cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6541859

Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

    • JungleJim@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      73·
      1 year ago

      Yeah. If you’re in society, advocating for intolerance of others, you’re breaking the social contract, so now I can stop tolerating you and tell you that you don’t belong in society. If you say you don’t accept the social contract you inherently don’t accept society. It would be better for you in the wilderness. Wild beasts don’t have to tolerate each other. You can live how you like and hate who you want.

      • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.worldEnglish
        213·
        1 year ago

        I never signed a social contract. Your argument is invalid.

        Unless, can you produce this social contract that I signed?

        Can you share with me what the consequences are of this social contract that I signed?

        What is the wording of this social contract? Can I find it online?

        Do I need a notary public to sign this social contract if I find it something that’s worth my while?

        Do you think contracts are things that people enter into without agreeing to them first?

        Who is this contract with? Who authored this contract?

        Who keeps this contract on file?

        Most importantly…

        Who wrote this contract?

        • JungleJim@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          81·
          1 year ago

          Wow you’re obtuse. Have you never had an abstract thought in your life? You can’t see this social contract is a concept? It’s a concept that explains that If we all stop tolerating each other we’d tear each other apart, destroy all the buildings and belongings and everything, and then you WOULD live in the wilderness if you lived at all.

          If you refuse to be tolerant of your neighbors, or allow others to be intolerant of them, you are saying you’re fine with a little bit of apocalypse happening. All those little bits add up and eventually destroying the social contract, destroying society, because it’s the same exact thing. Society IS the social contract. It’s not just buildings and roads and lights and pipes and farms. It’s the agreement that we want those things, and that since we don’t want ours destroyed we won’t destroy anyone who doesn’t destroy. If you’re saying that doesn’t apply to you, you’re saying you have a right to destroy as you see fit. That’s an amazingly brutal and egotistical position. Are you sure you’ve thought this out? That’s a heck of a thing to make part of your personality.

        • dnick@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          It’s the same contract you ‘sign’ with your friends or co-workers. People, especially in this thread, break it out as some solid ‘thing’, but it’s like any other ethereal concept that gets referred to by a concrete word. English is hard and not every word brings along every element in every instance. You could say that an ‘agreement’ must have a written, or at minimum a spoken set of terms, but you could have an agreement not to physically fight someone just by a few movements of your body, and ‘break’ that agreement by broadcasting one set of signals and then taking a swing at them.

          • 𝕯𝖎𝖕𝖘𝖍𝖎𝖙@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            1 year ago

            So, who is signing what contract with Russia and Ukraine? How do people agree or disagree with that contract? What options do they have?

            Can we please call things what they are?