this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2024
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Yes, you do. It's called the paradox of intolerance.
Actually, you are misunderstanding the paradox of tolerance. And I would say it is one of the most frequently misquoted philosophy on discussion forums such as lemmy or reddit.
Popper asserted many times that the intolerable intolerance is violence. "Fists and pistols" as he calls it.
By intolerating at a stage by calling the other as intolerable when we're still quite far from violence such as this case of HR management, you are proposing for an unjust society--is what Popper would say.
I'll admit I have not read Popper. But just because he coined the term doesn't mean his conception of it is the only acceptable one. Others have taken the basic idea and taken it in different directions.
Personally, I subscribe to the belief of the shitty crustpunk bartender.
Specifically, if someone is intolerant of others in a way that rejects who they are (as opposed to rejecting something that they believe—so gender and sexuality are on one side of that line, while religion and political ideology are on the other), especially if they do so in a way that creates the feeling of an unsafe environment, we should feel perfectly fine excluding them from that space.
I think feelings and personal beliefs should stay as far as possible from philosophy. Philosophy should never evolve around subjectivity such as feelings; philosophy is an attempt to be as rational and logical as possible in albeit a very subjective world. Much of philosophical arguments are made in same manner as discrete mathematics because of this but with words rather than formulas and rules. Even religious medieval philosophers attempted to be as logical as possible in their approach to explaining religion rather than relying on belief (though often fail despite their best attempts). So the "feeling of unsafe environment" isn't something I see as compatible with any philosophical discussion as a basis of reason. There needs to be an objective as possible pivot.
We see plenty of vastly different feeling of unsafe in social media. Some of which even do so with the intent of not actually feeling unsafe but to garner views and likes. If someone is scared by everything, can we start intolerating everyone else? We don't know where the line can be drawn between being a just society that tolerates freedoms and the one where tolerable can no longer exist.
This is why Popper proposed the entire dilemma. The violence being the pivot of intolerable intolerance isn't his opinion. It is that with violence, tolerable objectively (as much as we can be objective) cannot exist.
Even in your example, you attempt to separate objectivity vs subjectivity in are/is versus believe respectively for the sole correctness of the former. (Even though in my view, proof of what is is going to end up as sum of your beliefs or a cyclic viewpoint.) And then the argument goes back to pivoting in the subjectivity of feelings.
If you rely on subjectivity to draw the line of what's intolerable intolerance, then you will be intolerant of people who you subjectively view as intolerable.