this video is sponsored by skillshare expand practice and improve your creativity through their curated online classes the first 500 people to use my link in the description will receive a free one-month trial Most of us believe that open-mindedness and tolerance are good things. Most of us believe that we are open-minded and tolerant. Throughout our lives, we are repeatedly told in different contexts to do and see things in an open-minded way. As a child, we were likely told to be open-minded about trying new foods and going to new places. As a teenager, we were likely told to be open-minded (at least in so many words) about doing something new or outside our comfort zone. And throughout our whole life, we have likely been told to be open-minded about different kinds of people, cultures, opinions, and ideologies that perhaps we aren’t accustomed to or don’t personally like. Of course, in many cases, open-mindedness and tolerance are in fact very good qualities that are crucial to so many things—learning, growing, loving, sympathizing, accepting, and coexisting. But far less considered is the fact that open-mindedness and tolerance can also be terrible things. Consider the following thought experiment. *** You and a few other people are forming an organization in your community. Its title is The Tolerance and Antidiscrimination Group. Its goal is to fight discrimination and intolerance through a variety of initiatives—like discussions, education, policy, fundraising, and so on. The response is fantastic. A huge number of people want to join. In fact, at least one or more individuals from every belief system, worldview, gender, race, sexuality, national origin, age, and so on sign up. Things appear to be off to a great start. At the first meeting, however, there’s a problem—a big one. Some individuals don’t like other members. They don’t know any of them, but they don’t like them based on their beliefs, personal preferences, or who they are. These prejudiced members quickly become vocal about their disdain, making terrible comments about the other individuals. Panicked and unnerved by the situation, you quickly separate all the prejudiced individuals and inform them that they must leave. “So, we’re being discriminated against because of our beliefs?” one of the individuals says to you with a frustrated, matter-of-fact tone. “I thought this was the antidiscrimination and tolerance group where everyone is welcome. How you can you not include everyone if your mission is the inclusion and tolerance of everyone?” This confuses you. Everything this individual is saying is true, but of course, something seems very wrong. Unsure of exactly what to do and wanting to honor the group’s mission totally, you agree to let all the individuals stay. Over the following few weeks, you and the group make efforts to improve cohesion, understanding, treatment, and opportunity for all within the community—and hopefully beyond. The problems of incoherence, misunderstanding, and mistreatment, however, are running rampant within the organization itself. Many individuals have even left, having felt increasingly uncomfortable with the way they were being perceived and treated by the prejudiced members. On several occasions, some of the prejudiced individuals implied, and in some cases even explicitly stated, that those who conflicted with their own beliefs and partialities should leave. The group, which started out as an inclusive organization whose goal was tolerance and acceptance, is now becoming exclusive and intolerant to many. Realizing something needs to change, you confront the problem individuals again. “Sorry, but you guys have to leave. You’re creating a huge problem for our other members,” you tell them. “So, we’re being discriminated against because of our beliefs and views? I thought this was the antidiscrimination and tolerance group,” they say to you again. This time, you’ve prepared yourself for this objection. “Yes, but your beliefs and actions are harming others. The point of tolerance and open-mindedness is to allow for cohesion and acceptance, not harm and ostracization.” “But many of the beliefs and attitudes and behaviors of the other individuals’ who were and are in the group make us feel threatened and uncomfortable,” one person says earnestly. “We don’t believe what we believe to be hateful. We just believe it to be right and good, and we simply do not like those who oppose it. How come others’ beliefs and identities take precedence over ours? How is what you’re saying we are doing any different from what you are doing to us, right now?” “Hmm,” you murmur. What this individual is saying sort of makes sense, but you know something is still very wrong. Not having a clear answer and still wanting to honor the group’s mission totally, again, you agree to let all the individuals stay. Soon, your large, open-minded, antidiscrimination and tolerance group descends further and further into a smaller group comprising mostly intolerant and bigoted individuals. Worse, some of these individuals begin to threaten and even use violence on other members that they disagree with or don’t like. If you don’t act quick, you’ll be one of the founders and leaders of essentially what turned into a violent hate group. You decide to confront the problem individuals one last time. “You guys have leave. All of you,” you say to them sternly. “So, we’re being discriminated against? I thought this was the antidiscrimination and tolerance group.” “Yes, you are being discriminated against. And yes, this is the antidiscrimination and tolerance group.” “Well, that seems pretty paradoxical, doesn’t it?” one of the more philosophical bigots interjects. “It does seem that way, but it isn’t,” you say confidently. “Tolerance is not a universality in this organization. It is not a universal moral principle or truth claim. It’s a social contract. If you are not being tolerant of others who are not directly infringing on your ability to exist peacefully and safely, and instead, you are infringing on others’ abilities to exist peacefully and safely, then you are not acting in accordance with the contract, and so, you are not protected by the contract. This group’s goal is maximum tolerance for and acceptance of as many people as possible. You are impeding on that objective, and so, you are not allowed in.” The group angrily stares back at you. *** This thought experiment is a simple illustration of what is known as the paradox of tolerance, which was first introduced by the Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper in 1945. Essentially, the paradox shows that if a society or group were to be completely tolerant, intolerance would likely become the dominating attitude, undermining the very goal of tolerance. Optimal tolerance, therefore, needs to exhibit various forms and degrees of intolerance. Some of the key questions the aforementioned thought experiment raises are the following: Did you do the right thing? Should you have done something differently? Should you have done something sooner—or perhaps later? What if the individuals refuse to leave? What are you permitted to rightfully do to stop and remove them if they don’t on their own accord? In Popper’s view: 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 ... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. However obvious the paradox and its resolution might seem, there are, arguably, some serious uncertainties in how to justly and wholistically resolve it. Firstly, what is intolerant? Secondly, what is tolerable? The easy-seeming answer here is that all that does not pose threat or cause harm to another person’s ability to live safely and peacefully is tolerable, and everything else is intolerable. But what is the basis for determining what is harmful or threatening? Lots of things can feel threatening or cause harm—speech, creative work, technology, progress, physical violence, and so on. Furthermore, the same things can be perceived differently to different people. Depending on an individual’s perspective, beliefs, and sensitivities, one can experience something as good or harmless that is experienced as bad or harmful to another. Speech, for example, can cause emotional distress and can feel threatening—even if there is no explicit, direct threat made. But if speech and emotional distress are considered sufficiently harmful and threatening, then a society or group would need to limit free speech, which most individuals would likely disagree with. If, rather, one does believe speech should be limited, what speech exactly? Speech that makes others uncomfortable or feel like their beliefs, identity, or way of life is being threatened? Who then decides what qualifies for this? How do we measure and define reasonable versus unreasonable emotional distress? Of course, a very, very slippery slope emerges here. Popper says, “I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.” Of course, instead of speech, physical threats and physical harm are much clearer bases to use in determining what is intolerable. But there are still some serious degrees of uncertainty here. Often groups threatening or using violence are doing so out of a sense that their own beliefs, experiences, identities, or ways of life are being threatened. If violence is universally prohibited, however, then any group using violence, regardless of their assessments of their own threatened state, would be in the wrong. But presumably, violence would potentially be considered an appropriate response if one group was being attacked with violence by another. If this is true, though, then what is considered fair and appropriate in defending oneself when one’s freedoms and abilities to prosper are being inhibited and threatened in a technically non-violent manner? Of course, this why we have debates, democracies, government bodies, and enforcement agencies to help determine and enforce the levers of tolerance and intolerance. But in some cases, this is not enough. Ultimately, someone always needs to decide what constitutes a legitimate threat, what causes legitimate harm, and what is justifiable in response. Though, of course, there are good guideline for assessing these things, rarely is everything totally clear, and everything gets even less clear when you take into account that across time and space, what is considered harmless or harmful, good or bad, severe or mild, is all extremely fluid. The perception of what is acceptable or harmful has changed, does change, and will change across times and places in history and the world. And in a rapidly evolving, technological, and globalized world, this fluidity gets even more complicated and difficult to grasp. The best we can likely do is to continue to try to move our hands as quickly and as coordinately with each other as possible. Fundamentally, the paradox of tolerance reveals the inherent complexity and potential problems that can and do come from what otherwise seem like universally good things. If we bring the entire paradox and thought experiment down to the level of an individual’s life, we find a similar phenomenon. If we are so open-minded that we essentially accept anything as fair, okay, or true, we will invariably let unfair, bad, and false things into our lives. We will accept or allow beliefs and attitudes that we know are wrong—in ourselves and those we share spaces with. We will associate with people we do not like, who undermine our hopes and goals. We will try and do things that we know we don’t want to or shouldn’t. We will become a person we don’t want to be. Of course, all of this being paradoxical and fundamentally subjective in nature makes it anything but clear to manage, but in the words of the Austrian-American educator and diplomat Walter M. Kotschnig, “Don’t keep your minds so open that your brains fall out!” We have a tendency to take good qualities like niceness, like positivity, like open-mindedness and tolerance and universalize them outrightly across everything. We can then find ourselves believing that we should always be nice, we should always be positive, we should always be tolerant and open-minded. But we shouldn’t. When left unchecked, these things can turn back around and bite us, like an untrained dog let off its leash. With no commands and no guidelines, it doesn’t know its master. It has not master. It’s otherwise potentially good, kind, friendly nature becomes inflicted by inattentiveness. We should be nice when we can. We should be positive when we can. And we should be open to everything. But we should not let everything in. one area in our personal lives where we need to be especially careful about being open versus close-minded is how we allocate our time and efforts the paths we explore and choose for our careers and passions we're often told and we often convince ourselves that we should or shouldn't go certain directions in life we let people and doubts sway us with this video sponsor skillshare it's never Out Of Reach to explore new Realms of creativity and purpose and Forge New skills in areas you are either already working toward or have always wanted to try skillshare is the world's largest online learning community with classes covering a huge range of categories and topics from illustration to marketing to productivity to storytelling to filmm and so much more all of skillshare's classes are taught by industry experts as well as many familiar faces you likely know and love I've been wanting to up my Motion Graphics skills and with skillshare I'm able to learn from the senior Motion Graphics designer from the YouTube Channel and Production Studio kurts kazad in a nutshell also the very talented YouTube Creator and filmmaker Nathaniel Drew has incredible classes about creativity more broadly which take unique deep approaches to helping you better uncover unleash protect and document your voice the classes on skillshare go at your own pace and range from beginner to Advanced so there's no need to worry about outgrowing your membership our purpose and identity are made manifest by our choices and actions we thus in order to maintain our true self need to strive to let as much of what truly matters to us into our lives and keep as much of the rest out skillshare provides that perfect space where you can easily learn and explore in a curated and controlled environment that works you can get started today the first 500 people to use my link in the description we'll receive a one-month free trial to skillshare and of course as always thank you so much for watching in general and see you next video [Music]