Tolerance
Yip – this is the one that gets me in trouble.
Fair warning - this will offend.
Recently there has been a movie showing called Zootopia.
It’s a reasonable movie, OK for a kids’ film; I give it a solid 6.5/10. Now
while the CGI is good and the voice acting is also well done, there is a
message that screams louder than anything else, the message of tolerance. In
this world one must accept that anyone can do anything and that everyone must
be respected.
I have a problem with this.
I don’t think that anyone can do anything. I think that
there are people out there that absolutely could not do my job. In turn, I
think that there a jobs that I absolutely could not do. I don’t think that
everyone should be treated equally because not everyone is equal. There are those
who cannot teach a class of advanced microbiology; I’m one of them. There are
also those who would not be able to do a full day of manual labour. I’m one of
those as well.
Now most people (I think) would agree with me on these
points; we don’t, for instance, want our local plumber training brain surgeons.
Indeed, I think that most of us would accept that plumbing and brain surgery
are two very different skillsets, and no matter how good a brain surgeon the
person might be, when your toilet is clogged they are far from your first call.
Why, then, do we aspire to treat everyone the same? Why do
we give everyone the same standard tests? And why do we insist that everyone
should have the same say when it comes to, say, road networks or refugee intakes?
Now here’s where it starts to get tricky. Due to my belief
that not everyone should be treated equally in all things, it follows that
everyone should not have the same rights. For example, I don’t think that
everyone should have the right to vote. I don’t think that they should because
I don’t think that everyone can make an informed decision on who can run
things. Now before you go railing at me – you think so as well. You don’t think
that everyone should be allowed to drive; you think that before someone gets to jump
behind the wheel of a potentially dangerous car they should pass a standardised
test. So why should it be any different before you get behind the curtain of a
voting booth? Driving a bus, you may affect the lives of, at most, 60 people. The
person behind the voting booth has the power to affect the entire country. So
then, why should we let just anyone vote?
Now once you’ve started down this road it becomes very easy
to keep going. Why must I tolerate your tolerance? Why do I have to accept all
the things you accept? I don’t agree with many things that you might agree
with. I don’t agree that the LGBT community should be celebrated the way it is.
I don’t agree that I should have to accept everyone – there are, believe it or
not, things that I just don’t like. Let me put it this way: I don’t like
pumpkin. It’s foul. I don’t want it on my plate and I don’t want to have to eat
it just to make someone else happy that they cooked it. I would rather people
didn’t cook pumpkin.
My wife on the other hand quite likes pumpkin; she cooks it
in most of the roasts she makes; she has it on her plate and enjoys eating it.
So you know what we do? We agree to disagree. I think she’s wrong and she
thinks I’m wrong. We used to fight about it, but she is still wrong.
Tolerance has come to mean that I must accept my wife’s view
of pumpkin, that I must agree with it and that I must accept it to be true and
I must myself come to like pumpkin, to stand for a pumpkin’s right to be on my
plate and to be eaten. Sounds a bit silly, right?
Why should I stand for any of pumpkin’s “rights” when I
wholeheartedly disagree with them? Why should I go out of my way to help
Pumpkin when I don’t like its very existence?
Now many people will rail against this particular rant, almost
like they are tolerant of my views, like they insist that I fall in line with
their beliefs. But when I spout my theories, they are allowed to not only
disagree with them but feel that they have some right to tell me I’m wrong.
I disagree. It
doesn’t really matter about what in the end; I’m just not going to tow the
party line on everything because people say that I have to. I disagree.
