Posted on by Fred

Club Q and Tolerance

I put the following on Facebook after the mass murder at the Gay Colorado Nightclub, Club Q.

Words can incite hatred. Hatred can incite violence. Violence causes death.

Let’s choose not only our own words more carefully, but the words we choose to listen to and amplify. When we dehumanize people who are different from us, we contribute to the evil we saw in Colorado.

Perhaps it’s time not only to tolerate differences, but to celebrate them. Being different requires a courage all its own. Being who we choose to be should never be a cause of death.

As has become common for me, I received pushback from someone whose name I will omit:

The only problem I have is “tolerating differences”. I refuse to “tolerate” racist bigoted xenophobic transphobic homophobic assholes. Those differences cannot be tolerated.

I understand my friend’s feelings.  I don’t approve of those folks either.  Neither am I a fan of misogynists, racists, or religious people who believe their beliefs entitle them to decide others are bad.  But what does it mean to “tolerate?” 

The Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “allow the existence, occurrence, or practice of (something that one does not necessarily like or agree with) without interference.

“a regime unwilling to tolerate dissent”

So, am I to decide I will not allow the existence of those who disagree with me without interference?  What sort of interference is acceptable?  What is not?  Obviously, no one is going to support rounding up all the homophobes and transphobes and shooting them.  We can call them names, I suppose.  My friend called them assholes, and I understand her point of view, even if I think it’s a failure of understanding.  We can talk about how horrible they are.  And we may well be right that they are, in their ways, horrible.  But people don’t get that way accidentally. 

We aren’t born hating.  We are shaped by our experiences.  It’s easy to hate those who are different from us.  Homophobes, transphobes, racists, and misogynists are different from me.  Theists, and atheists for that matter, who hate those who don’t share their religious beliefs are different from me.  But my experiences have taught me that hating people doesn’t fix anything.  It doesn’t get them to change their views.  It doesn’t make them more willing to tolerate differences.  And it gives them reason to call me a hypocrite when I won’t tolerate our differences.  So, as I so frequently ask on this show and this blog, “Who’s better off?”

When I refuse to tolerate, when I hate, I give validation to those who are doing the same.  I’m going to decline to do that.  I forfeit any chance I have of changing their minds.  There are people who listen to this show who believe that God invented marriage (their God, I assume, as opposed to any of the other nearly 5,000 that are or have been worshipped on this planet by humans at one time or another) and He gets to decide who can get married and who can’t.  If I decide to hate them because I disagree, I have lost people I love, and I have done nothing to make the world any better.

If I continue to have them in my life, I may not change their minds.  In fact, I probably won’t.  Changing minds about deeply held beliefs is a nearly impossible task.  On the other hand, I have no chance at all if I reject them. 

The best I can hope to do is give them some other ideas to consider.  I can try to show them that believing that it is wrong to be different is not helping anyone.  I can’t show them that having a different sexuality doesn’t make anyone evil if I can’t talk to them. 

There are those who believe morality is a strict adherence to a set of rules.  This is called Legalism.  It originated in Ancient China, but its basic definition today is “strict, literal, or excessive conformity to the law or to a religious or moral code.”  If this is what the rules say, we must do this.  While I prefer people obey the law, it takes no more imagination than God gave to a pistachio nut to invent scenarios in which adherence to the law is simply wrong.  Your best friend has been shot and is in the back seat of your car.  The speed limit is 25 mph.  The hospital is 4 miles away.  Your friend has minutes to live without medical intervention, but… the law says 25.  You decide to drive 25.  Your friend dies.  The legalist would say you were right.  I wouldn’t. 

Legalism applies to the belief that marriage should be only between one man and one woman because it’s in The Bible.

Mark 10:

6 But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.

7 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife;

8 And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh.

9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder

For Christian Legalists, the question is now settled, without concern for the consequences of this belief.  It may be that two men, or two women, love each other and want to spend their lives together, expressing that love in sexual ways.  This isn’t allowed, though, because The Bible says so.  If this hurts those people, that’s just too bad.

For me, morality is a question of consequences.  If I do something that helps someone, it’s probably moral.  If I do something that hurts someone, it’s probably immoral.  I emphasize probably because this is a wild oversimplification.  There are all sorts of nuances that come into play in deciding what is right and what is wrong. 

Moral problems are never choosing Good vs Evil.  If that’s all you have to decide, the decision is simple.  You choose Good.  Moral problems arise when there are competing Goods.  The Trolley Problem is the simplest example of an actual moral problem.

You’re standing near the switch that will cause a trolley to change tracks.  You can see it’s about to kill five people if it stays on its current track.  If you pull the switch, it will change tracks, and then it will kill one person, who would otherwise have lived had you not touched the switch.  There are competing Goods at play.  The Good of saving five people.  The Good of not killing one person.  Which do you choose?

Answers to this vary from person to person, and there are many variations on The Trolley Problem.  I don’t pretend to be wise enough to solve it for all eternity.  I like to think I would pull the switch, but I don’t like the feeling that I caused someone to die who wouldn’t have if I had done nothing.  I recognize there are other equally valid arguments to be made on both sides.

From the Legalist perspective, it would be a simple matter.  If there’s a sign saying “Don’t touch this switch” they have no choice to make.  If they touch the switch, they have broken the law, and five people will die.  They won’t break the law.  They won’t save five lives.

I prefer to recognize I don’t know everything.  Socrates was quite fond of recognizing he knew nothing.  I’m not quite as wise as Socrates.  I think I know a few things.  I know there is, however, unimaginably more that I don’t know than I ever will know.  I’m always willing to entertain a different idea, at least long enough to make an informed decision about it.  I try very hard to keep my mind open to different possibilities in the event that there is something I haven’t considered.  This allows me to learn, and I have a nearly infinite amount of learning to do. 

As opposed to hating those who hate, I feel a pity for the experiences they must have had to cause them to feel hatred in the first place.  Hatred is an unpleasant feeling.  It’s a sort of burning inside of you that keeps you from thinking rationally.  It hurts both you and anyone you hate.  It blocks you from positive experiences you might have had with those who are from groups your intolerance has caused you to hate.

When you spread hatred with your words, your memes, or your jokes, you make it seem more acceptable to the rest of the world.  As it spreads, just a little here and there, it deteriorates the acceptance that others feel.  A slowly leaking sink will finally rot the cabinet beneath it, causing it to mold and collapse.  It won’t happen immediately, but given time, the results will be expensive to repair.  Given enough time, the damage will become irreparable. 

When someone makes jokes about those who are different, the very least you can do is withhold your laughter.  You might, depending on your relationship with the joker, ask what is funny about that, or, perhaps, tell them that there is, in fact, nothing funny about it. 

When someone posts memes that attack those who are different, you can, at the very least, choose not to respond positively to them.  You can also, again, depending on your relationship with the poster, comment asking why it’s funny, or pointing out that it simply isn’t. 

And when people say hateful things, you can let them know why you don’t agree.  You’re not required to let their cruelty go unanswered, but you don’t get to decide, either, that they are evil because they have beliefs or ideas that are not in alignment with yours.

Tonight, in writing class, we talked about the fact that stories tend to end with the antagonist meeting their end.  The Wicked Witch is melted.  Hans Gruber and Snow White’s Wicked Queen fall to their deaths.  The Nazis are defeated.  And we end shortly afterward without dealing with the healing.  Others have been traumatized by these events, and we never see how they dealt with those feelings. 

“Healing is learning to live with it.”

– David Gerrold

We don’t ever heal completely.  We survive.  We rebuild ourselves into something we weren’t before.  We hope we can continue to make a positive difference in the world even after we have suffered some trauma. Some of us can.  That’s not true for all of us, though.

When we watch a movie or read a book, we rarely get to understand how the antagonists became who they are.  To its credit, Star Wars took some time to show us how Anakin Skywalker, a sweet, clever, and kind boy turned into the greatest antagonist in its universe.  When we understand what he suffered, we begin to sympathize with him.  While we don’t forget all the suffering he caused, we can see he’s really not much different from what we might be had we suffered what he did. 

That, though, is a fictional character from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.  Does he have anything to do with the reality you and I occupy? 

He instructs us.  He shows us that good and evil are not that simple.  We see what happens when we embrace hatred.  Even the best of us is corruptible.

This is why when I see someone who hates, I won’t return their feelings.   I will do what I can to change them.  I may fail, but I am obliged to try.  “To believe you can change the world is insanity; failure to try is cowardice.”  I won’t be a coward.  I’m already plenty of things I don’t like.  I do my best to forgive those who hurt me.  I can move on with my life when I let go of the hatred.  I can remove that toxin from my system.

“Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.”    

–David Gerrold

If you choose to hate me for not hating the same people you do, that’s up to you.  I have done what I can to show you why Hate helps no one, but I if I’ve failed, then at least I can know I tried.  And I can continue to love you anyway.

Posted on by Fred

Violence Is The Tool of The Intellectually Ineffective

The following is my part of a discussion I had on Facebook the other day. 

A friend of mine had posted something Liberal on his page.  A conservative friend of his, referred to here as Name Deleted, talked about how he would “K” Democrats.  He said he meant “Kiss.”  No one believed him.

  • Fred: Violence of any kind is never the answer.
  • Name Deleted: Sure, Fred.  You grow up in church.  You be good.
  • Fred:  I’m an atheist, and ad hominem attacks are not arguments. Violence continues to be no answer.
  • Name Deleted:  Pacifist.  Nope not here.  Grew up military and country.  Saw a lot of stuff in my life.  Called survival. 
  • Fred: Also irrelevant to attack me instead of my argument. You also gave me your personal history, which is also not an argument.  Violence means someone is hurt. It usually means someone is killed. Whatever Good you believe you accomplished with your violence is denied to those who die.  Violence is the answer used by those who cannot be moved by words and logical arguments. It is the answer of the intellectually ineffective.
  • Name Deleted: Fred Eder You Win Freddy. Attack you. Wow. Fragile. You win. Bye.
  • Fred: Thanks for the discussion.

No, of course I didn’t change his mind.  I’ve been on Facebook for nearly 14 years now, and in that time I’m not aware of anyone ever changing their minds based on any sort of debate there.  I recognize the futility of the effort.  Why, then, should I continue to try?

It’s because I believe in the power of words.  Words can inspire.  They can change world views.  They can inform.  They can lift us out of our ordinary experiences and show us a universe we had never imagined before.  They both begin and end wars.  They set humanity apart from most of the rest of life on this planet.  There are hypotheses that other animals communicate, but we are unique, as far as I know, in written language, an alphabet, and our ability to be moved by thoughts from thousands of years ago.  The words I wrote might cause someone, somewhere, some time, to reconsider their own thoughts, even though I have no idea who that person is.  The best any writer can hope to do is to move a stranger.  I recognize that Good people sometimes commit acts of violence.  They are expected of our military, and they are often necessary for members of the law enforcement community.  But they always represent a failure of our intellect.  Soldiers, sailors, and marines don’t kill others for fun.  They do so on the orders of leaders who were unable to use language to convince other leaders to do what they believed needed to be done. 

Shakespeare took this up in Henry V:

BATES

… for we know
enough, if we know we are the king’s subjects: if
his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes
the crime of it out of us.

WILLIAMS

But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath
a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and
arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join
together at the latter day and cry all ‘We died at
such a place;’ some swearing, some crying for a
surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind
them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their
children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die
well that die in a battle; for how can they
charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their
argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it
will be a black matter for the king that led them to
it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of
subjection.

The most common argument about the need for violence comes in explaining why Neville Chamberlain was wrong not to go to war with Germany earlier than he did.  There can be no debate that Hitler needed to be stopped, and history suggests violence was necessary to accomplish that.  This is a powerful argument, but, for me, it misses the point.

That Hitler was mentally ill can hardly be debated.  He was, in simplest terms, intellectually ineffective.  He couldn’t be persuaded by words he didn’t like.  He loved the fame, the power, and the glory that were heaped upon him by the citizens of Germany at the beginning.  He was empowered by those who believed in the hatred he preached.

Hatred is an extreme form of Anger.  Anger is caused by fear.  (See Episode 123: “The Problem of Anger” for more on this.)  People feared Germany’s collapsing economy would cause them to plummet into poverty and homelessness.  I think many of us are familiar with this fear today in America.  Hitler gave them somewhere to focus that anger.  It grew to the hatred necessary to kill more than 6 million people simply for being different. 

What we see is a massive failure of intellect.  We see the power fear has to overrule our intellects. 

There are those who claim this is built into our psyche by our earliest evolutionary stages.  Fight or Flight kept us alive for quite a long time.  Fight became synonymous with courage, flight with cowardice.  We’re told to admire courage over cowardice.  Running away from an attack is not heroic.  There are few movies made about those who choose flight over fight.  We simply don’t admire such people. 

On the other hand…

“I wish Bob Ewell wouldn’t chew tobacco,” was all Atticus said about it.

According to Miss Stephanie Crawford, however, Atticus was leaving the post office when Mr. Ewell approached him, cursed him, spat on him, and threatened to kill him. Miss Stephanie (who, by the time she had told it twice was there and had seen it all—passing by from the Jitney Jungle, she was)—Miss Stephanie said Atticus didn’t bat an eye, just took out his handkerchief and wiped his face and stood there and let Mr. Ewell call him names wild horses could not bring her to repeat. Mr. Ewell was a veteran of an obscure war; that plus Atticus’s peaceful reaction probably prompted him to inquire, “Too proud to fight, you nigger­lovin‘ bastard?” Miss Stephanie said Atticus said, “No, too old,” put his hands in his pockets and strolled on. Miss Stephanie said you had to hand it to Atticus Finch, he could be right dry sometimes.

Jem and I didn’t think it entertaining. “After all, though,” I said, “he was the deadest shot in the county one time. He could—”

“You know he wouldn’t carry a gun, Scout. He ain’t even got one—” said Jem. “You know he didn’t even have one down at the jail that night. He told me havin‘ a gun around’s an invitation to somebody to shoot you.”

“This is different,” I said. “We can ask him to borrow one.”

We did, and he said, “Nonsense.”

— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23

Atticus is a hero.  Anyone can hit someone.  That’s easy.  One could certainly argue, from at least a legal standpoint, that Atticus would have been justified in hitting Bob Ewell.  I suspect a first-year law student could get him acquitted with self-defense.  I could be wrong.  I know many people who would have knocked Ewell on his ass for that.  I know many more who would applaud Atticus for kicking Ewell’s ass.  And, again, hitting someone is easy. 

You know what’s tough? It’s tough to tolerate such an insult without responding.  I maintain Atticus is tougher than Rambo.  I suspect many of you will disagree.  You’re welcome to do so.   

Bravery doesn’t exist without fear.  How we deal with our fears is what defines us.  When we use our language instead of physical force, we save each other pain that solves little.  Though it’s doubtful that Gandhi said, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” the sentiment is correct.  I can hurt you, and you can hurt me.  Which of us can hurt the other most is irrelevant.  It would be better for both of us if neither of us was hurt.  I decline to derive pleasure from your pain.  My life is no better because yours is worse.   And I won’t like myself as well if I hurt you.

One of the first things we teach our children is to use their words.  We don’t express displeasure by throwing a tantrum anymore because we’ve grown beyond that.  When I was 3, it would have surprised no one that I threw a tantrum because Mommy didn’t let me have a cookie before dinner.  I wouldn’t do that today.  Neither would you.  We’re adults, and we have learned better ways to deal with our feelings.  We’ve grown.  We need, as a species, to continue to grow.  We need to learn to use our words, just as our parents taught us when we were 3. 

My hope is my words can get you to reconsider your feelings about violence.  I hope we can stop creating a blind world and start creating a world in which we learn compassion, empathy, and love. 

I’m 60, diabetic, disabled, and defenseless.  I have no doubt you can beat the hell out of me for suggesting ideas with which you disagree.  Which of us will be better off?    Will you have proven anything other than that you’re capable of physically hurting me?  Does that make you heroic? You would be, in my mind at least, substantially more heroic by using your intellect to change my mind instead of your power to increase the pain I experience every day.  I invite you to do that in the comments on Patreon, on my Facebook page, or on the show’s Facebook page.  You can even send me something in Facebook Messenger.  Or you can hit me.  (And you wonder why I never leave the house??)  Which do you think is better?