Tolerance and Individualism

Today I’m going to write about something that as far as I know no one else has written about. As a result, my ideas aren’t yet fully formed. That’s ok. Every great idea was once a germ in a filthy pool. Discussed over time germs can become groundbreaking. For example, many of the ideas that led to American democracy were controversial in their time. If we went back and read those ideas we might chuckle at their lack of form, but what is important is they got the ball running.

That’s more than a necessary prologue. I want to talk about how intolerance destroys individualism, how intolerance shapes society and how we as a society should act. 

First intolerance destroys individualism because it forces people into  opinions. We have hated each other for opinions for all of written history. History shows it hasn’t always been a good thing. Socrates and Jesus Christ were both executed for their opinions. Their executions underly a truth about humanity we often don’t like to acknowledge. For the most part people don’t have control of their own views and society actively tries to shape those views.

Let’s start first with the conception of belief. We understand that beliefs shape who we are, but we don’t examine where they came from. Beliefs can be formed several ways. Charismatic leaders like Jesus Christ or Gandhi can inspire others driven toward the truth. One might read their writings and view them situationally over and over again to establish a moral system. One might further read philosophers, economists etc to shape the world where ethics against and find a balance between the ethical and realistic. A person like this more than likely (there is no certainty in this world for anyone but zealots) end up a good person provided they are honest with themselves and think of the effect of their believes on others. This person will take a lifetime developing their beliefs and will oscillate between different systems. They may never feel settled in their beliefs. They might even eschew belief altogether for community activism. They may also be extremely unpopular.

Most people aren’t like this. Their views are shaped by their immediate friends and desire to fit in. All humans want to fit in. It’s what keeps society moving. But it becomes a problem when social identity overrides individual identity. I’ll give an example, (I apologize to Republicans. This is just an example) the Republican party has a strong identity. People who claim to be Republicans ascribe certain values to themselves, hard-working, responsible etc. They have to be a part of this party no matter what.

Fiscally, they believe in supply-side economics. They are extremely unforgiving to the opposite side, often calling them communist (an extremely hurtful name in America). Religiously, they are pro-choice. I only briefly talk about the different parts of the Republican party because the parts are just examples. What I’m really talking about is in order to be a Republican (or Democrat for that matter) one is forced into a myriad of very strong view points.

For example, I’m a Roman Catholic. It’s hard to be a Catholic Republican because the religion emphasizes truth through experience and the necessary of sacrificing for one’s community. It’s understood that if one is given more one should give back more. Catholics make up 25 percent of the senate. Of that 25 percent more than 60 percent of Catholics in the senate are democrats. Compared to other Christian sects this is a very high number. But what if Catholics agree with the Republican Party on Pro-life? The Catholic can’t prioritize one issue or the other because the party demands complete allegiance. The cost is exile.

So here’s my point (I know we’ve been dancing around) large parties that amalgamate several issues are not individualistic. They are in fact, the opposite. We can reduce this further. Within Catholicism there are further divisions that the religion imposes on its parishioners. In the end none of us is truly an individual.

I’m sure I’ve lost some people already, but a lack of individualism is not necessarily a bad thing. A society of strictly individualists would be anarchy. The rich would exploit the poor. Essentially it would be feudalism. It might seem unfair to push individuals into certain views, but society has a reason for safe guarding what it believes to be truth. If a denomination splintered into so many pieces it would eventually have no meaning. In democratic societies a certain amount of compromise is necessary to achieve enough votes to foster change. Finally, ostracism is a good tool for preventing nihilism.

However, from the vantage point of a chaos philosopher intolerance can be extremely damaging to society because it prevents new ideas from gaining ground. The world is constantly changing and human beings never find a perfect solution. The best solutions are a result of trial and error, good testing and strong communication. Intolerance prevents all these things because it fears losing control and avoids looking at the world through different paradigms. Established parties can use power via ostracism to push people to their side and ignore larger problems with in society. It’s hard for us to believe, but being offended doesn’t make us just. We are offended because we desire power and seek to ostracize others, so we can obtain it. Ultimately, we need to compromise and save ostracism for extremes. We need to learn to let everyone state their points of view and not be offended.

Birth of a rebellion

I was sitting in the library reading several Harper pieces, one about the multiverse, another about an old mind’s journey into death juxtaposed with the collapse of American politics and another on the collapse of Britain. Each piece traversed my mind bringing up issues that exist, but aren’t yet formed. At the same time, I’ve been working on my own piece about urban renewal within a new mental framework. I’ve submitted my article several times, but editors have a lot of hangups. As such, I thought it would be helpful to systemize millenial thinking. Anyone else who has something to add is encouraged to comment.

Social Darwinism

Social Darwinism as understood in America makes no sense. The basic premise is that people who should survive will survive and is suppose to reflect how nature works. Only it doesn’t represent how nature works at all. It’s just anarchy.

In nature prey animals like elephants herd together. They organize like a union does to ensure survival. If they didn’t they wouldn’t survive. Lions or other predators would eat them until they became extinct and then when there was no food left the lions would cannibalize one another until their numbers shrunk. Amazingly, this is exactly how economics work in America. Businesses become more and more monopolistic until they reach the point where they no longer benefit the consumer.

The clear lesson here is that laizzes faire economics is not what Adam Smith calls natural liberty because it cuts off one group’s method of survival, so another group can dominate.

On Government

Which brings us to our next dilemma. The older generation hates government. I can’t understand this idea at all. Perhaps it’s a throwback to their hippie days when they simply said, I don’t like how this works, so I’m going to quit it entirely. Anti-establisment rhetoric doesn’t help anyone. Perhaps, we should talk about the responsibility’s of government, but it doesn’t make any sense to say a country could exist without government. In thousands of years of human history no country has ever succeeded without government. That’s overwhelming evidence that it is necessary.

It’s very simple why we need government: to protect the populous against accumulation and abuse of power. People naturally need to move forward, but in a country without a legislature there is no guaranteed way for a country to move forward without the consolidation of power (this is also true of legislature’s who refuse to work together). It’s true that a country can move forward behind a moralist like Gandhi or MlK, but long term those situations won’t work unless the people have strong moral character. In a country without strong moral character, consolidation of power generally results in a firm simple ideology (to reach a broader audience.) Idealism can be the greatest sin man has. As the bible says, “the path to hell is paved with good intentions”

P.S. I won’t delve into a country with long lasting moral character because it has never existed. If a country did have strong moral character it wouldn’t need idealism however because the people would always give each other the benefit of the doubt and work hard. In that country idealism wouldn’t matter because the people would always find the right solution. I guess you could say moral character is more important than any ideology.

Idealism and Pragmatism

One of my biggest concerns with the older generation is their obsession with idealism. They believe a good idea can solve all the world’s problems regardless of methodology. The Harper’s story of the dying man bemoan’s his generation’s obsession with idealism. The writer says he never realized how a lack of ethics could damage the country so badly.

His explanation is simple. If you believe you are right and all you need to do is bring people to your side than what’s the harm of manipulating your audience? Why not say wolves are waiting to tear us apart? Why not say money will trickle down? The problem is once one begins to live in a world of ideas one loses any attachment to reality. And even worse, the lack of remorse in manipulating people allows politicians to postulate overly simple ideas. The Bible is actually a good place to understand why the older generation has failed. Essentially, there are two ideas that encapsulate all of the bible: Man is fallen and love thy neighbor. With these two ideas one can build great societies.

Firstly, man must understand he is fallen and ultimately falls short of perfect understanding. By doing so man humbles himself to others and God, but also prepares an ideology that is adaptive to failings. No man with self doubt would postulate such simple economic theories. They would understand economics are four dimensional and change happens. They would spend more time reviewing and less time proseltyzing. Secondly, man needs to understand they must love thy neighbor. This should be the philosopher’s maxim. Without loving everyone one can’t help anyone. Loving one’s neighbor forces one to develop more complex philosophic systems and forces one to be just rather than power hungry.

Human being’s naturally don’t like dissonance. They don’t like being confused, so they make generalizations. They do this because they are flawed. Just because it’s natural doesn’t mean it’s ok. If they were to put themselves in one another’s shoes they might be overwhelmed, but Augustine tells us that angst is good. He says being lost is the way to God. In the case of economics if one lived a day in the inner city they would see the problem’s there aren’t laziness. Loving everyone forces one to except a lot of different believes. It pressures one to come up with middle of the road solutions. In our society we belief compromising is a sign of weakness. This is because we worship power. In a just country, we wouldn’t think of compromise as submission. We would see it as the end result of a long hard discussion where our realization gives us greater answers than we could have found on our own.

Millenial Future

I have posited an unorganized world that can only been held together via community love and hard work. I have proven (very easily) that social darwinism is a mistake and results in a consolidation of power. I have established government as a necessary check on power and finally I have proposed that when electing candidates it is important that our generation not get caught up in the simplicity of hate. Instead, we must love all ideas and develop our own ideas accordingly. Necessarily our ideas will surpass our parents in terms of complexity, but that’s ok as long as we stay connected with one another and patiently explain rather than bark. When someone asks us why we do something a certain way we must explain it and don’t become short tempered. Finally, I think it’s important to add it is natural to be mad at our parent’s generation for their religious and economic failures, but anger is not a helpful emotion. One one hand we must be stern when saying the world must move forward. We have to introduce new ideas, but we must do so with love in our hearts.