“Passivity cloaked in tolerance results in nothing being done.”
—-National Public Radio Correspondent Megan Williams, reporting on how Italians are apathetic regarding the ugly graffiti marring virtually every public building, including churches, in Rome.
Tolerance as a virtue receives too much unqualified praise.. Often what passes for tolerance is really ethical negligence and laziness, or, as in Rome, apathy. Some things do not deserve toleration, and tolerating what should be intolerable is no virtue at all.
Ethics Alarms 
Rome still hasn’t cracked down on that? The Italian graffiti problem has been building for well over a decade. The fact that it’s spread on public buildings, churches, and historical monuments is bad enough, but most of the “graffiti” in question is so ugly that it doesn’t deserve to be called anything but vandalism.
So they say on NPR. I was unaware of the problem. Apparently an American professor has organized a citizen volunteer clean-up project.
Here’s a great definition of Tolerance from the Character Training Institute in OK:
“Realizing that everyone is at varying levels of character development.”
When you take the time to think about this one, it really makes sense. We are all works in progress. Hopefully we are progressing to better character, not worse…
We call character definitions like this “working definitions” because they can be used in the workplace to identify and commend observable behaviors that result from good character. A wise supervisor, or a wise parent, can use definitions like this to make the “character connection.” This is a huge paradigm shift because it forces you to focus on the character quality that produced the achievement rather than on the achievement itself.
It is a fundamental maxim of character development that if you focus on achievement to the exclusion of character, you actually encourage bad character. I explore this concept more in-depth in some of the training videos posted at http://www.PoliceDynamicsMedia.com.
Although the site is designed primarily for police, the principles are timeless and universal…
Sheriff Ray Nash
http://www.PoliceDynamicsMedia.com
Thanks Ray. I agree with the principle, if not the definition, which has a little humpty-dumpty-ism to it. It does apply to tolerating the actor, but not, I think, to the action.
Oh, please. My husband is sure that one day I will be shot because I am absolutely INTOLERANT of public behavior that is illegal, disturbs the community, hurts others, and displays sadistic or amoral behavior openly and without remorse.
Don’t get me wrong: I am a nice person. I help people who need help. I am kind. I am empathetic. Perhaps that is why I call people on behavior that is antithetic to what I see as a basic human code.
When I see a mother abuse her child in public, I should assume she has just not “progressed” in her “character development” to be a mother? Nope. I tell her she is abusing her child and if she doesn’t stop I will call the police.
When a woman at the grocery story, in the rain, parks to shop in the pick up lane so that I have to walk in the rain to take my groceries to my car, I call her on it. She threatens to slap my face. I dare her to do it. I tell her I have given her license plate number to the manager of the store, and if the touches me or threatens to touch me again I will have her put in jail.
When a woman leaves her three children outside the drug store, with windows rolled up, on a 95 degree day, while she shops, I go into the store and have them call the police. The kids were red faced, the baby had a blanket over her, and they were trapped. When I came out, the mother was screaming about her rights. Another case of arrested character development, or child abuse?
Now I live in a nice neighborhood, filled with 750K to million dollar houses, and these things don’t happen all the time. But frankly, I’ll be damned if I’ll be intimidated by bad or life-threatening behavior, or excuse it by a bunch of psychological bullshit.
One can excuse any behavior these days with psycho-babble. We can’t all know or care where any one person is in his or her “personal journey.” All we can measure is behavior. And when “protectors” like security guards allow a bunch of delinquent girls to beat up another girl, we just can’t care about their motivations, we can only care that they let it happen, and judge their behavior. I don’t care why a serial killer kills; I care that he/she does the murders: get him/her off the street and then get him/her some therapy. Don’t try to wow me with all the reasons people do bad things. Thousands and thousands of people had bad childhoods, learned from them, and are good citizens today.
Is the average person, when they see another person doing wrong, really supposed to stand there and ponder, “Hmmm, is this a character development problem, or is this guy just a shit?”
“Humpty-dumpty-ism?” That’s something I’ve never been accused of…! 🙂
Sheriff Ray
http://www.PoliceDynamicsMedia.com
Ray: Not an accusation…just a reference to the famous exchange in “Through the Looking Glass” is which Humpty Dumpty argues that words with Alice about his tendency to use words to mean whatever he wants them to mean at the time, on the theory that the speaker, not the word, is “the master.”