Controversial Opinion: The Paradox of Tolerance and its Issues!
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- Опубліковано 15 вер 2024
- Karl Popper’s famous paradox of tolerance, a tolerant society can’t be tolerant of the intolerant, that he proposed in “The open society and its enemies” is a philosophical proposal that has been used a lot in political argumentation and discussion regarding freedom & free speech, this video is my attempt to bring my views onto the matter of this rather controversial topic and some of the issues I see with it.
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Sources and further reading:
Popper, Karl (1947[1945]). The open society and its enemies Vol. 1 The spell of Plato.
Rawls, John (1971). A Theory of Justice
#Paradoxoftolerance #Freespeech #toleranceparadox #Paradox_of_tolerance #Karlpopper #Controversialoppinion
I hope you liked this video discussing Karl Popper’s Tolerance Paradox. Please, don't be afraid to comment or voice any questions as I love interacting with you my dear viewers and I will try to respond as quickly as possible to you. Also, please like, subscribe & push the bell icon as those actions do help this channel grow!
i would love for you to give me your thoughts on "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear" and Sayiid Qutb and Leo Strauss and the whole weird neo-Platonic "noble lie" and culture of fear and terror that for some reason or another deeply appeals to conservatives in both the West and East. seems related to me, but also incredibly relevant in this age of conspiracy theorists and con men.
@@beepboop204 Funny that you mentioned it, I was actually writing a rough draft for something like that (though it is very much in the beginning stage and it is more about Sayiid Qutb)
@@beepboop204 I might also do something more like that discussing the nobel lie too, though I have an idea of a very different spin on it, in connection to Arabic-Islamic history.
@@theculturedjinni it can be easy to overlook how much Greek philosophy pervaded Islam and not just Christianity. Averröes was my gateway into this world 😁
@@beepboop204 Yes, and Averröes was far from the only one, even classical theologians like maaturiidi also took a lot of influence from and discussed Greek philosophy.
Glad to see someone else who reached the same conclusion about tolerance. Tolerance shouldn’t be the main focus in politics; rather, it is the fruit of other aims.
👍Indeed and the fruits of tolerance, liberty, justice and other great things are almost always in connection to hard struggles for greater goals and a long history of previous people whom also struggled for these things.👍
Hutterites in Manitoba, Canada, Hasidic Jews in New York, and the Amish in Pennsylvania, are examples where conservative religious groups mostly just want to be left alone from us, and we are happy enough to leave them alone to themselves. tolerance doesnt entail acceptance or celebration, its just polite agreeing to disagree. as long as the outputs are the same, as long as everyone is respecting basic laws and basic human decency, you can find a lot of variation and as a Canadian this is deeply linked to multiculturalism
@@beepboop204 Yes co-existence does usually at least require some sort of basic standards, as long as those are met then it might not be such as problem that differences exist within them. Now there is only the issues of who defines those standards and what those standards are. Which are often the contentious issues.
@@theculturedjinni Hutterite Colonies sponsored Syrian Refugees, the refugee families were surprised (in a good way) that the Hutterites kept their language and dress despite all this time in Canada.
stuff like this makes me laugh because so many trolls will characterize multiculturalism as some sort of hippy-dippy, liberal, trust-fund kid madness, and while i guess the Hutterites might be sort of collectivists and kinda communist, they dont really fit the hippy-dippy caricature at all!
they are probably way more religious and conservative than most Canadians, but they are just as decent as any other decent Canadian, and remember their own refugee plight
ua-cam.com/video/vcdVrUPl2vA/v-deo.html
@@theculturedjinni Hutterite Colonies sponsored Syrian Refugees, the refugee families were surprised (in a good way) that the Hutterites kept their language and dress despite all this time in Canada.
stuff like this makes me laugh because so many trolls will characterize multiculturalism as some sort of hippy-dippy, liberal, trust-fund kid madness, and while i guess the Hutterites might be sort of collectivists and kinda communist, they dont really fit the hippy-dippy caricature at all!
they are probably way more religious and conservative than most Canadians, but they are just as decent as any other decent Canadian, and remember their own refugee plight
the video is called "Refugees in Canada: From Far and Wide: Common Ground"
Didn’t know Popper put those requirements for when to use force. A few questions:
1) why is the democratic process so important?
2) what about an autocratic state developing a policy without consultation and it later becomes popular? is this intolerance justified or unjustified between being passed into law and becoming popular?
3) why is intolerance through the democratic process justified? Doesn’t that fall into the tyranny of the majority?
because an open democratic process entails politely debating and if push comes to shove, agreeing to disagree. basic Habermas stuff. post-modernists are the problem because they think its impossible to have such debates, because people like racists will remain racist no matter how much scientific powerpoints you show them. i think the proper response is to leave the children at the kids table, not rail against the adults at the adult table.
Interesting and challenging questions 👍
1) why is the democratic process so important?
a, it was assumed due to this being an assumption and argument for the process itself made by Popper hence, I went from it too instead of arguing for something which Karl Popper did not support.
b, A lot of the tolerance argumentation usually is in connection to democracy and its limits, hence in order to connect with this, a
c. I assume it as a political idea I support personally and argue for (though I am 100% open to discuss other systems and do not think generally that democracy & its process is a given, in fact I think it is important to be open to other people, their views & their systems so you may understand them)
2) what about an autocratic state developing a policy without consultation and it later becomes popular? is this intolerance justified or unjustified between being passed into law and becoming popular?
It is kind of outside of my argumentation about Popper, but answering this I would say it becomes legitimate, by being seen as justified by the people below at the moment it becomes popular. Though it is a rather interesting thought experiment.
3) why is intolerance through the democratic process justified? Doesn’t that fall into the tyranny of the majority?
I would not say that it is only democracy, it goes deeper than democracy and I would even argue that a certain type of necessary intolerance is more about the sovereignty of the hegemonic rulership, be it a democracy, a monarchy, a oligarchy or whatever, and this is a pre-requisity for any system. A system can not last having laws or rules if they are constantly undermined in their implementation (like constant calls for incitement to illegal action). It does not matter if it is a democracy or not. it will not be a functional system. The justification is partially about practicality, partially about the people also having the right to decide what is tolerated or not in actions.
I do admit that the tyranny of the majority is a problem, though I would argue that the paradox of tolerance is not a good argument against it, and I think safety measures to the highest levels of protection for free speech that does not incite against current law or cause direct states of illegal being or states (like fraud) is to be ensured by ensuring that the only censorship that can happen is direct incitement to crime or direct speech that has be connected to legal or monetary transactions and states of direct living well being, (fraud, libel, assault by laud voice, stalking voice harassment etc.) The majority should not be able to limit free speech outside of those very strict categories. Because I think free speech is the best protection of the minority to make their voice heard if issues do arrive. If the majority is becoming problematic in the views they hold, the best insurance to counter that is with raising a voice against it and argue against it. And you can easier do that when you have strong protections for free speech. I even think there should exist positive rights to free speech like limiting censorship on private sites that are big enough to function like social media and the like too. These things would ensure that free speech always exist and give greater opportunity to fight the tyranny of the majority. And still if it comes to it, I also think the tyranny of the majority is better than the tyranny of the minority, because in both cases almost all will suffer, but at least the ones suffering will mostly also be responsible, because mass psychosis and group thinking like that usually end in disaster. And, there is kind of a bit of personal responsibility in that which I also think is good. People that do stupid/bad actions and/or mistakes and suffer for it will also eventually learn from it. This is also why I controversially back in the day argued against the western leaders cheering on the coup in Egypt, because no matter what I thought about the Ikhwaan/brotherhood I still thought that it was a bad thing to do.
If their rule was good it would have been bad to remove them, if their rule would have been bad it still would have been bad, as they still were elected and you do not learn from mistakes in democracy if you do get to actually endure them.
Democracy ultimately is also about giving people the responsibility to decide for themselves, for good and for ill.
I hope this answered your questions👍
@@theculturedjinni IMO the democratic process is very similar to the Western court process: rational arguments are presented and weighed and precedent is taken into account as much as overarching ideals like "justice". hopefully this is a self-correcting system that isnt immune from making mistakes, but rather is adept at catching mistakes that have been made.
@@theculturedjinni I’m satisfied. Based on the answers derived from Popper, is it safe to assume these comments were made for the West? Also thank you for the brotherhood example, your opinion on that, and a good video.
@@Ushmadand i think Popper (and many others) are examples of thinkers who wanted to explore the failure of democracy in the Weimar Republic and the rise of a certain failed artist. Plato also was suspicious of democracy for tending to lead towards dictatorships.
This was a balanced, careful, intelligent video on the topic. I'm sure you'll get a lot of hate for it! 😁My one qualification would be that sometimes there is a situation within a society which has such intolerable consensus (like slavery) that a violent revolution, no matter how harmful in the current time can be considered (with hindsight) something of a moral act. That is not to justify individual barbarity during the process but just to say that a democratic consensus of intolerance itself can sometimes be argued to need force from outside for the greater liberty. I understand that this in itself can be manipulated for odious ends. But I guess I am saying (to use your catchphrase) - it's complicated... 😀
👍 , Yes of course there are worthwhile discussions about moments when intolerance towards intolerable conditions are warranted for either liberty or justice, and it is as my classical catchphrase says, it's complicated! Though with that said, the tolerance paradox is not a good argument in itself due to the various reasons outlined in my video and intolerance is a much more complicated subject than just intolerance towards intolerance.
the trick is to be "open to openness" and "closed to closedness" but you find many, many people on the internet who are "open to closedness" and "closed to openness".
i have literally met people in the comments who think i am a hypocrite because i am "accepting of them being religious" but i am not accepting of them being homophobic, and they think that since being homophobic is essential to their religion, i am being intolerant to them.
both the left and right have some very similar tendencies to be absolute relativists who think we have to accept them/other people being irrational because "freedom" or because "culture".
Yes, close mindedness is a real issue among all people, left or right or center, religious or non-religious. It is one of the goals of my entire channel, to make people think more and be more open minded to other viewpoints, but at the same time also learn discernment and understand that while the world is extremely complex there is also truth and fact & subjective values too out there that need to be considered and found through rigid reason and open discovery rather than blind following or ideological rigidity or extreme relativism, which I think often is avoidance of actually discussing hard questions & finding uncomfortable facts. It is hard, but a journey & task I have always thought was important. In this you could very much call me religious.
@@theculturedjinni people do love having memes and slogans at the ready, so instead of thinking about things that can deploy ready-made responses. the whole neurology of how people make snap-decisions is telling, it is better for us from an evolutionary perspective to use emotions to guide us.... it really is a skill as much as anything to be able to consider and contemplate before deciding.
i think part of that is the whole idea that you can disagree with people without being rude. but so much of troll culture is about "owning" or "destroying" and other sort of silly emotional stuff that my over-educated austistic-spectrum brain doesnt understand 🤔
its like if i showed a racist a whole bunch of powerpoints about why they were wrong and they just didnt change their mind or admit they were wrong, id be like "well i guess we gonna go over the powerpoints again" 😅
@@beepboop204 Yes, the "intellectual" troll culture t is very much a plague, worse is that it even creeps into IRL and you have to act like that, unfortunately even in Academia where you ought to behave better and avoid that behaviour...but generally I try to be as non confrontational as possible when I think someone is wrong in various issues. For example, I do try to get people out of the simplified meme-platitude thinking that I think is rather problematic even if understandable, though again I try to be nice about it. Unless it is something immediately important or I think it might actually cause direct harm, where I sometimes admittedly lose my cool and do stupid reactions too. I am after all not perfect.
Just tell them you don't approve of their lifestyle.
@@louc6635 Honestly, I do not think that would go down in a pretty way, It is best, maybe, to just keep it as nice as possible, you catch more flies with honey than vinegar and all that.