Tolerance is tricky when it comes to applying it to our daily living. As a humanist, I find myself struggling to keep my compass oriented toward goodness while trying to differentiate between ‘wanting’ good and ‘imposing’ it. There is also this incentive to check my moral outrage from aligning with bigots who can use my shoulders to fire their hate guns!
Simple moral situations of racism, bigotry and hate are easy to manage and navigate. It is the tricky ones that require special attention – assumptions, superiority, saviourism, control, projection, etc. Of course, as a humanist I treat individuals with equal moral worth and not as a representative of some group. No dehumanization or exclusion because of who people are; no group with automatic moral priority; no tradition, ideology, or identity getting default validity. This is the baseline from which tolerance flows for me. And herein lies the catch: if a group’s ideology denies the equal dignity of others, then tolerating that ideology undermines the very foundation that made tolerance possible. That’s the paradox.
A humanist reading of the paradox of tolerance becomes especially sharp in mixed societies because diversity isn’t an abstraction or a philosophical puzzle. Nor is it some far-off concept that other people have to live or navigate. It’s the daily texture of life on the streets, in the bus or the grocery aisles. The simplistic sloganeering of ‘tolerate everything except intolerance’ might help as a heuristic but, as a humanist, I need it to be moored in a rich and nuanced frame.
Humanism doesn’t ask me to be neutral about everything. It asks us to be principled. A mixed society works only when people agree to a few non‑negotiables: No coercion. No violence. No hierarchy of human worth. No forced conformity. No respect necessary for ideas but respect imperative for people
These aren’t western or liberal values, they’re the minimum conditions for humans to live together. So, when an ideology demands exclusivity – for example, “my group is morally superior,” or “others should accommodate my way of thinking” then a humanist line is being crossed. Not because humanism dislikes the imposing group, but because it protects the shared civic space that allows all groups to coexist.
Humanism doesn’t fear conflict; it fears coercion. The paradox of tolerance is triggered not by people who think differently, but by people who believe difference itself is illegitimate. Mixed societies thrive on disagreement. Humanism says: “You can believe your worldview is true but you cannot force others to live by it.” Harmony is a luxury. Fairness is a necessity. Humanism accepts that mixed societies will always have friction. The point is not to eliminate conflict but to ensure that no group can silence another, no ideology can override human rights and no identity becomes a license to dominate. Tolerance survives when fairness is enforced. We humanists are forced to navigate two commitments at once: respect for cultural difference and commitment to universal human dignity.
We come across many decent individuals shaped by old ways of living who can elicit responses from us that triggers a non-humanist response particularly in light of self-assumed righteous cultural arrogance. Take the example of the hijab. It is simultaneously held as a symbol of modesty, empowerment, individual identity and a stance against discrimination as well as an instrument of patriarchal control, oppression, and segregation. The tricky moral landscape of a person’s choice to wear a hijab ranges from a fully autonomous informed choice to partially pressured suggestion to deep brainwashed coercion. Or anywhere in between.
Believing that women deserve autonomy is the primary urge for me as a humanist. While universal dignity is the principle that guides my thought, contextual focus is often the reality of my action. Just like ‘All lives matter’ might be the silent grounding principle for the more contextual bold cry of ‘Black lives matter’. Proclaiming “All diseases matter” at a fundraiser for breast cancer is totally unhelpful! The moment we assume that women choosing to wear the hijab don’t know better or that they lack the knowledge to choose freely, I am unintentionally reproducing an hierarchy of enlightenment with me at the top. That, I only grew into this realization, is not who I am or want to be.
For a humanist, the universalist instinct to generalize ‘oughtness’ might kick in when witnessing violations of rights that assume cultural ills. The framing that causes this is the classic ‘I know what is best for you’ or ‘Your choices are not valid until they match mine’ or even insidious ‘Your cultural background makes you less capable of agency’. Doing this would mean replacing one paternalism with another. I may view the ideal condition to be human female flourishing minus the patriarchal translation but I have to act in humility knowing that I cannot know every woman wearing the hijab and know their story or assume that they lack knowledge or agency. We are all shaped by culture, family, norms and expectations and no one is perfectly free but the idea is to get close to everybody getting the space, safety and resources to make meaningful choices for themselves.
And this is a constraint I have to place on my ‘kind’ reactions skewing wrong when I see a woman in a hijab and assuming they are oppressed; seeing an elderly person and assuming they are lonely or need help; seeing a family with a physically or mentally challenged child and assuming the parents are sad; seeing a newcomer and assuming they need advice. I have had to learn to avoid this ‘pity’ reaction. A person’s dignity includes their ability to manage their own circumstance and that means my empathy shouldn’t skew into being a projection of my feelings onto their condition. Curiosity is OK but not pity.
This also plays out when I erase or flatten specific context with broad-stroke universalism. Responding to indigenous issues with “We have all suffered colonialism in some way” or to women’s issues by claiming “Men suffer too!” are examples of when being right doesn’t give me the right to use it every time, every where.
My 2 cents 