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What can we do, as citizens to promote tolerance in our daily lives ?
You're in a meeting. Someone tells a joke ... it's about a jew, a black guy, that pushy feminist, that gay guy... What do you do ?
You're waiting in line and you see someone ethnic/different being badly treated by a bank teller/government worker/cashier.
You're at a party where Dave, your friend's husband is gay-bashing again.
At school, you hear a kid use a racial epithet when yelling at another kid.
What kind of attitude do you adopt ?
If you do say something... what do you say ?
How can and does your behavior affect others ?
If you have stood up for the underdog and for tolerance, how did it affect your relationship with friends, clients, business partners or significant others ?
Tolerance ... definition :
"The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others."
Closing Statement from Caroline Phillips
Thank you all for your wonderful contributions to this conversation about Tolerance with a capital "T".
I've learned quite a bit from you and I think it's a wonderful testimony to the magic of TED that so many nationalities participated in this conversation. I feel a lot like Mary Saville : I too tend to get too emotional and engaged about intolerant things I'm hearing so I can produce the opposite effect and be too agressive and intolerant. I'll aspire to be more like Robert Jaffe when adressing intolerant people, to react swiftly but not humiliate.
Susan B. writes "Standing up for the underdog, does not make life happy for you. You are looked at as not being a team player, going against the norm and going against the grain."
My concluding thoughts : Unfortunately I don't live in a "TED world", so standing up for the underdog will often be a perilous endavour, but I'm willing to take the chance.
Hugs to all.
Jim Moonan 30+
So, I think a good working model of what we mean by "tolerance" would be the relationship that must develop in a good marriage.
Thoughts?
Debra Smith 100+
Jim Moonan 30+
debra pattison
And it can be shared by the simple action of me paying attention to these feelings and needs as they occur around me which are sometimes disguised in judgments and restrictions. It creates options for me to see beyond domination and subordination parameters and the imposed polarities of competing 'authorities'.
As a strategy, it keeps me engaged with my heart as well as my head.
Debra Smith 100+
I think that in venues like TED we have a golden opportunity to ask the politically incorrect question kiindly and clearly and stop seeing 'the other' as some sort of ticking time bomb. If someone with a view far different than mine starts a thread- I'm in! I want to know what they see that I don't see. I want to understand them better not with platitudes but by respectfully posing questions to a person who may be half way around the world, a person I might never meet but who holds answers that I might never get first hand.
It changes me. It changes us. I have made friends with a young Muslim man with a heart of gold and with a woman who spent her life in the American army. They were glad to have someone ask straight up rather than ignore them or pat them on the head and say 'there there!" I feel enlightened, more human and more optimistic about the world- all because they asked and I asked and we listened. It was not that scary either even if some of the observers were having figurative heart attacks!
Jim Moonan 30+
I would love to be a part of a team of educators who developed "Educational Theatre" to teach tolerance, respect, compassion, empathy.
Comment deleted
Jim Moonan 30+
It would be great to know of others who are working in similar ways with children to teach such things as tolerance, respect, empathy, compassion, etc. in a dramatic, active way, with real life scenarios and good adult facilitation
Debra Smith 100+
Jim Moonan 30+
It boils down to a single word: Words!
What you say about the ability of words to sink a person’s desire to live fully is true. There are many cases of it happening in cyberspace; one recent case of cyber bullying led to just such an end for a college student in New Jersey.
I also think a person’s ability to say they’re sorry is a reflection of their capacity to be emotionally competent, empathetic, and compassionate.
I dug up some quotes on the power of words:
“A blow with a word strikes deeper than a blow with a sword.”
-Robert Burton The Anatomy of Melancholy
“A word is dead
When it is said,
Some say.
I say it just
Begins to live
That day.”
-Emily Dickinson
“If the word has the potency to revive and make us free, it has also the power to bind, imprison and destroy.”
~-Ralph Ellison
“Every word was once a poem.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
To tie this into the focus of this conversation, so much of what is intolerance is manifested in how we speak to each other. In my house, respect is a non-negotiable thing!
Jim Moonan 30+
Paul van Zoggel
I'm really wondering how to to this both, as I can imagine instilling compassion even with small kids, as Jamie does great on daily basis, though to keep the passion of a 3-4 year old alive in numbing school methods is a hard thing to figure out.
Mary Saville
Christina Minamizawa
You can be intolerant all you like but at the end of the day you end up getting ignored or shouted at !
In Thailand if you lose you cool and get angry with someone like staff, they assume that 'If you cannot manage yourself, how could you manage me'? and any respect that you did have has now flown out the window.
Go travelling to a foreign country where you don't speak their language, that is a good tolerance building exercise.
Robert Jaffe
Martha Izaguirre
Pablo Rosenblueth
Susan B.
Derek Byrne
On a personal level I have made the effort to refrain from any negative references to race, gender, sexuality, and handicaps. The most recent word I am making the effort to refrain from is "retarded." It is one that most people do not even consider to be all that intolerant though it can be incredibly hurtful.
I think the problem is that we tend to waive our finger at intolerance. We are trying to prevent intolerance when really it could be more effective teaching tolerance. From such a young age we are taught not to discriminate before we may even comprehend that there is something to discriminate against. Maybe if we understood from an early age that we all have different ethnic origins, different religion, sexuality, etc. we could teach our youth that being different is "normal" as opposed to shunning what is not perceived as "normal."
Sablcious Faux
- We can ensure our children go to secular educational insitutions that have a 'no tolerance' stance on bullying / predjudice
- We can judge people on merit and personailty not on their look / denomination / personal preferences et cetera
- We can shun and disassociate ourselves with those who espouse insular attitudes; casting them out as the pariahs they're rightfully should be
- We can educate others on multiculturalism and encourage them to travel and experience how other people live / commune
- We can reject intolerance and endeavor to quash anything that promotes it, while at the same time ensuring we do not let it use our own accepting nature against us to promote their attitude of hate
- We can purvey the idea that inacceptance is 'not cool' to our youth so that in the vital formative years they gain the foundation for tolerance.
Muhammad Afif Idris
Christophe Cop 500+
I can tolerate a lot of things that are sufficiently worth tolerating, and I probably have zero care about a lot of other things that might appear to others as tolerance.
That said, there are a lot of things that cannot be tolerated at all.
Violence, corruption, theft, deceit, harm, inciting others to do intolerable things,...
That said:
One needs to have a certain tolerance of behavior of others. Especially those types that don't harm others (with intent).
So race, certain types of sexual preference, many beliefs and cultural behavior fall under this category.
To promote tolerance can be done by
- education (enlightenment and open-mindedness tend to have a positive effect on what one tolerates)
- living by example
- joining tolerance promoting organisations (like charter for compassion) and supporting them
- social responsibility
- changing incentives, punishments through law
- social punishment and exclusion of intolerable individuals (doesn't work for intolerant comunities)
Though I would tolerate a racist joke once in a while (especially if the person is not a racist), I would not tolerate racism.
On the other hand, I don't tolerate some cultural practices like woman circumcision, exorcism, stoning, death penalty, war-economies,...
I would even go so far as to defend NOT being tolerant towards such things... as they are harmful.
Talip OZDEMIR
So, there's no need to hurt people(no matter if they are close people or stranger). I do this.
If you don't want to keep silence? Use the brain which your creator putted it on the top point of your body,
Did you see any other Turkish people around who talk in my style of thought? So, make some creative steps and people start following your behaviour. Like the way I do now...
And never forget my motto: `Your tolerance to other people's worths, draws down your country's borders.`
Thanks;
Talip Ozdemir
John Toews
First, do I notice anyone within earshot that s on the receiving end of the joke/slur, etc. If so, in solidarity with them, a firm statement of disapproval seems necessary - but with a minimum of self-righteousness 8^). Now, there is an obvious problem here - I can spot the South Asian more easily than the Jew, admittedly.
I guess I can paraphrase a Canadian politician (W. M. King) and say' Chastisement if necessary, but not necessarily chastisement.' While Chastisement is great for venting one's own spleen, it is more likely to entrench rather than modify behavior - especially in public.
So, Plan B is to try to alter the behavior of the 'perp'. What I would like to do is to leave them with something to think about without having embarrassed them. Eg, sometimes I can (truthfully) say, "I was lucky in that my first knowing contact with a gay was a boss I had back at UBC. He was a great guy, lots of fun and we got a hell of a lot of work done - the best boss I've ever had. His sexual orientation, while well known, was of no concern to me since I had no interest in having sex with him. With that introduction, I've had no issue with gays."
With racist issues, again if one can appeal to one's own positive experiences with the race in question. And, the more we get out here and interact with others, the more we will have to draw on!
Kimberly Kradel
Debra Smith 100+
Bran Corvus
So for me tolerance=hypocrisy
Sorry for my english
Vaibhav Kodikal
Comment deleted
Debra Smith 100+
What I perceive you to be saying is that if we engage life with every sense and engage it personally at a truly vibrant level - we have less time for controversies, criticism and unpleasant reflections on others. A full life leaves little room for the petty distractions that arise out of small differences.
Hassan Syed
Most of the people make these kinds of comments without understanding that they are doing something wrong. If we corrected them with sincerity and without being angry, they listen 99% of the time. There is always a 1% that you can decide to stay away.
Thadeus Frei
Power is the capacity to do. One who acts out of habit, desire or ambition has no power but is being dictated to by his own mind.
Give perspective:
Objectivity begins with putting oneself into perspective. In one’s family one may have some importance, but in one’s neighborhood one has less, in one’s community still less, in one’s state still less, in one’s nation still less, in the whole world still less, and so on. Ultimately one is just a perspective. Grasping this is what the wise call humility.
Lastly show them your compassion and understanding of their situation. Teach by example.
Jim Moonan 30+
How I react to a incident where someone - especially someone who is not yet an adult - has demonstrated a lack of respect or understanding is crucial to how I help to make the world a more respectful place to live and grow.
How do I react? With honesty, concern, compassion and a willingness to spend the time to choose my words carefully so that I give that person every chance to change their paradigm.
But I try to react the same way regardless of whether it is a child, an adolescent, a teen or an adult.
Caroline Phillips 500+
Andrea Grazzini Walstrom 30+
While I think education and family are important factors for pro-social development, I think society itself is perhaps even more so.
There is a contagion factor involved in many of our social behaviors, be they compassionate or not-so-much. (A recent piece I wrote on these themes: http://dynamicshift.org/archives/from-bipartisan-blame-to-civilized-change.)
Though I agree it can, yes, be difficult to break out of familial and academic molds, it can be equally as hard for families and schools to break out of social/environmental molds and demands. It is very important, in my mind, to remember the macro culture within which our micro views are nurtured -- for good or bad.
So Qs I think ought to be considered are: does the culture model and reward relational integrity or does it favor or harbor a sense of "Us v. Them" or an "I vs. We" attitude or insecurity that foments competitive ill-will?
Indeed, the reflections elicited by your question are a wonderful example of how a much wider community can impact very personal thinking -- in this case: through compassion-engaging and co-constructive conversation.
Andrea
John Toews
This is why I, as an outsider, am dismayed at the extreme polarization I see in US politics - I, rightly or wrongly, often get the sense of a visceral hatred of the other side. One can argue that it is just rhetoric, but it has been repeatedly observed in this discussion - model what you wish to see in your society.
And yes, I am also concerned by the polarization I see here at home in our politics, and the degree of personal, negative advertising in our recent elections.
Andrea Grazzini Walstrom 30+
A focus of my work has me looking at issues of political polarization. I agree with you it is extreme and dismaying, particularly in the US. As you point out, hate communications go beyond rhetoric to impulsive reactivity. Increasingly so, it seems.
Nonetheless, cultural differences around rhetoric are notable. From discussions I have with people from developing democracies, it seems to me cultural polarization in Western societies has much to do with what might be called a "high-tell" attitude, perhaps promoted even by freedom of speech liberties.
Where personal freedoms are less evident, so are dissenting voices. And thus, is seems, less “need” for bully-rhetoric. The threat is either implied by forces of power or discourse is absent due to lack of venues (like democratic processes or public media).
In any case, it seems the US, at least, has taken the concept of voice beyond using ones rhetoric for civil progress to using rhetoric to satiate individual desires or impulses--whether to deflect blame, achieve personal gain, garner public attention or just to vent blindly. The concept of any PR is good PR seems to prevail for many. More troubling, beneath this there seems to be a loss of personal responsibility for what one does or says.
I think the political cure could be a cultural uprising against rage-rhetoric. ie: citizens collectively calling out leaders who model polarizing tactics. Frustration may be what it takes for people to demand co-productive leadership.
In my mind, citizens are a critical part of this Us/We attitude . And must actively change society by intentionally naming and, as you say, modeling civil discourse, too.
I encountered a similar challenge in another TED Conversation. Though politics wasn't the main theme, interesting culture change emerged when discourse devolved. The fix took some doing, but tthe lessons were useful: http://www.ted.com/conversations/2413/part_ii_when_how_and_why_hav.html
Andrea
Robert Jaffe
Andrea Grazzini Walstrom 30+
I agree with you that those whose interests (or impulses) are served via polarization are unlikely to willingly change their ways.
However, I'm not sure these times are any less brutal than others we've come through. People involved in the Civil Rights movement speak to quite bloody political battles. I suggest there are lessons we can learn from the movements that resulted in societal sea changes then. Many of these led to distributive justice and legislative cures for rhetoric-inspired discrimination.
The answer to conspiratorial thinking and (McCarthyism is an example from those times) political brutishness is something like large scale light-shiing. The balance can only be achieved with equally passionate counter messengers. In the case of the Civil Rights movement, these were blacks, women and other marginalized groups organized around parallel and interconnected causes.
In a sense, the solution is a "numbers" games. To outlast the considerable energies the defense of money and power can harness, compounded counter-energies must be catalyzed with many (if not more) players involved persistently calling out intolerance and inequities.
To be clear, though the Civil Rights movement provides a model, a modern tolerance movement can't seek only policy fixes. With some exceptions, we have much in place already. Clearly, (and you get to this in another comment) threat of exposure, rules or regulations aren't enough.
Todays solutions, then. must answer the core of your comment: How can civility pay off for those driven by power and money? One possible answer: when it is provocative enough to capture media and culture attention. Which requires taking action via all venues possible. The point is to redirect polarizing rhetoric with many more and different, examples of the opposite that speak to the self-interests of all. Polarizers will always exist, but they do tend to lose steam when "filibustered" by collective rhetoric.
Andrea
Taylor Barnett
If someone is being rude or just a prick about someone race/religion etc then I will say it to their face they are being ridiculous. How else can you get it through to their heads? A good form of education is embarrassment. If a little kid is spanked in public for doing something wrong they will be upset and most likely never do it again. So, I use this tactic on adults as well. If they need to be put in their place I say so. I live my life thinking what it would be like to be in the other's shoes and that really opens up your mind to think how could I judge an entire race/religion and so on off of this ONE person? It's immature and can very easily be stopped if more people would be willing to speak out against these disgusting jokes.
John Toews
SO, we may have to agree to disagree on this one. I can handle that.
I will agree that the approach may change peoples behavior in my presence - but I aspire to slyly change their behavior in my absence. Alas, by definition, I will never know if I succeed, but I wouldn't make claims of great success. I figure the trick is to leave them with something to think positively about - easier said than done.
Robert Jaffe