Quoting people I don't know

"A cultured person cannot be tolerant, as tolerance is a means of destroying culture through making it equal with lack of it."

That's an interesting quote. It refers to modern concept of tolerance - the sort where everyone's opinion is equal and equally valuable. I really wonder who it belongs to originally - so if any of you know the source, I'd like to know it. This might be paraphrased, since I translated it from a Russian version.

It sounds rather blunt and, well, intolerant, the quote, rather elitist as well - and excusing elitist behaviour as well, wouldn't be surprised if it was used in propaganda of certain movements... But if one takes a look at it properly, it's quite true - not just with culture, though, though it may depend on what one defines as culture. In general, though, is it not our tolerance that permits existance of all things distasteful merely because speaking out against it is essentially no longer permitted by our own establishment? Do we not destroy ourselves from within by permitting - and approving - of processes best halted, of people best stopped and of opinions best buried deep beneath the sands of time rather than pretend a forced smile and look the other way?

And why, then, do we do so? Is it because of politeness? But politeness isn't enforced - it's presumed, and the means of achieving politeness are quite codified, but they are simply rules we want to observe in order not to upset others around us - or achieve results desireable to us through observing societal norms and manipulating them to our will. So no, it's not politeness.

It's fear. Fear to be cast aside for breaking the behavioural norms, fear of retribution, fear of one day having someone we didn't please of throwing a rock at us. In some less fortunate countries, fear of being prosecuted by law. How screwed up is our society, then, if we have to be tolerant and polite out of fear rather than by choice?


That is not to say I approve of the quote exactly. People should be tolerant, but only according to their own will - and there are things that cannot be tolerated regardlessly. Just that people have to use their head, as time-consuming as it might sound.


Oh, and to those that equalise intolerance with violent intolerance - wrong. A person that can't tolerate a fact acts to correct it, yes - but not violently. Martin Luther King could not tolerate the way that a great deal of people in the US were treated - but did he go shooting whites for it? Nope. Did he punch them? No! What did he do? He came up with civil disobedience. When film industry started coming up with things like pornography and films of extreme violence, did their makers get burnt at the stake? No. People came up with age categories for films. These are examples of intolerance that did something good for society - intolerance of an aspect of surroundings - in fact, intolerance is one of the motivating forces behind progress.

Then there's a more regular display of intolerance - me, for example, I have an intense hatred of people chewing noisily (call it childhood trauma if you will, I really can't stand it) - and if I'm eating with someone I know well enough to comment, I will. If I am on the bus next to someone chewing like that, I'll make my music deafeningly loud or change seats - because I can't stand it, and being polite in this case would cause me near-physical discomfort. However, in some rare situations, I regardlessly permit people to eat that way without making any remarks or trying to drown it out - but I do it by my own choice rather than fear of rejection. And I won't tolerate a whole lot of other things as well, but it hardly means I'll go and beat someone up over it, or end their existance to stop troubling me. That is not just intolerance. That is intense stupidity.