Haha, I have free time for once so I finally got to check back here! Hmm, such an interesting topic.
I believe Amused Himself to Death is right in what his epiphany was: everyone is the same in that we are all humans, there is nothing that can superceed that, especially not mere words of our own invention. Tolerance is vital for any pursuit of reason, knowledge, faith, etc. “Classes” of people only exist in our minds.
Bruno is quite right about race. Did you know, that genetically amoungst humans, the darkest skinned africans are most closely related to the lightest skinned norwegians? That’s right, africans are closer to europeans (and vice versa) than either are to any other group of people. Moreover, genetic similarities do NOT corrolate with skin color, ethnicity, or “race”. Race does not exist, it is completely unbiologically founded and has no bearing on reality. It’s a simple human invention because people have a tendancy to catagorize themselves, and if they catagorize themselves they have to catagorize everyone else.
I suppose that is one of the roots of intolerance: catagorizations. I detest catagorizing people, or having myself catagorized. We can catagorize the professions we do, or the general crede (religion) we adhere to, but a person is beyond all those things and cannot be rightly catagorized. I see far too much potential in all people to become great things. Science, for instance, is not about advancing human knowledge so much as advancing human wisdom, and I think that is forgotten alot these days.
Well, I’m sorry I’m going to cause trouble with this, but I hate unfounded claims XD. Homosexuality is not evolutionary, nor biological beyond simple sex drive frustrations. In the greek days, it was not seen as something “normal”, actually. It was a reality, but it was not a social norm nor seen as something that a person should do, and was frowned upon. Greeks would send their young adolescent boys out with a (generally) slave chaperone to guard against them getting seduced by any older man. That is the common practice. The reason homosexuality was a reality for greeks was because men and women were generally held seperate from eachother until marriage (or even if married, during festivals at times). So, because males have an incredible sex drive sometimes they turned straight towards other males for release, but that’s about it. In fact, I know of not a single civilization that considered homosexuality a norm, and this is across all ages. In Jesus’ time, it was definately not seen as something socially normal, and was always a “shameful” act kept from public view (otherwise it was “bad form”), just like with the greeks in the BC’s.
So, a lack of self control and an insatiable longing for sex doth make a large portion of the homo and heterosexual constituancy. It actually highly annoys me that people are soooo obsessed with sex. It’s stupid and dulls the mind, like alcohol, and like alcohol will not cause troubles only if used in extreme moderation and the proper contexts (and like alcohol, it isn’t in and of itself a bad thing, just in how people use, misuse, or overuse it). It’s even more stupid that our society fights over it, or treats hetero’s and homo’s as if the were different kinds of people (our society is handling this issue so crappily it isn’t even funny). They aren’t. It’s an act and a choice, just like some choose to eat chocolate and others vanilla. At the same time, it is not something that is a necessary part of life, or something people should flagrantly pursue as they do in our society. It’s rather disgusting to me, and that’s for both homos and heteros as I feel it completely marginalizes what love is and tries to cast love as sexual desire. Love isn’t sexual desire, sorry, that’s lust, and the two are as different as oil and water.
I think that’s the real reason as to why homosexuality is stated as impermissible and equally as bad as premarital (hetero)sex in the old law of the bible (added to the pile of other such stuff that isn’t bad in the proper contexts which they didn’t have back then, like not eating pork which was wise back when they couldn’t cook pork hot enough to kill the muscular parasites that make pork so dangerous to eat). Both are seen as equal taboos, not homo preferentially as is the common myth our society throws around, and that begs the question as to the deeper connective reasons why. It’s always wise to look past surface appearances and seek deeper meanings: what are possible (if any) long term psychological/sociological implications of such things? Is there a different, deeper issue we should be adressing and discussing rather than a meaningless term like “homosexuality”?(/soapbox)
Anyways, people have different views and that’s important. So intolerance is even more stupid in view of that. However, it is an intellectual cop-out and mark of intellectual laziness to say “I’ll believe what I want to believe, and you believe what you want to believe”. Also, just because something is a reality, doesn’t mean it’s something to seek after. Just because death by disease is a reality, doesn’t mean we should seek to infect ourselves with ebola. Human intellects are here to allow us to aspire to greater truths and wisdom, and that cannot be gained marginalizing all ideas into “you believe what you wish, and I believe what I wish” deals; that’s just a way to avoid confrontations that force a person to actually use their head and think, and to avoid getting egos smashed and ideas shot out of the water by better ones so that a person can continue to inflate their own self indulgances.
So, I think alot of intolerance comes from a misunderstanding about all this, as well as from naivety, lies, twisted truths, and most of all, incomplete knowledge (just look back to that genetics thing inregards to race for an example). Moreover, there are of course two extremes in this issue. The horribly intolerant extreme, and the nihilistic “everyone believes what they want” extreme. Both are as ignorant as the other, and both just as self defeating and as serious a road block for intellectual growth and the advancement of our kind.
Therefore, let us escape intolerance by listening to and evaluating and exploring and seeking to understand all ideas in all fairness; and by understanding others have different beliefs and ideas, and celebrating these as a chance to further refine ourself with. People will choose what they choose to do, be that right or wrong, so it is tolerance and righteous to not beat the person, but instead adress the act! But let us also escape naivity by avoiding indifference, and instead seeking out truths, proper ways, and values, and by evaluating every idea with others, and by seeking out more and more knowledge with which to reinterpret and better interpret our ideas and world.
Also, it’s important to realize what tolerance is. Are we tolerant of murder? No, but why? Are there not things we should not be tolerant of in an absolute sense? Also, am I not talking about actions now? So then, doesn’t tolerance really mostly exist in the realm of ideas to guide the finding of beneficial and good actions, and as a weapon to stop judgmentalism against people themselves? For instance, when should people be tolerant of things like opression, genocide, prejudice, and descrimination, and when should they make a stand against such things with all their hearts?
I think we should think about these things, and try not to build one’s stance on the word “tolerance” itself, because if one does that, one can easily be manipulated by that word and anyone who knows how to throw it around. Same goes for any mere word or concept, as such can only create reactionism, and thus, opportunities for manipulation.