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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33485 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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Everyone else has given pretty good explanations of this. I’ll just quote an old comment of mine:

And yet, consider that the 'tolerance of tolerance paradox' went from being an obscure philosophical musing to an almost globally enforced rule of the internet in less than a decade.

I hate that that's an actual, real, example, and that it's an even better example of progressive "meme magic" than you seem to have laid out.

Consider the initial, Popperian formulation of the Paradox of Tolerance:

Less well known [than other paradoxes] is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. ... But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. ...

This is a milquetoast, classically liberal statement; tolerance in this sense is to literally tolerate other people, no matter how contrary to good taste (or hateful, or fascist, or communist...) they are. It is to tolerate dissent.

This has been morphed to something like:

A tolerant society welcomes all #ATTRIBUTES. Intolerant individuals do not welcome certain #ATTRIBUTES, and thus spoil the society. Therefore intolerant individuals must not be tolerated.

It does not take any more than a cursory reading to appreciate that Popperian tolerance(1) and progressive tolerance(2) are essentially different words, and that the progressive version of the "paradox" in fact has no paradox in it, merely a word game where tolerance(2) is implicitly equated with tolerance(1).

(Consider:

A tolerant(2) society welcomes all #ATTRIBUTES. Intolerant(2) individuals do not welcome certain #ATTRIBUTES, and thus spoil the society. Therefore intolerant(2) individuals must not be tolerated(1).

If I did not make it clear.)

That the nonsensical lack-of-paradox "paradox" is now the mainstream interpretation is at once disheartening and also an excellent example of successful progressive "meme power" in the Dawkinsean sense of the word.

If you’re still confused, I’d add as an addendum that not all $ATTRIBUTES are reconcilable; as such, you’re really only putting a pretty name and trying to self-justify the privileging of certain things above others.

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