Tolerance: An uphill task

"A function of a fervour that has waned, of an imbalance that results not from an excess but from a lack of energy, tolerance holds no appeal for the young." So says the Romanian-born philosopher Emil Cioran in "Lettre à un ami lointain" (Letter to a distant friend), the first chapter of his book Histoire et utopie (History and Utopia). Adolescence is by its very nature a time of extremes. Some young people never grow into adults but sink into fanaticism and become desperately narrow-minded, their unshakeable beliefs extinguishing in them the spark of life, the spirit of dissent or quite simply the critical outlook in any shape or form. 

 

It is thus difficult to talk about tolerance to those who live on a diet of wild slogans and inflammatory jibes and who are always in a hurry; but it would be suicidal for society to say nothing at all about the cardinal virtue of listening to others and respecting their views, beliefs and customs. Let us therefore teach tolerance, stripping it of its cloak of self-righteousness and its coats of varnish. Tolerance is a way of living, and it starts in the primary school. 

It has also to be admitted that human nature does not tend of its own accord in this direction. Human beings would appear to be fundamentally intolerant. The whole of the culture propagated by the civilized countries, those states where the rule of law prevails, is rooted in the fact that tolerance does not come naturally but has to be inculcated until it becomes second nature to people, spontaneous, a kind of reflex a difficult task, given all the resistance and all the temptations to be overcome. 

 

Cioran says that if the prospect of, or the opportunity for, a massacre is held out to them, young people will follow a leader blindly; such opportunities are constantly being offered to them by fanaticism in its political, ideological or religious manifestations. Suggestibility may take such harmless forms as fashions in dress or music, fashions that quickly come and go; but the readiness of the young to follow any charlatan and translate any outlandish idea into action makes it supremely important to get to work on and with them. 

 

To make tolerance people's second nature is a duty that has to be done if the rule of law is to be established and consolidated. Without tolerance there is no democracy or, to put it another way, democracy and intolerance are irreconcilable opposites. Fanaticism is the fire surreptitiously lit by intolerance in the democratic fabric, it is a fixation, a deceptively pure-seeming obsession, an error that seeks to bring life anything that moves, changes and holds surprises to a standstill. 

 

To tolerate fanaticism would be to tolerate the intolerable. How can fanaticism be allowed to monopolize the scene and make it a setting for tragedy? How is it possible to tolerate the enemies of freedom, those who would destroy intelligence and beauty, whose goal is a totalitarian order that imposes uniformity and proclaims that might is right, the law of the jungle? Where can one find the patience, courage and composure to refute this barbarity that prefers the use of the gun to that of the spoken or written word? How can one hold fast to one's principles, remain strictly respectful of beliefs different from, and even opposed to, one's own, and coexist with those who would wipe out anything that does not fit in with their crazed way of thinking? 

Tolerance is an uphill task. It requires courage and strength, a robust aptitude for the cut and thrust of debate, and an ability to stand up to pressure. Who can claim to possess all these attributes? The answer is a combination of soldier and poet, policeman and philosopher, magistrate and artist for all great literature and all great painting have been the expression of intolerance of the intolerable. The writer's subject is not happiness, nor is peace that of the artist. Art is a clean break, a rejection, anger, provocation even. When beauty is laid waste, intelligence done to death, childhood violated and human beings humiliated, art cannot but be intolerant. It tolerates neither the ugliness of which people arc capable nor the revulsion they arouse. 

 

Fanaticism can be countered with humour; but this is sometimes a risky undertaking, since those who are fixated upon a certain order of things detest wit, subtlety and of course laughter. What they hold sacred is dogma, rigid and immutable. It is forbidden to make fun of it, whereas life, being short and beset with pitfalls, commends laughter as the best course. Laughter is often provocative, a way of distancing oneself a little from reality; but distance is something that has been totally banished from the world of intolerant people, who are so bound up in themselves they would like the rest of humanity to be identical clones of themselves. 

 

Tolerance is something that has to be learned, a requirement that has to be lived with every day, a difficulty to be faced every moment of every day. It is hard work, but those who are attached to principles rather than prejudices or compromises do not seek the easy way out. They may not sleep soundly, it is true, but at least they do not relinquish that which makes us human, our dignity.