Tolerance is a word that gets thrown around an awful lot nowadays. Tolerance of other religions, other races, other lifestyles. Generally, if you are more liberal about life, you will associate tolerance with acceptance and equality. If you are less liberal, you might define tolerance as dealing with the fact that other opinions and other points of view exist, but not necessarily supporting or agreeing with them. In the eyes of the more liberal individual, the conservative definition of tolerance isn't very tolerant at all. And, furthermore, the lack of intolerance on the part of the conservative is, well, intolerable. Pretty much the only thing a liberal individual won't tolerate is intolerance. And all the while the conservative views the pressure to tolerate (AKA support) as discriminatory and unfair.
Of course, this isn't across the board. There are plenty of examples of tolerant and gleefully accepting conservatives and and intolerant and bigoted liberals. In Europe there are many political ideologies which fall into the category of "Liberal Conservatism" which currently refers to a culturally, socially liberal ideology combined with fiscal conservatism. And we've all heard the derisive and hateful slurs hurled by various liberal groups at anyone who opposes their agenda; labeling them homophobes, racists and regressives to shut them down and destroy any hope of civilized discussion of the issue at hand.
However, beyond the media, the pundits, the politicians and the activist groups, there are people- ordinary people- both liberal and conservative, as well as those, like myself, who are somewhere in the middle. And we all interact with each other, day in and day out. We generally keep our opinions to ourselves, upholding the tradition of not discussing religion or politics in mixed company. Those of us with more traditional manners, may go years without divulging our true feelings about a single political position, and we may never know where our friends stand on the issues either.
Enter, social media. With the advent of Myspace and Facebook, and more recently, Twitter, we can now disregard these vows of silence and proudly proclaim our love and hate for candidates, or support or disapproval of political issues and our take on religion at large across the Web. People who would otherwise never discuss politics might now feature a presidential logo as their profile picture or post articles covering the political fumbles of a politician they disagree with. And even if they aren't bold enough to do this, Facebook will now announce which articles a user has been reading. A daily dose of Fox news coverage or a dozen articles on marriage equality will give away even a politically silent poster.
But what about the real world? What about people, crossing paths daily? Casual acquaintances, coworkers, friends of friends, teachers, doctors? Now that we can know the politics and religion of every person we meet, how do we fare? How tolerant can you be when you discover that you are the lone Republican in your knitting group? How tolerant can you be as the only Democrat in the PTA? When you now know that everyone in your carpool voted yes on that proposition you adamantly opposed, how do you act?
For me, I feel a deep connection to my beliefs. I believe I'm right. To be honest, we all do. We would believe differently if that weren't the case. But when we now know that people whose company we had enjoyed hold "wrong" beliefs, does anything change?
My social media experiences have brought out the worst in me. I have felt attacked, wounded and betrayed by people simply because they've "come out" politically and I was surprised. Or maybe I wasn't, but the fact that it's now out in the open makes me think they are an activist. A casual liberal or conservative is one thing, but someone who posts antagonistic posts about politician I like, or demeaning blogs ranting about people who support positions I support? That feels personal. It turns out, I'm not all that tolerant. I have to step away from political posters on Facebook and unfollow certain people on Twitter when election season approaches or when a particularly controversial piece of legislature looms.
What about you? If you zeroed in on that one political adversary in your congregation, your classroom, your neighborhood. If they posted articles blasting your party, your position, your candidate. If you knew that they thought the absolute worst of your "kind" would you, could you be okay?
No comments:
Post a Comment