16 replies to this topic

[nishuonly]

I am a tolerant person.

What should be my reaction when I encounter intolerance?

you are contradicting yourself in the question. How can you encounter intolerance if you are tolerant at the first place?

By encountering people.

Not all people in the world are tolerant people.

A tolerant person might meet a person that is not tolerant.
And it may be impossible to simply walk away.

For example
[a] business colleague
[b] family member

yeah, you are right about [a] for me I'm not enough tolerant with respect to [a].

I think the absoluteness of the sentence "I am a tolerant person." screws the situations.

Well, You are a tolerant person with respect to what? If it means all, then you cant encounter intolerance from within. Now since you are encountering the 'intolerance" so I assume that you are not really tolerant to that situation. In that case, you should NOT tolerate it, 'cause you were intolerant at the first place itself.

[Martini]

Encountering intolerant person doesn't mean you are encountering intolerance.

What I meant was not only encountering an intolerant person, but encountering an intolerant person being intolerant.

I would take intolerance as an implicit quality of a person, not "the situation" created by some circumstances. If you face (i would say feel) intolerance you are not tolerant.

You are making slight changes to what you said earlier. You said,

"How can you encounter intolerance if you are tolerant at the first place?"

You just said "I would take intolerance as an implicit quality of a person"

It is possible to encounter a person with that quality and acting intolerant. According to you, one can't face a person being intolerant without being intolerant himself. You have given no reason why.

Bonanova clearly meant that encountering intolerance is seeing or sensing intolerant actions by people around him, not being the person being intolerant.

[nishuonly]

Encountering intolerant person doesn't mean you are encountering intolerance.

What I meant was not only encountering an intolerant person, but encountering an intolerant person being intolerant.

I would take intolerance as an implicit quality of a person, not "the situation" created by some circumstances. If you face (i would say feel) intolerance you are not tolerant.

You are making slight changes to what you said earlier. You said,

"How can you encounter intolerance if you are tolerant at the first place?"

You just said "I would take intolerance as an implicit quality of a person"

It is possible to encounter a person with that quality and acting intolerant. According to you, one can't face a person being intolerant without being intolerant himself. You have given no reason why.

I'm not making changes to what I said earlier..its just that you didnt understand what I said earliler and what I said next, you couldn't (properly) correlate it with what I said earlier.

intolerance - an implicit quality of a person. This is specific to person only.
encountering intolerance - getting intolerant. ( It doesn't mean that you are meeting some intolerant person, as you are emphasizing again and again. Thats exactly NOT what i meant.)

How can you encounter intolerance if you are tolerant at the first place? - are you tolerant or not (when tolerance is taken in absolute manner? )

Bonanova clearly meant that encountering intolerance is seeing or sensing intolerant actions by people around him, not being the person being intolerant.

Thats exactly what I meant. You can not generalize quality "intolerance" with people (or decided set of correct notions). Thats not the quality of people, its a quality of individual.
If you sense intolerance (which is feeling within you, not that the ACT is intolerant in "general"), you are obviously not tolerant to it. so the question is whether you are tolerant or not?

[Martini]

intolerance - an implicit quality of a person. This is specific to person only.
encountering intolerance - getting intolerant. ( It doesn't mean that you are meeting some intolerant person, as you are emphasizing again and again. Thats exactly NOT what i meant.)

You can't just claim that encountering intolerance means you yourself must be getting intolerant and have us buy that.

I would bet the majority of people (and more importantly, bonanova) would define encountering intolerance as encountering another person acting intolerant. I can't see anyone describing himself as encountering intolerance when he acts intolerant, he would describe himself as being intolerant. Tell someone that you encountered intolerance today and the last person they'll think was the source of it is you.

[bonanova]

Encountering intolerant person doesn't mean you are encountering intolerance. I would take intolerance as an implicit quality of a person, not "the situation" created by some circumstances. If you face (i would say feel) intolerance you are not tolerant.

Precisely in accord with the OP.

A tolerant person encounters a person who possesses the implicit quality of intolerance.

A person who already possesses a quality would hardly be said to encounter it [within himself].

You may say "feel", but the OP said "encounter".

...mumbles to himself: One thing I can't tolerate is people who can't tolerate my perfect English usage ....

[unreality]

So you meet someone who is intolerate... I would say if you really are tolerant you wouldn't recognize them as intolerant in the first place.

But say you do, and your thing is to be tolerant of people's beliefs and try not to change them. That doesn't mean you want people to think like you. So I say leave the intolerant person be.. or am I confusing the meaning of "tolerant"?

[Writersblock]

if you really are tolerant you wouldn't recognize them as intolerant in the first place.

I'm not sure this is logically sound. Just because you are tolerant doesn't mean you wouldn't recognize intolerance. In fact, if one were absolutely tolerant, they would likely be hypersensitive to the intolerance, they would just choose to tolerate the intolerance.

If I am a staunch heterosexual, would I therefore not recognize homosexuality?

If I am honest absolutley, would I therefore never recognize dishonesty?

I'm not trying to call you out, I just don't see how you connect absolute tolerance with a blindedness to intolerance.