“Tolerant” societies are an enduring myth. And will remain so. Unless…
Where did the tolerance go?
Recently, I was speaking to an older gentleman, a well-heeled member of a minority community. It was clear to see that he loved his county in the way he spoke. And his love was corroborated by the fact that he had never changed his citizenship, even though he had had multiple opportunities to do so.
Unfortunately, he was also really sad. Sad about how his country had become polarized and was a far cry from the idea of a “tolerant nation” he admired in his youth. The idea of “tolerance” seems (even to me) like it was a more prevalent part of the national narrative, even in my own youth.
What does it even mean? In a nutshell, it translates to “to each his/her own”.
But — given what I know now, is it surprising that tolerance has never really taken hold in any country? No, not really.
Why? Because (I believe) there are shortcomings with the concept of tolerance itself that are swept under the rug and ignored. The biggest ones have to do with the nature of our faith itself.
Tolerance will always have an intuitive connection with faith — after all there’s no need for tolerance if everyone believes the exact same thing.
If one were to map out a spectrum of belief systems (as done below), “true tolerance” can arise from either end of the spectrum. But most of us aren’t at the extremes, and we’re never taught how to move to either end.
Tell me more about these sources
The first source (on the left hand side) of tolerance is an awareness that all belief-systems are simply best approximations of reality & that there is no way to know the “real truth”. This then leads to a tolerance of other opinions because one realizes that one’s own belief system might be flawed.
What’s crazier? Someone else might just be right. Even if one were to assign a negligible (~0.0001%) chance of someone else being right, probabilities lead one to implicitly acknowledge that the universe is more complicated than what one believes in. And thus tolerance emerges — a probabilistic tolerance for sure, but tolerance nonetheless.
The alternate source of tolerance (way to the right) lies within a mix of detachment and self-confidence. Detachment is a necessary condition because it is so much harder to let loved ones make mistakes. If you truly believe in that your beliefs are the best, it will always hurt to see your loved ones making sub-optimal choices. When you love someone, you care about them, and if the stakes are as high as eternal damnation (for example), it seems a bit unrealistic to expect someone to be tolerant.
Instead, this source of tolerance is basically our mind telling us a combination of self-confidence (“You KNOW you’re right. It’s inconceivable you could be wrong.”) and detachment (“This person’s clearly wrong, but they don’t matter in your life”). Together, these two thoughts help us ignore whatever someone might be doing, because ….“who cares?”
Unfortunately, this second source of tolerance is more dangerous than the first. In fact, give a human enough power and they will quickly go from “who cares?” to “I’m going to make sure everyone does the right thing aka what I believe in” And this is the birth of a very dangerous type of dictatorial leader.
However, the fact remains — absurd self-confidence can often blossom into a strange sort of tolerance (or at least indifference) of others.
Unfortunately, the unaddressed issue here is that most of us don’t really fall into either of the sources. Instead, we’re somewhere in the middle — a seeming desert where tolerance can’t seem to take root for long.
The desert in the middle
Feeling certain about something rocks. And this may have something to do with the evolutionary journey we’ve been on. Certainty co-relates with control, and more control has always been an evolutionary advantageous. In a world with scarce resources & where things can abruptly change, more control improves our chances of surviving and thriving.
As much as we desire to feel the certainty that comes with being towards the right side of the spectrum, most of us find it difficult to get there. Instead, most people usually have seeds of doubt buried deep within their psyches — even those who seem outwardly confident.
However, these seeds of doubts are inconvenient. And while they may be nature’s way to ensure a species doesn’t run headlong into disaster due to misplaced confidence — it doesn’t change the fact that doubt doesn’t feel good.
Nurturing these doubts & moving to a probabilistic view is a great way to move towards the left side of the spectrum (and is likely a winning strategy in correct decision making too as evidenced by studies such as the Good Judgement project by Philip Tetlock). But that’s not what we usually do.
Rather, because certainty feels so good, we do our best to suppress these doubts & sweep them under the rug. Emotionally speaking, we want to move towards the right, not the left!
So we look for “markers of truth” — specifically any evidence that can help confirm our pre-existing beliefs (hello confirmation bias!). These “markers of truth” fulfil an important function — they prevent the seeds of doubt from germinating further and make us feel great about our existing beliefs.
Social and authoritative proof are particularly effective “markers of truth”. But they have a flipside — social & authoritative proof can sometimes become counter productive — i.e., outside opinions can run counter to our own beliefs. When this happens, one MUST silence the opposing voices.
A co-ordinated or powerful story that goes against your own belief systems is the last thing one needs when trying to suppress the seeds of doubt.
In extreme cases, this silencing can take the form of killing people or ruining their lives. When this happens, many of us see direct evidence of “intolerance” around us. We may feel (instinctively) that the perpetrators went too far.
However rather than paying attention to the habits and belief systems (as they relate to our confidence/faith) that enable this type of behaviour, most people fall back on preaching about the need for more tolerance.
As if tolerance will magically emerge and take hold in our collective psyche. But alas, hope is not a strategy.
But where do we go from here…
To recap, while many of us like view tolerance as an admirable trait, we (as humans) do not seem to be pre-naturally disposed to it. Specifically, most of us are neither uncertain nor certain enough in our belief systems to achieve tolerance.
Rather we are continue to desperately seek evidence to gain greater certainty as certainty feels great.
Even while most of us operate within this behavioural prison, the calls for being more tolerant never seem to stop. But these exhortations will never actually lead to change unless we also start to change our relationships with our belief systems.
Specifically, for tolerance to take shape, we must try and move towards either ends of the faith spectrum. Of course, how to do that is never specified. Instead, we’re left with high-minded talk about a pluralistic society without any consideration for the behavioural prison that most of us seem to operate within.
So…is it really that surprising that tolerance is in a downward spiral? In fact, I suspect there never was a tolerant society, and it is likely there won’t ever be one till we start addressing the logistics of how we make people more humble (and thus questioning about their beliefs) or more self-assured (and thus uncaring about actions of others).
Shouldn’t we be having those conversations instead?
