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I keep being reminded of something my Mum used to tell me as a child whenever I misbehaved.
"What would happen if everybody did that?"
It strikes me as being one of the wisest things I've ever heard and without thinking about it, I've applied it to much of my later life. I suppose it's a paraphrase of
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."
Or something, but I think it applies to this idea of tolerance/intolerance. What would happen if everyone allowed everything to happen? It all depends on whether you think people are inherently good, or inherently evil. If you belong to the former camp, then more toleration would lead to less stress and aggravation which in turn would lead to a peacefull and gentle paradise of people being pleasant to one another. If you belong to the latter camp, then there will always be those who take advantage of your attitudes and use the freedoms you give them against you.
I lie somewhere between the two extremes, but lean heavily toward the former. How does that get applied in the question of what to tolerate and what not to tolerate? I'm happy to tolerate beliefs, I might argue against them, I might think they are nuts, but it will never stop be from enjoying the company of someone who holds them.
I would not be able to tolerate actions associated with those beliefs if they involved the deliberate harming of someone else. I act this way because I would hope someone else would find it difficult to tolerate a third person who deliberately wanted to harm me. I can only expect others to act ethically and responsibly if I attempt to do so myself.
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