(interesting) (tolerance as tax evasion)
Do you separate respect for the person from respect for their ideas or do you make the solipsistic error of conflating a persons beliefs which they can change with their physical body which they cannot?
One can say:
i) that we coexist peacefully,
ii) that we compete peacefully,
iii) that we cooperate on different ends peacefully,
iv) that we cooperate on the same ends peacefully.
If someone possesses a catastrophic error, and you wish to cooperate with them, what is the impact of letting them hold on to silly ideas?
Well, they can have whatever silly idea they want as long as it doesn’t affect your ability to cooperate on ends together.
It is possible to possess ideas, values, beliefs, traditions, myths, metaphysical value judgments that are not merely differences in tastes, but which actively PREVENT cooperation on certain types of ends and means.
If your culture denies reality, provides no means of correction of knowledge, provides no means of correction of individual thought, and at the same time, we know we must use science to understand that which we cannot perceive and sense directly, and such that
TEACHING COOPERATION ON MEANS IF NOT ENDS
In solipsistic argument, respect is for the purpose of raising children who do not yet have the ability to cooperate in the world. At some point we must become adults, or be the wards, subjects and victims of adults forever. One becomes an adult at the very point where one abandons solipsistic argument (the one you’re making probably) and distinguishes between the meaningless errors of children which they may grow out of, and the meaningful errors of adults that they may not grow out of.
Tolerance in children is necessary for pedagogy. Tolerance in adults is only logically necessary for tastes, but not for truths. If you do not correct the errors in thinking of yourself and your fellow citizens then you are a conspirator in the conspiracy of ignorance, and a threat to society – and to man. Just as you are a threat to a society and to man if you fail to enforce and adhere to manners, ethics, and morals.
TOLERANCE AS “FREE RIDING, CHEATING AND STEALING”
If you do not enforce and adhere to manners (ethics of signals), ethics (participatory ethics), and morals (ethics of externalities) then you are not paying the behavioral ‘tax’ for living in a society – you are a tax cheater so to speak in the normative system of costs. if you are less ABLE to pay normative taxes, that is the same as if you are less ABLE to pay real taxes – in both cases these are statements of your willingness and ability.
In other words, if you let adults around you believe that which is economically dangerous to the polity, then you are just trying to save yourself the cost of paying for the normative infrastructure, just like any other tax cheat is trying to save himself the cost of paying for physical infrastructure.
You can say that you are not competent (productive enough) to pay that normative tax, but if that is so, then you of course, like any other person who evades taxes, no right to speak about norms.