Intolerance
"'Tolerance' is when you tolerate things that actually bother you." ― From “On Tolerance,” by Alex Tabarrok
~ From An Earlier Conversation ~
That is true. You need to remember that I was a Democrat for 35 years, and I still retain those core values: civil rights, woman's rights, helping the poor and needy. I understood and opposed bigotry and racism when I was only six.
My "growing up" really took off in the mid 1990's as I began to pay more attention to the world around me. It became painfully obvious that the Democratic Party was not the party I knew in the 60s. We used to sport bumper stickers that read "Hate Is Not A Family Value," but as exampled on Facebook, the modern Democrat Party, under the influence of liberalism, has become a bastion of intolerance and hate.
Now some people assume that because I criticize liberals, that I am an “Ultra Right-wing Conservative,” as I was once called. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, though I recognize that you need money to survive in our society, I don’t crave it. I never have. I still maintain my 1960s values too. What has changed is my awareness of just how much intolerance and hatred there is in the world. It’s such a part of our “normal” behavior that we aren’t even aware that we do it.
When talking about this condition, I frequently quote Orwell’s observations on hate and intolerance, which he detailed in a number of his writings. These were written in the 1930s and 40s, and though the world has changed, human psychology has not.
What’s interesting is the resistance I sometimes encounter when I show that Orwell had wrote in detail about the intolerant attitudes we experience today some 75 years ago. These people seem to feel that they know more about the subject then Orwell, who was an intellectual giant.
This delusion, this denial, of course, is part of the overall spectrum of psychological self-defense mechanisms that protect people from appreciating who they truly are. To varying degrees, we all do this. As Orwell wrote in his essay “Notes On Nationalism” though, we should strive to become aware of our intolerance, and then work at mitigating it.
The problem here can be illustrated in the light bulb joke: “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has got to want to change.”
GFS 12/28/2015
That is true. You need to remember that I was a Democrat for 35 years, and I still retain those core values: civil rights, woman's rights, helping the poor and needy. I understood and opposed bigotry and racism when I was only six.
My "growing up" really took off in the mid 1990's as I began to pay more attention to the world around me. It became painfully obvious that the Democratic Party was not the party I knew in the 60s. We used to sport bumper stickers that read "Hate Is Not A Family Value," but as exampled on Facebook, the modern Democrat Party, under the influence of liberalism, has become a bastion of intolerance and hate.
Now some people assume that because I criticize liberals, that I am an “Ultra Right-wing Conservative,” as I was once called. Nothing could be further from the truth. For example, though I recognize that you need money to survive in our society, I don’t crave it. I never have. I still maintain my 1960s values too. What has changed is my awareness of just how much intolerance and hatred there is in the world. It’s such a part of our “normal” behavior that we aren’t even aware that we do it.
When talking about this condition, I frequently quote Orwell’s observations on hate and intolerance, which he detailed in a number of his writings. These were written in the 1930s and 40s, and though the world has changed, human psychology has not.
What’s interesting is the resistance I sometimes encounter when I show that Orwell had wrote in detail about the intolerant attitudes we experience today some 75 years ago. These people seem to feel that they know more about the subject then Orwell, who was an intellectual giant.
This delusion, this denial, of course, is part of the overall spectrum of psychological self-defense mechanisms that protect people from appreciating who they truly are. To varying degrees, we all do this. As Orwell wrote in his essay “Notes On Nationalism” though, we should strive to become aware of our intolerance, and then work at mitigating it.
The problem here can be illustrated in the light bulb joke: “How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? Only one, but the light bulb has got to want to change.”
GFS 12/28/2015