Paradox of tolerance
Paradox of tolerance
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.
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The social contract is a philosophical concept, Dipshit, one hundreds of years old. You can disagree with this concept, but unless you have something more than "I never signed a piece of paper lol," your disagreement can be dismissed as petty ignorance. Or maybe you're just trolling.
Thanks for linking me. You’re the first person to do so. Not trolling. This sounded like some BS someone made up. Then again, it’s philosophy, so it is bullshit someone made up.
Interesting idea though, because my points still stands. A “contract” is a really bad way of considering all of this. Without knowing personal values of the individual, and without stating what the stipulations of the contract are, the “social contract” can be literally anything the author wants it to be.
“Social contract” seems to be one person observing the status quo and encouraging everyone to maintain the status quo because it “was what we entered into as a society”. Example: “The police protect the people, because it says so right on the cars (‘protect and serve’), so we must respect the police, as they protect ‘us’ from ‘them’ (the ‘bad guys’). They’re ‘bad’ because they’re ‘evil’ and they know what they did”. So many issues with that: 1) police protect property, not people unless that’s people in positions of power, 2) the police (aside from the band) enforce the law, 3) what’s good and bad is a matter of personal opinion.
I am trying to understand how I could apply a “contract” to my life, one which I cannot read, one that I’m just told to obey, because there’s unmentioned consequences of disobeying said contract.
But the paradox of tolerance, is clear to me: you like tolerance? Good, your one ‘enemy’ so-to-speak would be people who fight against tolerance - the intolerant. Of course the question is then intolerant of what? Intolerant of pineapple on pizza - no harm done, except maybe to the sales of pineapple farmers. Intolerant of humans, as in, you want to genocide them - that’s a lot of harm to humanity itself and it should not be tolerated.
But where is the “contract” in any of this, when discussing how we deal with people who want to harm humanity by being intolerant of others? If we ask them, their social contract would be only 14 words long. That’s not a social contract I would ever agree to. And yet, any social contract I would write up would not be one they would agree to either. And yet, we both live in a society. Curious.
Please don’t mistake my reference to memes as trolling here, I am being sincere. If the idea of a social contract is just a metaphor, it has a lot of holes in it. I can easily get on board with ideas like the paradox of tolerance, the “golden rule” and the “platinum rule”, and short sayings like “your rights (to punch) end where my rights begin (my right to have an unpunched face)”. I can understand concepts like “law” and “policy”, “rules” - all things we agree to, with “law” being the closest to being a “social contract”; yet law can change, law isn’t morality, and law is actually written down (well, most of it anyway). “Law” looks most like a “social contract” in that we are automatically entered into agreeing to it by showing up in that jurisdiction (aka being born or otherwise being in a certain place).
Thank you for writing a thoughtful response! My understanding of the social contract is that it's an unwritten agreement that if you want to get the benefits of living in a society (being able to purchase food and shelter rather than having to live in the wild and make/get your own) you have to abide by its rules. Where the Paradox of Tolerance comes in is that being intolerant (in how you treat other people specifically) is disruptive to society, which breaks the social contract. There may or may not be actual laws broken when doing so, but you should expect to be shown the door (also links nicely with "freeze peach" arguments).
So this kind of comes down to the “is it ok to punch nazis?” question. It sounds like the social contract, being unwritten and thus open to interpretation says “No, nazis are part of society and society has laws and rules, such as not being allowed to punch people just because you disagree with them”.
Or, does it say “Yes, although nazis are a part of society, they are a part of society that doesn’t agree with the social contract that we should not harm others, and as such, we are morally obligated to turn their antisocial threats against them, even if it means that we are being antisocial to the antisocials”? Because to me that sounds like a paradox.. of tolerance.
My point has just been to say that this unwritten “social contract” is a dangerous idea to continue with, because it can be used in many ways. This thread began because someone mentioned that the paradox of tolerance is false, and that it’s a social contract. To me, that sounded like “no paradox here, if you punch nazis, you are a nazi, because it breaks the social contract”. Which at best sounds centrist, and at worst sounds like trying to create an environment where nazi ideas may be entertained.
Yeah, since the "social contract" is a concept, it will vary depending on what society or even part of society you're in. The Paradox of Tolerance specifically refers to societies that value tolerance of others - there's no paradox in a society that's just fine with being intolerant. When it comes to "is it okay to punch Nazis?", I'm of the belief that it's highly dependent on the situation. If you're meaning to just express displeasure in their ideology, the better way to do that is to collectively "show them the door," make sure they know that their ideas aren't welcome without resorting to violence. But actively oppose them and don't simply ignore them, because they will use any power given to them to suppress others. If the Nazis are violating your rights, then, yes, it's okay to punch them because they've taken a step over the line at that point.
“no paradox here, if you punch nazis, you are a nazi, because it breaks the social contract”
I'm pretty sure this is the opposite of what they meant because as I said, the Paradox of Tolerance only apples to tolerant societies, which the Nazis are demonstrably not a part of. And of course, breaking the social contract doesn't necessarily make you a Nazi. Could you break the social contract in a tolerant society by punching a Nazi? Yes, if you instigated violence without sufficient reason.
This makes sense. I guess I get mixed up because I want to live in a tolerant society, which I understand as being a society which tolerates others. I understand the paradox as “sure, we all want others to be tolerated, we want to live in a tolerant society, but this doesn’t mean pure tolerance, as in tolerance of intolerance”, or otherwise as an exception to the tolerance we should have in a tolerant society.
But I recognize that we live in a society that is intolerant of others. There’s the nazi extremists, but also conservatism as a whole being intolerant of anyone but the conservative white man. It boils down to me being intolerant of most people, as most people are intolerant of someone else. Of course in my example, my intolerance is my additudes towards that person and not say trying to make live actually miserable (via harming the person, the person’s employment or the person’s rights). I try to attack ideas, and not people, and by “attack” I mean criticise and question.
I'm pretty sure this is the opposite of what they meant because as I said, the Paradox of Tolerance only apples to tolerant societies, which the Nazis are demonstrably not a part of. And of course, breaking the social contract doesn't necessarily make you a Nazi. Could you break the social contract in a tolerant society by punching a Nazi? Yes, if you instigated violence without sufficient reason.
It might be, but this is also where I get confused. A contract is an agreement between one or more parties. If I agreed to the tolerant society contract, but the nazis agreed to the 14 words contract, who’s right? Which contracts trumps the other? Who arbitrates this? The best I can understand is that “our” social contract is the paradox of tolerance, or simply put: “you’re cool unless you want to physically harm and murder others, in which case it breaks the social contract and now we get to punch you” - which sort of makes it sound like a bit of a mob protection order: “that’s a nice face you’ve got there. Shame if some violent rhetoric about hurting minorities were to come out of it”. The reason for “our” social contract is because “thier” social contract seeks to terminate the lives of non-white people.
Anyway, thanks for explaining. It clears things up a bit. I still don’t like the idea of the social contract, but I think we’re splitting hairs at this point, and most of my dislike has to do with how easy it is to pick apart the concept due to the “contract” wording.
Seems like your biggest hang up is the word ‘contract’, which you have assigned a lot of concrete properties to. Would it be easier to understand if they used the word agreement, and described it in softer terms like the general agreement everyone in the world has that punching someone in the face is not an acceptable for of greeting? I mean, no one has said that, and you haven’t personally gone up to everyone and stated this and shook hands on it, but it’s still something everyone agrees on.
The social ‘contract’ is like that, it just uses an unnecessarily official sounding term in it, but ultimately is just the understanding that some concessions have to be made to deal with other humans. The terms of the contract are really to vague to ‘sign’, and when people start referring to more specific terms things can go of the rails pretty quickly, but there is still an implicit agreement. It’s like living in an apartment where you didn’t sign the lease…sure you’re not legally bound by the terms in the same way that someone who did sign the lease is, but your still bound by them in some ways simply by living in the apartment. In the same way, continuing to live in society is the way the ‘contract’ gets signed.
Yeah ‘contract’ is a terrible word to use here, especially in 2023. Oh sure if we want to discuss hunter gatherers, I can relax my definition of ‘contract’ a little bit, but we aren’t discussing hunter gatherers. We are on the internet in 2023 and we have better words to describe things, like ‘law’ and ‘governance’.
So, taking your definition, a ‘social contract’ is what Russia does to Ukraine when they say “this land is my land”. The Ukraians ‘agree’ or disagree, but since Putin wants that land, the ‘social contract’ is less of a ‘contract’, or an ‘agreement’ and more of a ‘command’ with a threat of violence. It’s just very wierd to discuss wars and modern day politics with ‘social contracts’. It’s such a very basic way of thinking about the world. “That’s the great thing! Ukranians don’t need to sign anything! In solviet russia, social contract comes to you!”
So, can we all please stop using this phrase ‘social contract’ to give our big-brained selves a pat on the back and instead talk like real people in 2023? I’ll start: Is it ok to punch nazis?