I will crush them with physical force!”. Which is really not so much of an earth shattering alternative to the way the world already operates, is it?
Your decision to attribute blame at the door of Christians for the world’s problems would be a little stronger if your own argument about tolerance was internally consistent.
When a group becomes ethnocentric, other groups suffer, especially if the original group is dominant. There can be a level of ethnocentrism where the expulsion or murder of out-group members becomes a “necessary evil.” This actually makes the ethnocentric group weaker by depriving it of valuable human capital (skilled laborers and such). Another, more agressive group may then field the opportunity and seize power. Survival of the fittest.
The more diverse a group, the stronger it is. This why christianity itself survives… because it accepts anyone, no matter who you are. That level of tolerance is a powerful force.
Sure christianity accepts anyone into it’s ranks, but it is not tolerant of competing ideologies, or those who actively resist.
Tolerance between individuals who belong to a “whole” seems to work. Those outside of that “whole” are often portrayed as sub human, violent, etc… Surely you would agree. Christians don’t think of atheists as equals by any means. Christians in America wouldn’t even think a christian tribal member in the jungles of honduras as an equal.
So, the keys are: Tolerance, and survival of the fittest. Maybe the only one who will eventually survive will be the most tolerant.
I’m not sure where you are going with this now. I agree that Christianity is intolerant in a theological sense, as is any claim to absolute truth, but in a practical sense Christians are encouraged not to respond in a retaliatory manner to competing ideologies. This could be contrasted with Islam for example where competing ideologies are both wrong and to be actively fought. I’m aware that Christians have been far from perfect, but the ideal of the Christian faith is theological intolerance combined with practical tolerance of any external pressure
