Tolerance

Anywhere you go these days, tolerance seems to be the new buzzword. Most of us grew up hearing tolerance as something we used when a sibling or classmate was getting on our nerves. Simply put, tolerance is exercised when we put up or ignore something we don’t like. However, tolerance has grown to take on a new shape these days. In a world focused on group hugs and excessive virtue signaling, we find ourselves racing against our fellow man to open our arms to whatever else we can try and “tolerate.” We congratulate each other and pat ourselves on the back as we accept yet another lost sheep into the fold. Definitions change over time, that’s the way language works. Tolerance now seems to be an exclusive term, where “if you don’t agree with X, then you must hate those who are X or practice X.” The penalty for refusing to offer tolerance (which in this case has come to mean utter acceptance to the point of celebration) is to be labeled a bigot and disruptor of all things warm and fuzzy. It’s ironic, really, in how one’s unwillingness to agree with another’s lifestyle, tolerance is not a service due to you.

Times have changed, changed to the point where it’s become difficult and dangerous to have an opinion. At risk of being made an outcast for whatever opinions you carry, if you aren’t on board with the latest social trends, you’re an outcast. What’s more difficult to accept than a system that punishes its players for playing? After racing to become the most tolerant and accepting, people cannibalize themselves trying to become the top apologist for whatever social justice trend they may be championing at the time. So, tolerance has gone from acceptance to mandatory celebration, and to refuse to join in the parade excuses the intolerance of the tolerance.