If there is one thing people seem to agree upon in American society, it is that being inclusive and tolerant are good things, and being exclusive and intolerant are bad things. Labeling something inclusive and tolerant means that it is positive, healthy, and good, while labeling something as intolerant means that it is beyond the pale of morality and decency. However, this widespread rhetoric of our society indicating that tolerance is always good and intolerance is always bad is arbitrary, incoherent, and deeply problematic. The reality is, everyone is intolerant of certain things and exclusive towards certain people in different situations in their lives. In fact, intolerance and exclusion are necessary for any human community to exist and function.
Communities and Societies
A group of people by itself does not make a community. A large number of people next to each other, if they have nothing in common, is not a community but a crowd. In order for a community to exist, people must be gathered around common values and/or goals. They can then work together for the sake of a commonly agreed-upon good. A family is a community that gathers around the health and wellbeing, economic and otherwise, of the household. A group of friends is a community formed around the relatively simple values of treating each other well and enjoying one another’s company. People can be members of numerous communities of varying significance that have to do with different aspects of their life. A group of coworkers can form a community gathered around the common goal of running a business. Members of a political organization can form a community gathered around shared political goals. Members of a religious community gather around shared religious beliefs and practices.
Theoretically, a liberal democratic nation state like the United States creates a society in which people can live with each other while having different values and pursuing different goals in their “pursuit of happiness.” However, in practice, it is impossible for a peaceful, stable society to exist without at least a minimum of certain shared values in place. All societies must have certain agreed-upon moral values, or at least a certain agreed-upon conception of justice, in order to function without descending into chaos. Thus, society itself is a kind of community, even though it is a community that, theoretically, attempts to allow for the greatest amount of freedom and diversity of goals and values. It is a community that is broad and overarching in scope, but at the same time is relatively superficial in the depth of community it creates.
Communities, Intolerance, and Exclusion
So what does all this have to do with exclusion and intolerance? Well, if communities are gathered around common values and/or goals, then communities necessarily must be intolerant and exclusive towards certain behaviors and people. Otherwise, communities would cease to exist.
Let’s begin with tolerance. It sounds nice to say that communities should always be tolerant towards everyone’s behavior. However, if communities only exist where people are gathered around shared values and/ or goals, then it is absolutely necessary for communities to be intolerant of behavior that contradicts those values or goals, since this behavior is harmful to the community. A family should not tolerate behavior that is harmful to the wellbeing of the household. A group of friends should not tolerate someone betraying one of their friends. A community of coworkers should not tolerate someone acting against the interests of the business. As for society, it should not and does not tolerate robbery, assault, murder, and other such crimes; if it did so, society would soon descend into anarchy and cease to exist.
It sounds nice to say that communities should always be inclusive and in favor of diversity. However, if, as has been established, communities must be intolerant of behavior that contradicts the values or goals of the community, then it follows that communities must also exclude people who demonstrate that they are not on board with the values or goals of the community. For example, a Muslim community must exclude from their community someone who announces that they have become a Christian, and a Christian community must exclude from their community someone who announces that they have become a Muslim. A group of friends must exclude from their community someone who repeatedly harms the other members and demonstrates that they are not truly a friend. If a community allows people who actively work against the values and goals of the community to remain within the community, then that community will become meaningless and will soon effectively cease to exist.
To apply this analysis to society, society should not be and is not inclusive of robbers, murderers, and other such criminals. Instead, society excludes these people by imprisonment (or sometimes execution). Society cannot be inclusive of everyone. Unless it wants to descend into anarchy, a society must exclude people who demonstrate that they are not on board with the values of the society.
When to Be Tolerant?
As we have seen, the idea that tolerance and inclusiveness are always good things is arbitrary, incoherent, and deeply problematic. The fact is, everyone is intolerant of certain behaviors and exclusive towards certain people. And that’s a good thing! Communities (and thus society) cannot exist without intolerance and exclusion.
Thus, it is not at all helpful to advocate “tolerance,” “inclusiveness,” and “diversity” in the abstract. Instead, we need to ask the question, “What should we tolerate? Whom should we include? And why?” Our answer to these questions will depend on what community we are talking about and what the values and goals of that community are. For example, a religion may require total devotion and commitment to a set of high ethical standards based on its religious teachings. Thus, the religious community will not tolerate deviation from those high ethical standards, and will exclude those who demonstrate they are not committed to the religion’s way of life. In contrast, a group of friends is gathered around the relatively simple values of treating each other well and enjoying one another’s company. Thus, it will be much more tolerant of a wide range of beliefs and behaviors, as long as they do not contradict those relatively simple values.
Neither tolerance nor intolerance are good or bad in and of themselves. It all depends on what community we are talking about and what the values and goals of that community are. Since everyone is a part of multiple communities, we may need to be tolerant of something in one aspect of our lives and intolerant of it in another. We may need to be inclusive of someone with respect to one community we are a part of, and exclusive towards them with respect to another community.
So what place do tolerance and inclusion have in society? As mentioned previously, society itself is a kind of community, and so must be intolerant towards certain behaviors and exclusive towards certain people. It is not at all self-evident what these things should be, since there is no universal morality, and the ethical values of our society are a kind of compromise produced by the consensus of various communities and traditions as their beliefs overlap. Some things which were once tolerated in American society (for example, slavery, and then racial segregation) are no longer tolerated, and most Americans believe this is a sign of moral progress. It is not at all helpful to say that being tolerant and inclusive are good things; people need to be able to explain and articulate exactly what society should tolerate and what it should not, and why. Ethical disagreements about these questions are inevitable, but we need to be able to have these ethical discussions, rather than just simplistically using “tolerant” and “inclusive” as labels indicating that something is good.
Tolerating Intolerance
As a liberal democratic nation state, the United States seeks to create a relatively tolerant society that allows a great deal of freedom without government interference. Tolerance by definition means disagreeing with a person’s beliefs and actions, but allowing them to think and act in that way anyway. Thus, if we want a relatively tolerant society, we must be able to live in the same society as other people, while disagreeing with their actions. Part of this means recognizing and respecting the fact that people in other communities with different values from us will be intolerant of behaviors that we believe are acceptable and exclusive towards people that we do not believe are doing anything wrong. Demanding that these communities be more tolerant and inclusive, even though this would contradict these communities’ own values, is not an example of tolerance; it is an example of intolerance. If we want a relatively tolerant society, we must respect the freedom of communities to be intolerant and exclusive in accordance with their own sincerely held values, even as society as a whole is tolerant of these behaviors and inclusive of these people.