Of tolerance and outgroups

I was going to finish out the week with something light and non-controversial, but then I read a rather lengthy, but entirely worthwhile post by Scott Alexander (hat tip Instapundit) that engaged my mind and left me feeling uneasy–as it intended, and as it should. While not entirely dispassionate, it is one of the most fair-minded, most well-reasoned essays I’ve read in…I don’t know how long.

It’s really difficult to do this article justice short of quoting the whole darn thing, but I hope I can find a couple citations sufficient to entice you to invest the time to read it through, because it’s that good.

Yeah, I just skimmed it again, and it’s darn impossible to cover the best points without covering the other really good points without covering the awesome points, etc. So instead I’ll just give you part of the hook:

After some thought I agree with Chesterton’s point. There are a lot of people who say “I forgive you” when they mean “No harm done”, and a lot of people who say “That was unforgiveable” when they mean “That was genuinely really bad”. Whether or not forgiveness is right is a complicated topic I do not want to get in here. But since forgiveness is generally considered a virtue, and one that many want credit for having, I think it’s fair to say you only earn the right to call yourself ‘forgiving’ if you forgive things that genuinely hurt you.

To borrow Chesterton’s example, if you think divorce is a-ok, then you don’t get to “forgive” people their divorces, you merely ignore them. Someone who thinks divorce is abhorrent can “forgive” divorce. You can forgive theft, or murder, or tax evasion, or something you find abhorrent.

I mean, from a utilitarian point of view, you are still doing the correct action of not giving people grief because they’re a divorcee. You can have all the Utility Points you want. All I’m saying is that if you “forgive” something you don’t care about, you don’t earn any Virtue Points.

(by way of illustration: a billionaire who gives $100 to charity gets as many Utility Points as an impoverished pensioner who donates the same amount, but the latter gets a lot more Virtue Points)

Tolerance is definitely considered a virtue, but it suffers the same sort of dimished expectations forgiveness does.

The Emperor summons before him Bodhidharma and asks: “Master, I have been tolerant of innumerable gays, lesbians, bisexuals, asexuals, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, transgender people, and Jews. How many Tolerance Points have I earned for my meritorious deeds?”

Bodhidharma answers: “None at all”.

The Emperor, somewhat put out, demands to know why not.

Bodhidharma asks: “Well, what do you think of gay people?”

The Emperor answers: “What do you think I am, some kind of homophobic bigot? Of course I have nothing against gay people!”

And Bodhidharma answers: “Thus do you gain no merit by tolerating them!”

II.

If I had to define “tolerance” it would be something like “respect and kindness toward members of an outgroup”.

And today we have an almost unprecedented situation.

We have a lot of people – like the Emperor – boasting of being able to tolerate everyone from every outgroup they can imagine, loving the outgroup, writing long paeans to how great the outgroup is, staying up at night fretting that somebody else might not like the outgroup enough.

And we have those same people absolutely ripping into their in-groups – straight, white, male, hetero, cis, American, whatever – talking day in and day out to anyone who will listen about how terrible their in-group is, how it is responsible for all evils, how something needs to be done about it, how they’re ashamed to be associated with it at all.

This is really surprising. It’s a total reversal of everything we know about human psychology up to this point. No one did any genetic engineering. No one passed out weird glowing pills in the public schools. And yet suddenly we get an entire group of people who conspicuous love their outgroups, the outer the better, and gain status by talking about how terrible their own groups are.

What is going on here?

Alexander then goes on to explain what he believes is going on.

Read the whole thing, please. But do read the whole thing. Anything less and you miss the best point of all, in which the author engages in sufficient self-awareness that he catches himself in his own arguments, thus lending all the more weight to them. I can’t help but like this guy, and I do hope Diogenes finds his way to his door.

Update: After reading some of the comments on the link posted at Instapundit I have to shake my head at how well so many prove his thesis while completely missing it themselves. His intent was to help us recognize our intolerance and encourage us to become more tolerant, not to justify any particular ideology.