The Meaning Of Things

Question 0

Tolerance

Answer 0

“The peak of tolerance is most readily achieved by those who are not burdened with convictions” - Alexander Chase

• tolerance rare yet important virtue: usually limits of tolerance drawn too tightly and in the wrong places.
• “mankind are greater gainers by differing each other to live as seen good by themselves, than by compelling each other to live as seems good to the rest” - John Stuart Mill.
• intolerant person one who wishes others to live as he thinks they ought.
• human community benefits from having alternative lifestyles living; they are like experiments of the human condition.
• premise that no one has the right to
  tell another how to be/act, provided they aren’t harming others: liberalism.
• liberalism embraces opposition of viewpoints, which threatens those who live by hard principles and uncompromising views and would wish to silence liberals.
• should the tolerant tolerate the intolerant? Tolerance has to protect itself.
• the only coercion should be that of argument.
• “the highest result of education is tolerance” - Helen Keller.
• Intolerance is symptomatic of insecurity and fear.
• the old become intolerant of the young.
• cycle of intolerance and fear.
• what underlies tolerance is the recognition that there is plenty of room in the world for alternatives to coexist.

Question 1

Moralising

Answer 1

“A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite” - Oscar Wilde

• Moralising is about seeking to impose your beliefs on others.
• insensitivity, intolerance, unkindness, lack of imagination, failure of sympathy, absence of understanding, ignorance of alternative interests and arrogance in their opinion.
• not comfortable with attitudes and practices more relaxed than they can allow themselves to be.
• depending on whether the body politic is immune to them or not they can be a joke or a menace.
• every age thinks it’s in crisis, not really a better or more moral time to live though.
• Victorian values; class system, poverty.
• child poverty is more harmful than single parents.
• upper class people like the idea of a “moral”, clean, self sufficient, indebted population: urge morality because it suits themselves.
• neo-Victorian’s view on crime is to be more clean and godly.

Question 2

Mercy

Answer 2

“He that spares the bad injures the good” - Thomas Fuller

• Mercy often a beautiful virtue but sometimes dangerous.
• mostly its a form of restraint against punishing one who deserves it.
• often prompted by kindness, pity or sympathy.
• it’s not mercy but justice that is called for if the punishment is much too harshe for the crime.
• term used loosely these days.
• “one virtue cannot be the opposite of another” - Seneca
• opposite of mercy is strictness.
• “nothing emboldens sin so much as mercy” - Shakespeare’s play
• reason to be merciful is that we all need mercy ourselves.
• “to understand all is to forgive all” - French proverb.
• sometimes the world needs justice done to those who step beyond a line.

Question 3

Civility

Answer 3

“The knowledge of civility is a very necessary study, like grace and beauty, it breeds mutual liking” - Montaigne

• western world not having immoral age, is having loss of civility.
• mutual tolerance and respect makes the social machine function, let’s people live in peace, psychological space.
• mores, etiquette, politeness, informal rituals that facilitate out interactions.
• more serious symptoms of u civility are invasion of privacy by newspapers.
• link to tolerance, moralising is discourteous.
• “we must be as courteous to a man as we are to a picture, which we are willing to give the advantage of good light” - Emerson.
• social feeling replaced by defensiveness.
• society fragments into subgroups shoe members hope thereby to shield themselves against selfish abrasives and disregard.
• “there is a courtesy of the heart which is akin to love. Out if it arises the purest courtesy in outward behaviour” - Goethe.
• open to abuse but fosters a society that behaves well towards itself.
• people can be ill-mannered towards people they see as worth less such as because of their job.
• “civility is to human nature what warmth is to wax” - Schopenhauer.
• civility can help to manage humanity’s propensity for conflict.
• civility is our best hope for finding and maintaining that subtle and constantly renegotiated equilibrium on which the existence of society depends.

Question 4

Compromise

Answer 4

“Every human benefit, every virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise” - Burke

• there are almost always at least two diametrically different ways of seeing the same human problem.
• sometimes people can be I intransigent or steadfast in their position. Principles, traditions, rights, threats to these often the reason people are so. Can seem obdurate, pig headed or prejudice to others.
• “it is better to lose the saddle than the horse” - Italian proverb.
• ideally compromise will end with both parties being happy, feeling they have won out.
• liberal democracies were right not to compromise with Hitler, often these days western nations compromise with human rights abusers etc.
• compromise in private life. Some compromise at least necessary for relationships.
• people change over time, often forgotten in relationships.
• women used to compromise a lot for men, giving up life opportunities etc.
• often compromises concern disparities in sexual interest or one party having to suffocate needs because the other can’t meet them.
• most insidious compromise a person makes with themself when ambitions start to falter, and they “accept their limitations”. A phrase that usually denotes weariness and retreat in the face of failure.
• Unamuno said we are all potentially heroes and geniuses if only we would have the courage and do the hard work necessary to becoming so.
• perhaps the one exception to Burke’s rule is that we should never make compromise with life.
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