What's Changing? - Tolerance

Please see below selected recent tolerance-related change.

See also:

July 2024

Tolerance enables peaceful co-existence among diverse populations. However, viewing tolerance as an unconditional moral imperative can be problematic. To maintain a stable society, we must recognise that tolerance has limits and requires mutual respect and adherence to social contracts, argued David Gurteen.

December 2023

Scientific psychology has repeatedly highlighted the human aversion to not knowing. In 1949, the psychologist Else Frenkel-Brunswik introduced the concept of intolerance of ambiguity. This century, the psychologist Geert Hofstede popularised the idea of uncertainty avoidance. Since then, several theories have described how high uncertainty can be threatening, motivating people to defend against it.

April 2023

A Wall Street Journal-NORC poll found that just 58% of Americans believed that tolerance for others is very important, down from 80% in 2019. People in the US now prioritise money more than patriotism and religion. Experts cited the economy, COVID, and fractured politics as likely reasons why.

July 2022

Toleration, for late philosopher Bernard Williams, is a central ingredient in thinking through what coexistence under conditions of fundamental disagreement requires. Toleration involves putting up with something that you would rather not be the case. However, for radical critics such as Wendy Brown, toleration is what might be called a status quo value: those desiring wholesale social change are understandably suspicious of calls for restraint and don’t-rock-the-boat approaches to conflict

January 2022

A former religion and philosophy teacher argued that, to encourage respect and tolerance in the next generation of citizens, children should be taught that all people, including those who act in ways you object to, ought to be respected, and are the rightful recipients of equal moral, political and legal rights. She advocates tolerance as non-disapproval. Here the tolerant person is a non-judgmental person, disinclined to disapprove of ways of life that differ from their own, and even appreciating their value and worth.

December 2021

Famous Stoic Cato hated excess, according to The Daily Stoic. He hated finery. He hated luxury. He thought to indulge such things was weakness and stupidity. And so what did Cato think of his brother who was far less strict about these things? He loved him. The Stoic has strict standards and strong opinions on what’s right and what isn’t, but counterbalanced by an understanding and forgiving of those who have been, as Marcus Aurelius wrote, cut off from truth. Marcus’s rule was to be strict with yourself, tolerant with others.

October 2019

The Ship of Tolerance – a 60-foot long, hand-crafted wooden ship - is dedicated to educating and inspiring young people through the universal language of art. Its unique potency emerges via a curated workshop programme with primary schools, refugee groups and cultural organisations in which children paint silk panels to make sails for the ship based on their discussion of diversity and the agency ideas gain through art. First launched in Egypt in 2005, The Ship of Tolerance has subsequently been created in various locations around the world including Venice, Havana, Moscow, New York and Rome. The project was awarded the prestigious Cartier Prize for the Best Art Project of the Year in 2010.

September 2019

The Right to be Offended was an Institute of Arts and Ideas debate which argued that, while we expect our press and our comedians to be critical of, even offensive to, our leaders, to avoid giving offence, student campuses are introducing no-platforming and safe spaces. The panel debated whether we should therefore seek to eradicate offence to create a more tolerant and equal society, or whether offence is vital to freedom and a critical means of containing the powerful.

June 2019

In parts of the developed world, young people may be growing less tolerant . For example tolerance of LGBTQ individuals has decreased in the US - a jarring turn for a generation traditionally considered embracing and open. The number of Americans 18 to 34 who are comfortable interacting with LGBTQ people slipped from 53% in 2017 to 45% in 2018 – the only age group to show a decline, according to the annual Accelerating Acceptance report. And that is down from 63% in 2016.

September 2018

Too often we take for granted and neglect our libraries, parks, markets, schools, playgrounds, gardens and communal spaces, warned the RSA, but decades of research now show that these places can have an extraordinary effect on our personal and collective wellbeing. Why? Because wherever people cross paths and linger, wherever we gather informally, strike up a conversation and get to know one another, relationships blossom and communities emerge – and where communities are strong, people are safer and healthier, crime drops and commerce thrives, and peace, tolerance and stability take root.
Further reading:
- Does immigration strengthen or undermine tolerance? - The Economist

August 2018

For The School of Life, the sublime grants us a perspective within which our own concerns are mercifully irrelevant. Bits of our egoism and pride seem less impressive. We may be moved to be more tolerant, less wrapped up in our own concerns. We’re reminded of our fragility and transient occupation of the world – which can move us to focus on what’s genuinely important, while there is still time. The Sublime foregrounds a sense of equality, which we can otherwise find it hard to hold onto. In the face of vast things, the grades of human status lose meaning.

June-July 2018

Scepticism towards tolerance has a long history, argued Aeon, stretching back to the German author J W Goethe, who said ‘to tolerate is to insult’. It faced a sustained critique after the Second World War from philosophers and political theorists such as Karl Popper, Herbert Marcuse and many others who saw liberal tolerance as guilty of passively acquiescing to the rise of fascism in the first half of the 20th century.
Believing that the ideal of religious tolerance has crippling flaws, such as the fact that most dominant religions in most states today profess tolerance, but they also seem to feel especially threatened, Aeon also argued that it’s time to instead embrace a civic philosophy of reciprocity.

Pre-2018

The World Values Survey (WVS) examines the changing values of societies and the impact of these changes on social and political life. The WVS is composed of nationally representative surveys conducted in almost 100 countries that represent almost 90 percent of the world’s population.
Among the dozens of questions that World Values asks is one about tolerance for other races. World Values asked respondents in more than 80 countries to identify the kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose "people of a different race." The more frequently that people in a given country gave that response, the less racially tolerant the society is rated. Knoema mapped the latest findings:

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