What is tolerance?

Question

I hear Liberals and Conservatives all shouting about tolerance. Is tolerance the act of taking what anyone believes and immediatly accepting it, trying to NEVER, under any circumstances, hurt someone's feelings or self esteem? Or is tolerance simply not encroaching on the beliefs of others while holding true to your own?

Answer 1

It depends. Tolerance can mean, "Everyone has a right to believe what they want, and I will put up with it."

Or, tolerance can mean, "All viewpoints are equally valid." (This is the one that most people buy into these days, what with all the political correctness running around.)

Answer 2

Tolerance is excepting differences in others. If you have too little tolerance, you are what is called "thin skinned". These are the types of people who get offended at the drop of a hat. Then there are people who are too tolerant. These people don't care about anything. They tend to be the kind of parents who let their kids run around the restaurant.

Of course, that's still a bit too simplistic. There is also semantic tolerance. This type of person keeps going on about "loving the person while hating the sin" while going on and on about how what you're doing is so awful and how you should change. This is the type of person who's been told how evil it is to judge anybody, so they use this loophole to get around it.

Besides this, there is the issue about what you are tolerant or intolerant about. There are differences in others that you should be intolerant towards. For example, I'm fairly intolerant towards pedophiles. I can support this intolerance with reason. Because of humanistic standards, I don't think it right for a person to take advantage of another who hasn't reached the age of consent. We must protect our young until they can protect themselves. That just makes sense.

However, there are other types of intolerance that don't make sense such as racism, bigotry, chauvinism and so on. It's fine to judge other people, but do so on characteristics that matter.

Answer 3

Tolerance is part of not being harmful. As you said, "..trying to never hurt someone's feelings or self esteem." Tolerance is an essential part of what is known as right speech.

Answer 4

sometimes the definition of tolerance is so liberal that it includes the defintion of allowing behaviors that would hurt others....in that case, it is not tolerance, but chaos and a lack of control

if i tolerate murder, how am i helping? it is bettter to be intolerant to this behavior, because the intolerance is more protective and constructive and the tolerance would be.

Answer 5

Tolerance is simply accepting that not everyone is going to think or act as you do - and that it's perfectly OK.

I can accept that people have other religions/beliefs. I don't have to believe in their religion to accept and respect the fact that they believe in it. That's tolerance.

An intolerant person expects everyone to conform to what they believe.

Answer 6

I can tolerate someone's beliefs without taking them as my own. I can even disagree and still be tolerant. To me intolerance is condemning others, dismissing them, devaluing them.

Answer 7

It's the second one and a little bit of the first one. It's hard to explain but it dosen't mean we can't hurt anyone's feelings it has more to do with not being able to force our beliefs on them.

Answer 8

Tolerance is embracing the fact that we are all different and it is good that we are.

Answer 9

The second sir. Mutual respect would also factor in.

Answer 10

Neither.

Tolerance is ALLOWING a behavior, belief, or custom to exist.