Avon Barksdale wrote:Right, which is why British values strive for tolerance rather than acceptance....
I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not.
Tolerance is a terrific thing but it only works if
everybody is tolerant and also if
nobody does anything that is intolerable. Both of which are utterly subjective conditions.
To digress slightly, there's currently an interesting discussion going on in the USA with regard to the constitutional right to freedom of speech.
The point being that the constitution was drafted at a time when it was accepted that everybody was, basically, using the same moral compass and now we have a world where people who have fundamentally different morals interact with us, should we be forced to tolerate them too?
It's kinda like the old "Tolerance means tolerating the intolerable" cliche.
It's all very well setting standards for what people should act like in a society but I'm not sure how, short of compulsory brain surgery or sedative use, we can expect to guarantee that
everybody abides by those standards.
And, again, if (by some miracle) we DO somehow create a society where everybody abides by the same values and has the same level of passion, tolerance and dislike of
everything then we WILL have wiped out huge chunks of diversity in the process.
[quote="Avon Barksdale"]Right, which is why British values strive for tolerance rather than acceptance....[/quote]
I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not. :ooer: :mrgreen:
Tolerance is a terrific thing but it only works if [i]everybody[/i] is tolerant and also if [i]nobody[/i] does anything that is intolerable. Both of which are utterly subjective conditions.
To digress slightly, there's currently an interesting discussion going on in the USA with regard to the constitutional right to freedom of speech.
The point being that the constitution was drafted at a time when it was accepted that everybody was, basically, using the same moral compass and now we have a world where people who have fundamentally different morals interact with us, should we be forced to tolerate them too?
It's kinda like the old "Tolerance means tolerating the intolerable" cliche.
It's all very well setting standards for what people should act like in a society but I'm not sure how, short of compulsory brain surgery or sedative use, we can expect to guarantee that [i]everybody[/i] abides by those standards.
And, again, if (by some miracle) we DO somehow create a society where everybody abides by the same values and has the same level of passion, tolerance and dislike of [i]everything[/i] then we WILL have wiped out huge chunks of diversity in the process.
