After talking to as many people as I can these past few years, it dawned on me at one point that a lot of people seem to be confused about the concept of tolerance and how it manifest in their lives. What I mean is that, there are times where I observed people who were seemingly very interested or endorsing the idea of tolerance on diversity don’t seem to exhibit any of such qualities. And while things were happening, at one point, I started to question the feasibility of the whole idea about “tolerance on diversity”.
Is there such a thing as an automatic diversity?
During a course of couple of years, I noticed that most people I had conversation with often assumed that just by having a lot of friends from different racial or religious background, they’re automatically entitled to have a tolerance to diversity. And as much as I’d like that idea, unfortunately however, this is not always the case, especially when you take religious diversity into account. I believe, this is where the difficult part comes in.
We all know that when it comes to religious beliefs — no matter how mild it could sound sometimes— are often held with the utmost and unshakeable conviction, to the point that it’s easy to make people upset the moment you start to question about their religious beliefs. No, you don’t even have to invalidate their beliefs—even by asking some simple, non-threatening questions, from what I’ve seen so far, you could really make people rather uncomfortable talking to you from that moment onward and vice-versa.
Now — while we can agree that having friends from various cultural and religious background does help kindling tolerance towards diversity, there are just way too many times that I noticed the people who have diverse friends do not always seem to exhibit the kind of tolerance they often thought they have. This is of course not to say that they are intolerant, but what was apparent is that, these people seem to perceive their coincidental opportunity and mere blind luck of meeting a lot of people from different backgrounds and befriend them casually, makes for a kind of irrefutable ground to entitle themselves as someone who are “tolerant to diversity” without questioning further whether they actually have that sort of value in the first place.
So, what is the appropriate grounds for diversity then, if we can’t take our own social experiences into account?
Just to get something out of the way, I am not by any means trying to imply that you can’t grow tolerance towards the idea of diversity by getting out and make friends with people — that is certainly one of the many ways you could achieve such ideal, if you are so inclined to do so. However, the fact still remains that being “born into” a diverse culture is a completely different thing than “getting into” a diverse culture by decision.
You see, being in a multicultural society here in Southeast Asia (specifically my country Indonesia, which is very diverse), we often take it for granted and don’t question a lot of differences that we already have as a nation from day one. From island to island, most of us are very much used to different cultures and religious backgrounds of different people living here, and nothing seem to be wrong with these differences as we have lived this way for decades. This is of course, a very good thing, since because of that (positive) ignorance, we seem to be able to live in some sort of peace with each other. However, problem usually starts to come in when we have to need to make a serious conversation against someone with such a huge difference in perspective and belief system — so different, sometimes it hurts.
This, I believe, is where the test of tolerance to diversity comes in. I’d presume that in the modern world we are today, as a civilized, mentally matured, intellectual human beings, you’d think that we can bridge those artificial differences by engaging in healthy conversation and discussion. However, as much as I don’t like to admit it, this is — unfortunately — not the case at all for some, if not most cases.
Surprisingly (or not) when it comes to discussion like this, people are very often forced into a position of “agree to disagree” — which sometimes, could be the most reasonable position on its own, given that it is a mutual resolution that came out from a discussion. However, truth to be told, I have found that behind all that smile and apparent agreeableness people have towards many differences we have, lies somewhere a vile hypocrisy in the hearts of many.
If that’s too much to imagine, let me ask you this: Have you ever wondered, why is it that people seem to be more easily resort to get together in like-minded groups and talk bad about other people behind their backs, than to engage in healthy conversation? Also, why is it easier for some public speakers to get into a stage or national TV and yap about the inferiority of other people’s values and beliefs than to discuss openly about how they can bridge those differences? I’ve always wondered about that. This is especially true when people start to talk about personal, deeply held religious values — there seem to be no way to make people sit there and just listen to one another without getting upset about the littlest things other people are saying. I just don’t know why this sort of thing happens all the time. It could get so bad at certain points, that it is unbelievably disturbing when some of these people could actually have the nerve to demand “tolerance “ from others while showing absolutely none towards other people.
Like any human virtue such as integrity, I do believe tolerance has to be nurtured for it to happen.
Whether we realize it or not, I’d argue that tolerance is not something that flourish from ignorance of differences. I found that this is where people often get everything backwards. Putting it in another way, living in an illusion of peace is a completely different thing from living in mutual understanding of differences we have. Illusion — like anything imaginary — is easily burst by slight poke of a finger, which is exactly why we can’t seem to get past some of our very fundamental problems we have as social beings.
I’d argue that tolerance, like any human virtue, is never automatic, unlike what many people like to believe to make themselves feel better. It is honed, like a skill, by deep thoughts and rigorous discussions about all the differences we could collect among people in one population or environment, and properly taking into account the solution that can be generated towards a more tolerant society. And when I say “discussion”, what I meant by that is a healthy room full of people with different backgrounds, rich of healthy arguments where each and every party is prepared to change their mind shall they be proven wrong, not the kind of discussion where you gather a group of people discussing about other people’s beliefs among their own circle and thinking they’re doing tolerance in diversity a favor. Unfortunately however, the former started to sound more and more imaginary as I typed it out. That is how bad it is now.
Maybe I’m cynical, but when it comes to this sort of topic, it’s hard not to say things without sounding so. Fact is, I’ve met people who — by the way they explain themselves and their values—seem to exhibit a kind of inflated sense of self and narrow-mindedness without actually realizing it. Who think that their values are superior than any other just because their religion told them so. Who prefer to mingle with people of their own self-righteous little circle. Who say things like tolerance and respect while at the same time making nasty remarks about other people’s way of doing things. Oh yeah, and they call themselves tolerant to diversity.
I don’t want to make this sound so depressing for people by laying things down like this. It’s just, looking at the way things are this way, it’s difficult not to be feel disappointed with the situation we currently have as a society, which often claims to be peace-loving. Bridging these artificial differences definitely is not easy, but I believe that — as naive as this might sound — by working together as a society and taking one step at a time, it’s imaginable that we can surely get this done and over with one way or another. Still, that could only happen if we are to put our collective minds to it. Otherwise, all these talk about tolerance towards diversity, in my opinion, adds up to nothing more than just platitudes designed solely to make us feel better about ourselves.
Final words
I can’t help but to reference the saying that have been consistently circulated on the internet which says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”, which I think, where we are now today — we kept on banging on mere platitudes and doing lip service without actually doing anything real about it. Well, then again, when I think about it, not that this whole fiasco is particularly strange nor off-mark, since we are still talking about human beings. It’s just after all these years, I have to say it’s still very difficult to get used to it when it hits you right on the face.
All in all, if we are to keep on doing the same thing over and over and expect different results — by prioritizing self-indulgence and self-righteousness over nurturing understanding and attempting compromise —it’s hard to say if we will ever graduate collectively as human beings. Such an ironic fate for us this way, being the supposedly most intelligent species on the planet.
Being said all that, I’m in no way saying that I’m the most tolerant person on planet earth, nor the perfect role model for the job. My point is that, by paying close attention, at the very least I can tell the difference between people who are tolerant and people who are anything but tolerant. It didn’t really take much practice to tell — it is not rocket science. You just have to be keen enough to spot the difference.
— Teguh Li
Personal Note: The article went through major revision on March 11, 2018. Basically content stays pretty much the same, but with some paragraphs edited in and out for coherence and better flow on storytelling. I’ll leave it at that for the time being.
I also put up my content on Quora. I am no longer active there as of January 2018, but you can still check them by following the link below.
