Tolerance

On Saturday, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania eleven Jewish Americans went to synagogue to worship and celebrate in the naming of a new baby and were shot and killed by a white man spewing hate. Last Wednesday, two black Americans were shot and killed at a grocery store in Louisville, Kentucky by a white man spewing hate after he had tried and failed to get into a predominantly black Baptist church. One of the slain at the grocery store was a grandfather whose grandson was with him. They were buying a poster board for a school project. Please envision these two scenes over and over and over again until your eyes well up and your heart aches.

Thirteen innocent Americans were killed last week because they were deemed as “others.” Their absences will forever be felt by their loved ones. Those who were there when the victims were slain will carry that trauma with them all their lives. They will relive that moment, hear the gunshots and see that grisly scene over and over. Their otherness was targeted. For a true democracy to exist, the citizens of that democracy need to exhibit one human trait: tolerance. That’s it. We don’t need love or even understanding. We just need tolerance. Tolerance for people that are different than us in color, in religion, in orientation, in gender, in language, in a myriad of other ways. Tolerance. That’s it. That’s the baseline, the very least we need for a democracy to exist.

But, if we want our democracy to be nourished and grow, we need to acquire another trait: humility. This is the understanding that it is possible for our thoughts and opinions to be wrong. This is not an easy trait to acquire. It takes practice and it can be painful. But, knowing that we can be wrong helps us look objectively at the problems before us. With humility, we can whole-heartedly approach any question or problem with the best of our knowledge and experience. But, when a new piece of valid information is presented to us that counters what we’ve always believed or assumed to be true, humility helps us accept it. Sure, sometimes that new information needs to be confirmed to be true. But, once it is confirmed, humility helps us accept it as truth even if obliterates a belief that we’ve clung to for safety for as long as we can remember. That’s the painful part. The nourishing and the growing part comes after we realize that true safety doesn’t come by clinging with white-knuckles to opinions or beliefs. It comes in the questioning and the listening and the changing. That’s how democracy is nourished and grows.

Of course, there are other nutrients like empathy, self-awareness and respect that would enrich our democracy to blossom and fruit even more. And, if we’re already carrying some of these other traits with us, that’s wonderful. But, here’s the thing. If we’ve got tolerance and humility, we can acquire all the other nutrients. But, our country goes nowhere without tolerance and humility.

​So, to be clear, if we are intolerant of others, we are an enemy of democracy. And, if we do not have humility, we are preventing our democracy from growing. This is true whether you are a regular citizen or the President of the United States of America.