This is an old revision of the document!
Major trains of thought
Philosophy
Trainwrecks
Nature of Things
Fact of the Universe
Tolerance
Ship of Theseus
I'm 14 and this is deep
Words
Claim
Court
Redemption
Toleration is the absence of objection to behaviors, attitudes or similar thing where others unrightfully believe that they justify objection. This, I believe, is a reasonable definition when one puts the word “Tolerance” at the beginning of the sentence; however, I think that tolerance is much better categorized and contextualized from a more fundamentally philosophical perspective:
Decisions, acts, beliefs and so on and so forth are moral or immoral based on how they affect you and the people around you. Some beliefs would cause harm, others not so much. Now, in a perfect world we would all agree on what beliefs cause harm, at which point the creation of the words “tolerance” and “intolerance” would never be prompted. The word “intolerance” emerges only when disagreement over the effect of a belief or act exists. Commonly, the word “intolerance” is used to describe such things that unnecessarily, ie. immorally, hurt individuals or groups of individuals. Not all hurt is “bad”, but that which is bad is intolerant if the motivation for that hurt is based on prejudice. Theft isn't necessarily “intolerant” if it is motivated by personal gain only, but if it is motivated in part by prejudice then at least the motivation for the act is considered “intolerant”. From this, tolerance emerges as the word that simply means the opposite, being accepting of things that others are not accepting of.
A distinction needs to be made, again, that objecting to actually immoral things is not considered intolerant. If an act or belief is actually harmful - like, say, a murder - then calling this out is not based on prejudice but on moral principles. From this, calling out harmful sentiments - like, say, “all blacks are evil” - is not intolerant either. It is a rejection of intolerance. While, sure, calling this out may “hurt” the person who actually believes it, “hurting” them is not unnecessary or immoral.1) In fact, the intended effect is to stop that person from hurting more people by hurting them; ie. hurting them will have a positive impact in the grand scheme of things.2)