cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6541859

Wiki - The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually ceased or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

    • JungleJim@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      91·
      1 year ago

      Wow you’re obtuse. Have you never had an abstract thought in your life? You can’t see this social contract is a concept? It’s a concept that explains that If we all stop tolerating each other we’d tear each other apart, destroy all the buildings and belongings and everything, and then you WOULD live in the wilderness if you lived at all.

      If you refuse to be tolerant of your neighbors, or allow others to be intolerant of them, you are saying you’re fine with a little bit of apocalypse happening. All those little bits add up and eventually destroying the social contract, destroying society, because it’s the same exact thing. Society IS the social contract. It’s not just buildings and roads and lights and pipes and farms. It’s the agreement that we want those things, and that since we don’t want ours destroyed we won’t destroy anyone who doesn’t destroy. If you’re saying that doesn’t apply to you, you’re saying you have a right to destroy as you see fit. That’s an amazingly brutal and egotistical position. Are you sure you’ve thought this out? That’s a heck of a thing to make part of your personality.

        • Mario_Dies.wav@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          3·
          1 year ago

          The “social contract” is a well-known term to describe the very basic idea of a society, no matter what your political or philosophical belief

          Maybe you’d recognize it as “the golden rule” – don’t do things to people that you wouldn’t want people to do to you.

            • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              The social contract is a philosophical concept, Dipshit, one hundreds of years old. You can disagree with this concept, but unless you have something more than “I never signed a piece of paper lol,” your disagreement can be dismissed as petty ignorance. Or maybe you’re just trolling.

                • samus12345@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  Thank you for writing a thoughtful response! My understanding of the social contract is that it’s an unwritten agreement that if you want to get the benefits of living in a society (being able to purchase food and shelter rather than having to live in the wild and make/get your own) you have to abide by its rules. Where the Paradox of Tolerance comes in is that being intolerant (in how you treat other people specifically) is disruptive to society, which breaks the social contract. There may or may not be actual laws broken when doing so, but you should expect to be shown the door (also links nicely with “freeze peach” arguments).

                • dnick@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  Seems like your biggest hang up is the word ‘contract’, which you have assigned a lot of concrete properties to. Would it be easier to understand if they used the word agreement, and described it in softer terms like the general agreement everyone in the world has that punching someone in the face is not an acceptable for of greeting? I mean, no one has said that, and you haven’t personally gone up to everyone and stated this and shook hands on it, but it’s still something everyone agrees on.

                  The social ‘contract’ is like that, it just uses an unnecessarily official sounding term in it, but ultimately is just the understanding that some concessions have to be made to deal with other humans. The terms of the contract are really to vague to ‘sign’, and when people start referring to more specific terms things can go of the rails pretty quickly, but there is still an implicit agreement. It’s like living in an apartment where you didn’t sign the lease…sure you’re not legally bound by the terms in the same way that someone who did sign the lease is, but your still bound by them in some ways simply by living in the apartment. In the same way, continuing to live in society is the way the ‘contract’ gets signed.

            • Mario_Dies.wav@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              This has everything to do with the paradox of tolerance. It’s literally its foundation.

              For example, a healthy community would sanction someone like you until you ceased this antisocial and delberately bad-faith character you’ve chosen to be.

              Let’s start with my blocklist.

    • dnick@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It’s the same contract you ‘sign’ with your friends or co-workers. People, especially in this thread, break it out as some solid ‘thing’, but it’s like any other ethereal concept that gets referred to by a concrete word. English is hard and not every word brings along every element in every instance. You could say that an ‘agreement’ must have a written, or at minimum a spoken set of terms, but you could have an agreement not to physically fight someone just by a few movements of your body, and ‘break’ that agreement by broadcasting one set of signals and then taking a swing at them.