Things I Do Not Understand, Part VIII

Things I Do Not Understand, Part VIII – What are tolerance, acceptance and respect, and when are they deserved?

Recently I was unfortunately dragged into a conversation as per why I looked at the “map of the times” objectively and with some respect that little thing called ‘International Law’. Since I have gotten used to having this thrown at me, I genuinely did not bombast with a barrage and neither did I need to control cackle and chuckle reflexes. No, I pressed onward in my best attempts. Then finally, the opposition delivered the final blow, that last unbearable straw to break not just the camel’s back, but my mother’s, my grandmother’s, my great aunt Lucy’s and the dog’s back, all in one ridiculous ribald that should make anyone with a working frontal lobe and cortical stimulation shiver in appropriate aversion.

‘Fine, I might be willing to tolerate them, but I won’t ever accept them as the same level as me.’

The source of the quotation, much like the people being discussed, to whom he placed a rather rich sentiment of human decency upon, are frankly not important in the sense that there is present little if any need for them to be named to make this comment horrifying and a crime against humanity. For much like that most laughable label ‘hate crime’, just because you label something does not mean that you have accurately described the situation, and does not mean you have encapsulated the true caveat to some unfounded emotional “catharsis” that is respiring within the context. I go out of my way to explicitly state that such labels discredit and devalue these situations, as much from those incapable of emotional distance opening their mouths as our (and by ‘our’ I mean people who possess a working frontal lobe) own ability to see things a tad too objectively.

So I will leave out any denominational remarks except to say that the speaker was a political member of a governmental body that is supposedly trying to ‘fix’ the situation perpetuated between ‘his people’ and some ‘other people’ across the border, and that the issue in question is deleterious to not only both sides of the argument but to all humanity, and is a measure of the scar that our time will leave in human history, encompassing every ounce of cruelty, childishness and caustic contemptibility we can so often have within ourselves. And congratulations world that this could adequately describe one of, off the top of my head, seven rather public and well-known causalities we are allowing to present peril to us as a people. And when I say top of my head, I mean what I did not have to think about – I shudder to think how that number would triple or quadruple if I sat down and really thought about it and wrote it all out, even without Google.

I wish I could say I am surprised. I am not. Not in the slightest bit did this statement throw me off and cause me to assume a major miscalculation for my faith in humanity. I am not sure exactly why I might as well just go fuddle about in the corner to this. Not sure if it’s the number of funerals, personal injuries because of sociopaths like this, or because I am very well aware this is how the average human being thinks, that I cannot perpetuate any sense of dread about this comment. Shame, embarrassment and the urge to beat myself with a rake were all certainly engendered.

I suppose I am at a loss because of what I intend to analyze this time: the fact that we, as a social order in Western Civilization, preach all of the verbiage to respect, acceptance, and tolerance, when we apparently have absolutely abysmal levels of conscious, collective conception as to the definition of these designations.

Now social hypocrisy in the main is certainly a tall order. Yet we do not go so far out of our way to make ‘Museums of Cultural Enlightenment’ as literal temples to the rest of the world about American cultural heritage. We might act as though we have a worthwhile culture, but we are all far too aware our culture is permeated with simplistic and consumable products and an economic concern that far outweighs the artistic concern: refuse for the rats and nothing more. Only a complete idiot, or someone for whom a toolbox would be a rather delightful, and sadly not ironic gift in every figurative way that can be taken, would actually straighten back and state with anything that might mistakenly manage as “assurance” and “authority”:

‘Jersey Shore is just like anything in art; you just do not understand it.’

Ignoring the reality that such a person would by no means, through either incapacity or apathy, correctly annunciate and punctuate a grammatically correct statement by novel and individual convention, the fact of the matter is collectively, we, as a society, are not so delusional that we could genuinely accept the aforementioned faecal stain as anything less or more than that. Yet we do have the audacity to literally construct a ‘Standards of Acceptance’ Museum with a ‘Hall of Tolerance’. 

Delusional much?

Believe it or not, I am not just singling out America here, I really am not. Hey Europe and other developed nations, you have quite a few boarding passes pre-ordered for this flight already too. And do not tell me that you are “all accepting” and “all welcoming”, not naming names of course, crazy groups of sociopaths who outlawed minarets and the Islamic ‘call to prayer’. Oh and brilliant quote:

Isn’t it just frightening to see someone covered like that from head to toe?

No you snivelling, sadistic, sociopathic stain on humanity, it does not scare me. It does not scare me that people believe a certain thing and want to follow that life format. I have to spend my whole existence on Earth with a vast majority of people who are confused by my professional education and who believe in imaginary friends providing personalized and protective predestined products. Yet it does not scare me, and it never will.

If you would like to know why this is, it is because I do my fair part in the process, treat everyone like a human being, and actively inquire and address issues with a perspective of objective analysis. But you know that is after all a by-product of my world view, that being that sensibility and decency are worthwhile pursuits, and considering your horrendous failure at both of these things sir I can understand your trepidation.