What About You?

I always get a little chuckle out of those that proclaim themselves to be enlightened and insist on others being more tolerant. What makes me chuckle is the fact that these people want you to be more tolerant as long as you agree with "their" views. If you disagree, they brand you as a bigoted Neanderthal or dismiss you as not intellectually enlightened. In reality they are neither tolerant nor enlightened.

Why you may ask? Because they do not respect your right to have your own opinion and fail to be tolerant to your views, especially if those views conflict with theirs. Try taking a counter point on a topic that they have a strong opinion on (or at least they want you to think that they have a strong opinion/belief) and see what happens. Usually they dismiss you and either attack you personally or if you decide to post on a blog, they delete your comment's (even though it was not crude or disrespectful, only a different view point). Is that tolerant or enlightened? I think not.

This brings me to another thought. These same people like to think of themselves as philosophically superior. They like to muse about their inner thoughts and regurgitate another's philosophy that have formed these thoughts, instead of formulating their own philosophies through observations and real world events in their lives. They hail Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Nietzsche, Marx and a platitude of others as great thinkers and contributers of the ages and at times may inadvertently worship these people. We can not argue that these people did not make contributions to the societies that have come after their brief existence on this earth. We must realize though, that we all have the capacity to think and express ourselves; thus creating or own philosophies from the environmental and social variables that we have experienced. This can help shape our own world for the positive if we allow ourselves to think, believe and act.

This brings me back to my first paragraph. The true meaning of tolerance is forming a philosophical belief by listening to others point of view and either accepting or rejecting the arguments they may put forth. In this way, we can strengthen or modify our own philosophical beliefs. Which in reality translates into ones own moral and ethical code.

Are you really as tolerant as you profess?