Episode #043 - Transcript

Thank you for wanting to know more today than you did yesterday, and I hope you love the show.

The episode today is kind of a weird one. What I really want to do is talk about why tolerance was so important to Voltaire and the Enlightenment thinkers. And hopefully in that process we’ll understand a little bit more about ourselves and why we treat people the way that we do. I want to start by asking questions as usual. What comes to your mind when I say the word “tolerance?” What comes to your mind when you think about how tolerant you are towards the beliefs of other people and what you are personally willing to do in the name of ending intolerance in the world around you? What are you willing to do?

Now, keep these questions in mind. I’m about to read you a story. And the only thing I ask you to do when you’re listening to this story is to make a mental note of how you feel about the actions of the woman in question. Remember how you feel in your stomach. Because after I tell you the story, we’re going to look at tolerance from multiple different angles, and at the end of the show I’m going to ask you what you think about this woman again. Try to note any sort of changes that occur in the way that you feel towards the actions of this woman. And if at the end of the show there’s absolutely zero change made, then there’s two options. You’re either a super genius, one, or my show is absolutely terrible. And I think we’re both very aware of which one’s more likely out of those two.

So, anyway, I want to tell you a story about a bus driver. Let me take you back in time for a second. The year is 2008. The setting is a little town called Carmel, Indiana. And the woman in question is one Betty Campbell. She’s a bus driver. And up until about 3 pm on the day that this happened, pretty much everything was normal. The kids came onto her bus. She drove them to school. They went into class. They went to recess, lunch; they had their history exam. Then they got out of school, and Betty Campbell, like any other day, wants to drive them home. That’s her job, right? Just as a carpenter is supposed to make things out of wood, Betty Campbell is supposed to drive these kids home.

Now, as she’s driving these kids home from school that day, she overhears a conversation going on about three rows back from her. It’s between a girl named Rachel Zimmer and one of her classmates. And what they’re talking about is the upcoming election, the presidential campaign of Barak Obama versus John McCain. What a wonderful time in American history that was, tons of great cable news to watch, tons of divisive issues that could separate the country down the middle and make us hate each other for a while. What more could you ask for in an election cycle?

So, the bus driver overhears Rachel Zimmer talking about her political beliefs. She says that she would never vote for Barak Obama because of his positions on gay marriage and abortion. She just couldn’t do it. Now, the bus driver strongly disagrees with this. And there are many different things she could have done at this point to try to diffuse the situation or even just ignore it. But let’s talk about what she decided to do.

So, at this point, after hearing the girl talk about how she doesn’t want gays to be able to get married or women to be able to get abortions, she pulls over the bus; she pulls her little portable soap box out from underneath her overstuffed chair. And she begins to evangelize to the rest of the bus. She begins to publicly flog this girl for believing the stuff that she does. At one point she calls her a “stupid little bigot.” At one point she says that she will actually eat her alive if she says anything racist. It escalated pretty quickly.

Now, at this point, she gets off the soap box. She gets back in her overstuffed chair. She continues her route home. She drops everybody off including this girl. And at this point she decides to double back, stop at the girl’s house, bring her and her sister back up onto the bus, and continue to lambaste them for another half hour/45 minutes about how they’re wrong, she’s right, and they should change their opinion about what they believe. Eventually the girl breaks down and starts crying in the bus. The woman lets her out. Her parents call the school district. And eventually a lawsuit is filed later on.

But I want to add just kind of like an alternate ending to the story. Let’s say if at this point when the girl starts breaking down and crying, that’s not enough of a concession for the bus driver. Let’s say that she wants the girl to change her mind or else she’s not letting her get off that bus. Let’s say that the girl refuses to change what she believes. Let’s say the bus driver pulls the handle to lock the doors; she drives her creepy school bus behind a bale of hay or a barn or whatever they have in Carmel, Indiana, and she kills her. Bullet in the head, burned at the stake, beheading, whatever you feel like.

Now, let’s break down the story a little bit, okay? What would you have done in that very same situation? How far would you have been willing to go to change that person’s mind if you disagreed with them? Because there’s probably some point in the story that you agreed with the driver’s actions, but she crossed the line. See, the problem is, there’s many different layers to the story. She seems reasonable up until a certain point, and then she keeps vamping it up. She keeps taking more and more extreme measures to get her point across. As we peel back those layers, fewer and fewer people agree with what her reaction was until eventually, at the end—the director’s cut ending—she actually beheads the person for disagreeing with her. I’m pretty sure not many people listening to this show are going to agree with that. But let’s just break it down. Let’s look at the layers. You can identify where you stand in all of this, okay?

So, the first layer is at the beginning of the story when the bus driver’s just listening to the conversation going on behind her. The girl says something that she doesn’t agree with, something that’s very bigoted and intolerant in her opinion. Now, there is a certain percentage of people listening to this show right now that would react in this very same way. They would hear a belief that somebody holds that is actively causing harm to somebody else, and they would not say anything. They usually say, “Why should I? What business is it of mine what they think? I’m not going to take it upon myself to go and police everybody’s thoughts for the rest of my life. No, I don’t agree with them at all. But I’m going to let them make the mistakes that they have the right to make. I’m going to stay out of this one.”

Now, the second layer of the story is when the lady pulls over the bus, gets out her portable soap box, stands up, and begins publicly flogging the girl for believing what she believes in front of all of her classmates. Now, this may be a little extreme. The public flogging may have been a very extreme version of this layer. But what I’m talking about is, there’s a certain percentage of people who would hear someone say a belief that they think could potentially hurt themselves or others around them, and at that point they feel a sense of obligation to change that person’s mind, to approach them and at least try to do something good. You know, maybe they won’t get through to them in one conversation, but maybe they’ll chip away at the veneer. Eventually, enough people have that same mentality, that person will change their mind about it. This person would say, “Well, maybe I’ll fail, but I have to at least try, right? I’m going to feel terrible going on throughout my day knowing that this person feels this way.”

Now, the third layer of the story is when the lady finishes her route and actually decides to double back to the girl’s house, invite her and her sister back up onto the bus, and lambaste them for 30 to 45 minutes trying to the extent of her capabilities to change their opinion when it comes to gay marriage and abortion. Now, the equivalent here is that there’s a percentage of people out there listening to this show that when they hear someone say a belief that’s destructive to themselves or people around them, they would go to the extent of their capabilities to try to convince them otherwise. They wouldn’t let up after one conversation. They would keep pressing them relentlessly. And eventually, hopefully, they would change their mind about it. Or they would break down into tears, because that’s what happened.

Now, the fourth layer of this story is obviously the director’s cut ending. It is where the lady drives the school bus behind the barn and beheads her for believing what she believes. And I know there’s not many people listening to this right now—hopefully none—that would think this is a good tactic to go about dealing with intolerance. But think about it. You don’t got to go much further than the 5 o’clock news nowadays to find a group of people that are willing to behead or kill other groups of people that don’t agree with them simply because they believe that irradicating any opposing viewpoint is the proper way of dealing with that sort of thing.

Now, we all agreed with the bus driver’s decision-making up until a certain point in the story. The question I have for you is, which point was it for you? When did she cross the line in this story? The irony here, the deeper question that’s underneath this story—and it’s actually a famous question in philosophy—is, if you consider yourself to be a tolerant person, how intolerant should you be towards the intolerant? I mean, think about it. The reason this bus driver did anything, the reason she decided to pull over the bus and start publicly flogging this girl is because she heard the girl proudly supporting intolerant beliefs. So, her reaction to the intolerance was to call her names, threaten to eat her alive, silence her. She fought intolerance with intolerance. If tolerance is a virtue that you strive to emulate, then what, if any, obligation do you have when it comes to combatting other people’s intolerant beliefs?

And look, one thing I want to make clear right now, just real quick, because it’s a mistake that a lot of people make when they think about intolerance versus tolerance, is that when you say that you’re a tolerant person or that you strive to be as tolerant as possible, that doesn’t mean that you never disagree with anyone. Tolerance isn’t saying that everyone is right and no one is wrong. Tolerance is accepting that other beliefs exist and not taking action to silence or condemn people that disagree with you. There’s a big difference between that and merely disagreeing with someone, okay?

Now that we’re past that, look, if you live in a first-world country I would like to congratulate you right now. You live in one of the most tolerant societies that has ever existed in the history of the world. Just in my everyday life, I don’t see many people walking around, taking to the streets, championing the cause of intolerance. I mean, just going through my everyday life, I don’t see many people walking around on the street holding up signs proud of how intolerant they are towards other people’s beliefs. That’s just not how we do it in modern America. I mean, just the fact that the Westboro Baptist Church are wack jobs that are worthy of putting on the nightly news just goes to show you how rare that kind of behavior really is.

Maybe the best way to understand how important tolerance was to the Enlightenment thinkers is to give a little bit of historical context. So, bear with me for a second. In modern times we all fancy ourselves extremely tolerant people, don’t we? Being tolerant in today’s society is a paradigm. It is a virtue to strive for, especially the people listening to this show right now. You guys have to listen to a bunch of stuff that you disagree with. I mean, I do episodes on tons of philosophers that are opposite opinions of each other. You guys don’t stop listening to the show just because you don’t agree with something that’s said on this show. You guys are tolerant.

And we hear this all the time, people saying, “You know what? I’m cool, alright? I don’t care what race, culture, or creed you’re from. Do whatever you want! Why does it bother me? I’m going to mind my own business. You do your thing. That’s fine.” This is widely held as a very admirable and respectable way of viewing other people in the world. But unfortunately for the rest of human history it hasn’t always been this way.

Voltaire was living during a time period where being tolerant was seen as the opposite; it was seen as cowardice. Being ambivalent about the strongly held religious convictions of all the other people around you was seen as laziness. And there was a long history of this. There was a long dialogue within the church about just how much responsibility the average person had over the eternal fate of their neighbors or friends. Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, a few other people contributed too, but these people systematically made religious intolerance into a virtue.

And if there’s any part of you that’s confused about that, if there’s any part of you that’s confused about how they could sell something like that to the masses—you know, how could you ever convince the average person that they need to be unaccepting of the religious views of their friends? It just doesn’t make sense. Why would they ever do that?—well, let me explain where they’re coming from for a second because it’s actually not that crazy. Their thinking was, look, could you ever honestly see yourself passively sitting on the sidelines as your neighbors or friends burned to death in a house fire? No, if you heard them screaming inside their house and you could put up a ladder or do something to rescue them from that house fire, you’d do anything you could to save them. So, if that’s true, they argued, how could you ever justify sitting on the sidelines and just watching your friends and neighbors get condemned to the eternal house fire, you know, the house fire to end all house fires, hell, Satan’s cabana, whatever you want to call it?

Now, on that same note, during the time before Voltaire when people mostly lived under monarch rule, as a person living in one of those societies, you would never just sit around and watch your friend organize against the king or speak out against the king. No, you’d try to do something about it. If anything, you’d report him. But you’d try to change his mind and get him to fall in line, right? So, if that’s true, these people argued, why would you just sit around and watch your friend speak out and organize against the king of all kings, Lord God?

So, you can see where they’re coming from here. Intolerance was a virtue. It was an admirable thing to do. It’s really not that crazy. I mean, if in fact you truly believe that your friend is going to be sentenced to billions upon billions of years of torture, horrific torture, just for not having a few drops of water sprinkled on his head when he was a baby, why would you just sit around doing nothing about that? Doesn’t that make you a bad person? By the way, that was a widely held belief back then. And it’s no different than the sorts of arbitrary rituals that religious leaders say condemn you to hell in today’s world.

The point of this is to illustrate just how different the world was back during these times. Intolerance was a virtue, okay? We see the Westboro Baptist Church and their parading around on the streets with their signs, and that’s disgusting to us in today’s world. But just a few short centuries ago, what they were doing would have been seen as an incredibly selfless, virtuous act. Seriously, back then they were sacrificing all kinds of worldly pleasures in the name of showing their friends and neighbors the errors of their ways. There’s actually a part of me that really respects the Westboro Baptist Church, because even though I don’t agree with their particular viewpoints, you got to admire their conviction. You got to admire how motivated they have to be to get up, be hated by everybody around them, and continue to hammer that message home.

The point is, these people believe that they’re saving others from eternal damnation. It is an admirable thing that they’re doing. So, if you think about it that way, Voltaire and the rest of the Enlightenment thinkers had a giant task on their hands. I mean, imagine if all of Western Europe was populated by members of the Westboro Baptist Church. Just imagine that world for a second, okay? Like, first off, if you live in that world, good luck going down to a craft store and getting poster board any time soon. Poster board would be like bread in World War II. If you invested in poster board right before that world became a reality, you’d be rich. You’d be Mitt Romney.

But seriously, what sort of magical intervention would it take to change the way that they viewed intolerance towards other beliefs? Intolerance is a self-sustaining thing. Really, tolerance is the opposite of that. What we’re talking about here is actually a very important and very interesting paradox in philosophy, and it’s known as the paradox of tolerance. Lots of commentary on it, and it actually reminds me of something that we’ve talked about on the show before.

Protagoras in ancient Greece, the sophist, he has the famous beginning to his Refutations that man is the measure of all things, that there is no good or bad in the world, but man makes it so. There is no absolute good or bad or just or unjust, only what individual societies and people deem to be just or unjust. Now, the obvious contradiction here is that if everybody is right regardless of what they say, then what about the guy that says he’s right and everybody else is wrong? Either he’s wrong or Protagoras is wrong. Now, Protagoras’ position is known as relativism. And although it’s not the same as tolerance and what we’re talking about today, tolerance runs into a very similar problem when taken to the extreme.

There was a famous scientist and philosopher in the 20th century that we’re certainly going to be talking about in time. His name was Karl Popper, and I think he does a really good job at shining a lantern on the inherent problem that arises if we simplify things down to, you know, tolerance is good, intolerance is bad. Is it really that simple? Karl Popper says no. He says, “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed and tolerance with them.”

So, think about what Karl Popper is saying here. If all the governments of the world had a meeting one day, you know, a big tolerance summit, and they decided from this day forward we’re all going to be tolerant of any set of beliefs regardless of what they are, then that eventually, as Karl Popper says, destines tolerance to be destroyed. Because if the tolerant are always tolerant towards people who are intolerant, then eventually the intolerant gain followers and power, and they are intolerant towards the people who are tolerant. And those tolerant people are going to sit by and be accepting on the sidelines of all the intolerant people who will continue to gain power and eventually do away with the tolerant. Sounds like a tongue twister, but it makes sense if you think about it.

The important thing to consider here is that even though you may strive as hard as you can to be a tolerant person in your everyday life, is absolute tolerance really what you’re going for as an individual? Is tolerance taken to the extreme, tolerant about anything no matter what it is, is that really something that we should be striving for as a society? I would argue no. I would argue that every single person listening to this right now actually is a much more intolerant person than they realize. In fact, I would argue that whether you realize it or not, there are hundreds of sets of beliefs that you work towards eliminating every single day when you just clock into your job.

Let’s talk about this for a second, okay? There are people out there in the world right now that hold a strong belief that killing people that do something wrong to you is not a bad thing to do, that murder is okay as a course of retribution. Are you tolerant of that belief that they hold? Here’s another example. There are people out there right now that believe that molesting children is perfectly okay, that that should be well within their rights. Are you tolerant of this belief that they hold?

In fact, what are our laws other than just a collectively agreed upon set of intolerances? Don’t we all actively pay into a system that’s designed to prevent certain beliefs of certain people from coming to fruition? We do! Our structure of government is a tyranny of the majority, right? There are so many people out there—including me and hopefully everybody listening to this—that murderers, child molesters, drunk drivers, all these people should not be able to exercise their beliefs that that’s okay. And we’ve created a society where if they do walk down the street and wantonly kill someone, we throw them in a cell for the rest of their life. That is intolerance plain and simple.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that rapists and murderers should be able to walk the streets, but let’s call it what it is. For every law that you agree with, you are intolerant of a set of beliefs because of that. And the point of this is that it’s not as cut and dry as just saying, “Tolerance is a good thing; intolerance is a bad thing.” But it’s okay. You shouldn’t want to be tolerant in every single situation. And on that same note, intolerance can actually be a great thing sometimes. And pure tolerance, if you take it to the extreme, that inevitably leads to the downfall of tolerance like Karl Popper pointed out.

So, if we can’t hover around these extremes as individuals, we’re all presented with a very difficult choice. And it’s one that we’re going to analyze today. What criteria do you use to determine how tolerant you’re going to be towards a set of beliefs? Because there has to be a criteria. If there’s no criteria, then you just walk around—like, have you guys ever known somebody like this or, I mean, at least imagine somebody that assigns themself the burden of policing the beliefs of everybody that disagrees with them about anything. Just imagine how miserable that life would be. Someone with no filter, they never pick their battles about anything, not just religious beliefs or cultural beliefs; I’m talking down to the most basic beliefs.

Like, let’s say they’re a fan of Hot Pockets, and they see somebody in the breakroom eating a Lean Pocket. “You know, you really shouldn’t eat Lean Pockets. Hot Pockets taste better than Lean Pockets, and Hot Pockets have more calories per cost, and they both cost the same. So that’s more calorie to cost ratio efficiency. And you really should just eat half a Hot Pocket instead of a full Lean Pocket.” No, how maddening would that be? Just walking around, everybody that you see that disagrees with you, you tell them what you think they’re doing wrong. Nobody listening to this would advocate going around spending your entire life just trying to change people’s minds about stuff like that.

So, we need a criteria. Which criteria do we use to determine when we step in and try to enforce laws against opposing viewpoints? Now, there’s something I said in the “Belief” episode about every belief that we hold that’s actually very relevant here. Every belief that we hold is a leap of faith, but not all leaps of faith are created equal. I think one of the main things that we use to distinguish between all these different leaps of faith that we make is how much they hurt ourselves and the other people around us.

Now, most people when they’re answering this question of when a particular leap of faith that we make needs to be policed or have laws enacted against it or they need to step in and try to change someone’s mind about it—usually that comes when it starts to hurt themselves or other people. You’re right to swing your fist ends where the other guy’s nose begins. Do whatever you want just as long as it doesn’t hurt me or anybody else around us.

Now, on that note, most Christians in today’s world wouldn’t want to outlaw atheism. If they could just push a button and atheism would be illegal, most of them don’t think that you should be killed or locked in a prison for just not believing in God. I mean, after all, if the atheist is wrong about it, isn’t he really only hurting himself in the long run? And in that same way, most atheists don’t have a problem with most modern denominations of Christianity. They see them as completely benign. They don’t walk out and evangelize against people. They don’t crusade. Their problem with that leap of faith comes when they start to nail people to a wooden X who disagree with them. In the long run, ultimately, if the Christian is wrong about what they believe, they’re only hurting themselves. Why should the atheist worry about that? Pure intolerance is a fascist dictatorship, and pure tolerance is a lawless anarchy.

Now, what Voltaire is trying to do with the power of the pen during his time is to move away from the old ideas of intolerance being a virtue and usher in a world of religious tolerance on a government level. But although Voltaire’s focusing on the benefits of tolerance when it comes to maintaining order in a government or a state, the message that he’s sending here is also extremely interesting to think about when it comes to how we treat each other in our personal lives, especially considering the fact that our government is so connected to the opinion of the masses.

I mean, think about it. We live in a representative republic. Our lawmakers and our laws for that matter—you know, the collectively agreed-upon set of intolerances that we choose—are chosen by tyranny of the majority. We’re in a democracy. Like, let’s do a thought experiment real quick, alright? Let’s pretend that 99% of everybody in the United States thought that gay marriage was not only wrong but that it should be outlawed; there should be a law against it, preventing people from getting married. They would go to the ballot box, and they would reflect that opinion in the people that they elect. Those people would pass laws against it, and the 1% of people that thought there was nothing wrong with gay marriage, well, they would feel like the 1% of people that think there’s nothing wrong with murder in our current society.

The fact is, the intolerances that people carry around on a personal level shape the society that we live in. It’s our system of government. Over the years as people have become more and more comfortable with gay marriage and more people are thinking that it shouldn’t be outlawed, the resistance at the ballot box has died down. Eventually, there’s large enough pockets of people that aren’t intolerant of it anymore, and in certain states they’ve passed laws where it’s allowed. Eventually, if the momentum continues in that direction, the sentiment spreads to the majority of the country, and it’s passed at a federal level.

The only difference between the old world where gay marriage was illegal and the new world where gay marriage is legal is a shifting of public opinion about what they’re going to be intolerant towards. And that shifting of public opinion is really just millions of people shifting their own personal intolerances. Something interesting to think about is that this goes for anything. If enough people believed that murder was okay, if we lived in a world where 99% of people believed that murder was okay, we could truly live in a world where people walked around on the street, you know, two guys have a disagreement about something at The Home Depot like the price of a shovel, one guy gets beaten to death with a shovel, and nothing happens.

Consider the fact that this could both be extremely worrying and extremely empowering at the same time. And the reason it’s empowering is that the only thing stopping you from living in the exact country that you want to live in is a few million people being convinced one way or another about their intolerances. Think about that. Think about how possible that is.

Like, have you ever had a conversation with somebody—a friend, maybe—who was intolerant towards a certain group of people, a coworker? And after having a few conversations with you, they eventually start coming around, shifting their intolerances? Well, isn’t this all that Voltaire did on a massive scale with his writing during his lifetime? Think about how powerful that is. Think about the potential if everybody had those conversations.

Look, that’s not to say that this is always going to work. There are definitely people out there that are a lost cause. Trust me, I know. To be honest, there’s just a lot of people out there that aren’t willing to listen to opposing viewpoints. They believe what they believe because it’s what they’ve always believed. And the last thing they’re going to do is take an honest look in the mirror, because then, then they’d have to stop clinging to this much easier, oversimplified way of looking at the world. And that’s scary to them.

Well, let’s go back to the beginning of the episode, okay? Now that we’ve talked about the power of engaging people, now that we’ve talked about how changing the mind of somebody that holds beliefs that are hurting people currently, how that could only be one conversation away, let’s consider the initial question again. How intolerant are you willing to be towards intolerance? How far are you willing to go? Let’s think about the bus driver again. She vehemently believed that the views of this high school girl were bigoted and intolerant towards gay people and women. She truly believed that the prejudices that she held were actively causing people harm. Paradise is a conversation away, and knowing that you have that power given our structure of government, how far are you willing to go to change the mind of someone who holds intolerances that are hurting others?

Look, the fact is, the bus driver didn’t do the director’s cut ending to our story. She didn’t actually drive the girl behind the barn and behead her for not believing what she believed. She declared a war of ideas. And look, I don’t condone what the bus driver did at all. It’s a 17-year-old girl. I severely question her judgment when it comes to who she’s declaring it against. But it definitely gives you a different perspective. Maybe this bus driver had good intentions. Maybe it wasn’t driven out of anger and hostility. And it’s really not that much different than what Voltaire supports all throughout his philosophical letters. Voltaire was kind of like a general in this war of ideas that was going on. And lucky for us, Voltaire won the battle of tolerance.

Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next time.