What ever happened to tolerance?

Here is a thought-provoking article by Hanif Kureishi, published in the UK’s Guardian, in which he makes the case that our idea of tolerance must be more robust, a real exchange of ideas, not just a festival of food. I like how he constructs the relationships between issues that are on my mind--liberalism and fundamentalism, idealism and practicality, race and “the other.” Here’s a good summation of how some of these ideas fit together in his mind:

“I believed that questions of race, identity and culture were the major issues post-colonial Europe had to face, and that inter-generational conflict was where these conflicts were being played out.”

This sentence got me excited, particularly the part about inter-generational conflict.

From what we learn in his article, Kureishi’s personal beliefs about God could run the gamut from humanism to atheism. In any case, he seems to doubt an individual’s access to God via faith. Like the Christian, who’s ultimate goal in a pluralistic society is to convince everyone else to pursue relationship with the Living God, Kureishi’s ultimate goal of in this exchange of ideas must necessarily be the dilution of religious ideals to the degree that they become indistinct from general humanistic ideals. The underlying Nietzchean belief found here is that religion is valid (is nice) insofar as it is a vehicle for the progress of mankind. Religion is undeniably useful as catalyst for culture, for self-discipline and belief about the world. Religion galvanizes humans together. But the prospect of human myths about the personal-ness or designed-ness of the universe actually being true? That’s ridiculous.

In an even more direct statement of the goals of materialism, we have Dan Dennett, a philosopher and writer, who touches on his ideal version of society while giving a talk on the nonsense of looking for a designed purpose in life.

To me, these two thinkers embody an important discourse that is going on right now in America and Europe: Beyond the topic itself (of the truth or falsity of God), both authors are taking a stance regarding the question of whether or not tolerance is a valid way for people in disagreement to relate to each other.

Maybe tolerance is a continuum: On one end is outright bloodshed among warring cultures and nations, on the other end is an over-saturation of pluralistic subjectivity in which no one believes in anything but tolerance.

As I look around the world, I see what appears to be a growing animosity between Islamic fundamentalists and European materialists, a widening rift between American liberals and the Religious Right. My speculation is that the mode for the exchange of ideas seems to be trending towards the war end of the exchange spectrum.

If politics do indeed progress in this direction, it would mean resolution for the giant experiment in tolerance that America represents to many people. Perhaps more than any other particular country, America has been attempting to gather mostly non-violent consensus from a rather diverse group of citizens ever since it was pre-born in the 1600s, and an even more diverse group as time has progressed.

As battle lines get drawn, I’m not sure if in 20 years there will be many people around who are seeking a delicate balance of holding firmly to their beliefs on one hand as well as genuine tolerance, even love, for their neighbors on the other.

(Philosophically speaking, this experimentation with tolerance could be described as the human struggle to come to terms with the paradox that explains both the limits of our individual subjectivity as well as our essential need to connect to objectivity.)