this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Right, so you show them who's the bigger person by being just as intolerant to them as they were to you...
Yes, you do. It's called the paradox of intolerance.
Actually, you are misunderstanding the paradox of tolerance. And I would say it is one of the most frequently misquoted philosophy on discussion forums such as lemmy or reddit.
Popper asserted many times that the intolerable intolerance is violence. "Fists and pistols" as he calls it.
By intolerating at a stage by calling the other as intolerable when we're still quite far from violence such as this case of HR management, you are proposing for an unjust society--is what Popper would say.
I'll admit I have not read Popper. But just because he coined the term doesn't mean his conception of it is the only acceptable one. Others have taken the basic idea and taken it in different directions.
Personally, I subscribe to the belief of the shitty crustpunk bartender.
Specifically, if someone is intolerant of others in a way that rejects who they are (as opposed to rejecting something that they believe—so gender and sexuality are on one side of that line, while religion and political ideology are on the other), especially if they do so in a way that creates the feeling of an unsafe environment, we should feel perfectly fine excluding them from that space.
I think feelings and personal beliefs should stay as far as possible from philosophy. Philosophy should never evolve around subjectivity such as feelings; philosophy is an attempt to be as rational and logical as possible in albeit a very subjective world. Much of philosophical arguments are made in same manner as discrete mathematics because of this but with words rather than formulas and rules. Even religious medieval philosophers attempted to be as logical as possible in their approach to explaining religion rather than relying on belief (though often fail despite their best attempts). So the "feeling of unsafe environment" isn't something I see as compatible with any philosophical discussion as a basis of reason. There needs to be an objective as possible pivot.
We see plenty of vastly different feeling of unsafe in social media. Some of which even do so with the intent of not actually feeling unsafe but to garner views and likes. If someone is scared by everything, can we start intolerating everyone else? We don't know where the line can be drawn between being a just society that tolerates freedoms and the one where tolerable can no longer exist.
This is why Popper proposed the entire dilemma. The violence being the pivot of intolerable intolerance isn't his opinion. It is that with violence, tolerable objectively (as much as we can be objective) cannot exist.
Even in your example, you attempt to separate objectivity vs subjectivity in are/is versus believe respectively for the sole correctness of the former. (Even though in my view, proof of what is is going to end up as sum of your beliefs or a cyclic viewpoint.) And then the argument goes back to pivoting in the subjectivity of feelings.
If you rely on subjectivity to draw the line of what's intolerable intolerance, then you will be intolerant of people who you subjectively view as intolerable.
I am aware of that paradox but I think it's misguided, because it's essentially just an excuse for neverending violence and revolution. Anytime you punish someone for not adhering to some sort of group standards, you aren't likely change their minds about those standards being a moral good. Some might relent and begrudgingly go along with them, but others will not, and in time they'll accumulate. At some point, there will be enough of them to overthrow the status quo, and then your intolerance will be replaced with theirs. So the result is that you live in an eternal state of intolerance, all in the name of tolerance. It's a sucker's game, and only fools are dumb enough to go along with it.
If you cannot defend your standards using reason, they are immoral, and they'll eventually be overthrown and abolished, as they should.
You cannot reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
If someone is being intolerant out of ignorance, by all means we should try to politely educate them and help them be better. But there are a lot of bigots out there who will be racist, sexist, or transphobic despite your best efforts.
Nobody else should have to put up with an uncomfortable work environment, social club, or anything else, because we have to make accommodations to be tolerant of bigots.
And nobody said anything about violence. It's entirely about excluding people from spaces with others who do not want to have to be exposed to that intolerance.
That's merely an assumption based on a stereotype you have about people like this. Just because reason may have failed with other people like that in the past doesn't mean it's not going to work with this one, especially if you haven't even tried to reason with them and immediately go for the bigger gun of ostracism (i.e. firing).
It is not reasonable to deprive someone of their source of income for having an opinion you don't like. It IS reasonable to tell them that their opinion doesn't belong in the company chat, and give them a warning that disciplinary action may result if they do it again.
You're excusing hatred with bigotry. The same argument could be used to exclude transgender people.