This post is in response to comment left in the Good Sense to Judge post.

Tolerance

For the record, I was not talking about classically defined tolerance I was actually referring to a more recent variant that is heavily informed by relativism. This form of tolerance aims to eliminate judgment completely by using relativism’s argumentation that all truth is relative to the person. Since truth is confined within the individual, judgment beyond the person is not justifiable. One can never know another person and therefore one must always abstain from judging others.

You current definition of tolerance is mildly incoherent. It seems to be making the strong claim that people can judge all they like, but are restricted from taking action. In matters of judgment it’s unclear when one can and can not take action. The obvious example is the context of this discussion. Your definition of tolerance tells us nothing about how the university of Columbia should proceed.

Some judgments warrant action. One of the most common ways to avoid the required action is to ignore the judgment. The father of a murderer is less eager to call his child bad then the father of the one that was murdered. This is in large part because admitting the judgment justifies taking the action of having his son incarcerated or sentenced to death.

One gets the sense that Columbia university is refraining from judging President Ahmadinejad as a terrorist, oppressor, and killer or our soldiers merely so they can avoid the action of refusing to let him speak. How does one get around the problem of denying the obvious fact that President Ahmadinejad is an oppressor, terrorist, and killer? Using relativism one denies such judgments because one can’t know things from his perspective. One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. Lacking his perspective we can’t judge him bad, and therefore we can have him speak.

I should like to know does you definition of tolerance allow or prohibit President Ahmadinjad from speaking?

Generalize or Analyze?

You object to my characterizing the whole of one culture as being either good or bad. You desperately want to analyze further and talk about different components. Certainly one can analyze a culture into bits and often times one is wise to do so. However, one can be just as wise to make broad judgments provided they are willing to do the work of analysis when their broad judgment fail to be effective. In this regard I think its fair to say that on the whole, contemporary middle-east culture is bad.

To put the question to you: on the whole, would you say contemporary Middle-East culture is good or bad?

If you know anything of Middle-East culture you will have to resist the urge to respond with bad. You might take comfort, as my roommate did, by dismissing the question as being nonsensical. Nevertheless in your heart of hearts you know the answer. Certainly I can understand why people struggle with answering the question. The response makes them look ugly. Leaves them vulnerable to charges of; how did Jamie characterize me: “a biggot, an idiot, a racist and a simple-minded fool“. Quite a price to pay for uttering something that is so trivially true.

Analysis at such a broad level leads to the conclusion that Middle-East culture is bad. Sure we can analyze it in to different components and show that some parts are bad and others are not. But in the final analysis, when we aggregate everything together, when we give a cost benefit analysis of the culture in its entirety, we have to give it a thumbs down. The culture is just a little to intolerant (irony intended) of heterogeneity to be considered good.

Middle-East culture is not evil. Such terms are invariably used to censor valid counter arguments. Its much like using terms like ‘bigot’, ‘racist’, or ’simple minded fool’ to characterize a valid if not overly broad generalization about a culture. For the record i make no distinction between Christian or Muslim culture. Its not the Muslim faith that makes a culture bad. Cultures that are all about lethally enforcing homogeneity are bad whether they believe in Jesus Christ or Mohammad or they are still waiting on their prophet.

Demonstration of Lacking Good Sense

Your last paragraph captures perfectly what I’m trying to say. While President Ahmadinejad kills our soldiers and gives material support to terrorists we can’t judge why he does things until he we understand his perspective. Thus, it makes sense to refrain from judging him as bad and therefore not worthy of speaking until we can hear what he has to say. Oddly you freely admit what he says lack merit and yet you still want him to speak.

This is what is meant by lacking good sense. The virulent form of tolerance that restricts judging a demonstrably bad guy as bad all for the edification of a perspective you freely discredit. It just plain good sense to judge this guy bad and for that reason refuse to let him speak. Further analysis is just not needed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 29th, 2007 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Multiculturalism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.