I have a lot of disorganized thoughts on the subject of tolerance and complicity and how changing ideas around what it means to be complicit are corroding tolerance as a social norm that makes liberal societies possible... in the interest of sharing raw ideas rather than seeking a perfect form I may never find, here we go…
What does it mean to be complicit? Does it still cleave to the dictionary definition: to be involved in a crime? What does ‘involved’ mean? And what’s a crime these days? How have our ideas about complicity changed over time?
I’m tempted to look at how broader ideas about complicity may have emerged as part of the reckoning over the Holocaust. How does a society carry out genocide on that scale, given the number of people who had to be involved at different levels, given that much of the groundwork for genocide was laid in view of the public. What might complicity mean, taking into account both material contributions to genocide and ideological justifications? Among other things, I’d also want to look into the literature on bystanders, which I suspect will show a similar evolution, and at discussions of complicity with state violence—e.g., Vietnam War protests, protests against police violence—which seems to me a more legitimate basis than vague accusations of complicity with “white supremacy” or “systems of oppression.”
In any case, I think ideas about complicity have morphed, with the charge covering an ever-broader range of behaviors (including inaction) and beliefs while retaining its moral weight. “Silence is complicity” comes to mind—connected, crucially, to ideas like “silence is violence.”
In a liberal society, I think there are three basic stances you can take to a political argument: agree, disagree, or remain neutral, and that you can hold these stances passively or actively and privately or publicly. What I see happening now is that the neutral-passive-private stance is getting ruled out, or rather redefined as complicity with an unjust status quo. The space to remain neutral and/or passive and/or to hold an opinion privately is shrinking as more and more spaces, relationships, and issues become politicized and polarized. Take a look at online knitting communities riven by conflicts over a particular brand of racial-justice activism. How did online knitting communities become so bitterly polarized that participants send and receive death threats? All summer long, we’ve seen a steady stream of corporations, universities, cultural institutions, and individuals name and denounce their own past complicity with systems of white supremacy and exclusion. What does it mean for retailers to be “complicit” in white supremacy (mind you, nobody’s talking about their supply chains in these statements)? What about Chevron? Actually reckoning with harms to communities of color would look quite different than a generic statement—but I get why Chevron would rather not do something about the actual racial injustices its racked up (take its Richmond, California, facility, for one). A narrow idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion is at work here. I’ve also observed similar conceptions of tolerance and complicity at play in personal relationships—other people’s relationships and my own.
In these cases, it’s clear that ideas about complicity are eroding the space for tolerance of difference—at least tolerance for difference that’s more than skin deep.
To take a concrete personal example of how shifting ideas of complicity operate, last year I fell out with a long-time friend over gender ideology. I had known for a long time that we had a deep disagreement on the issue. My friend has been a vocal supporter of transitioning young children and redefining women from a sex class to a mixed-sex class based on gender self-identity—two positions I strongly oppose and that violate core ethical principles of mine. Yet while we both had strong feelings about the issue, it’s clear from my conversations with her and the letters we exchanged that we saw the disagreement in very different terms. I was able to say, OK, I could not disagree more strongly with Friend on this issue, yet I don’t think she’s a bad person; I do think it’s possible for people to disagree in good faith on this issue; I trusted that her motivations were good (if alarmingly misguided). What’s more, I don’t think her beliefs reflect on me; and I am not worried about being contaminated by contact with her or her beliefs. The criticism I would—and did—level at her was that I think she is more concerned about doing the right thing than finding out what the right thing is, and that in the process of trying to Do The Right Thing she has outsourced her judgment to other people and even thinks that handing over her judgment to others is what makes her a good ally, something that I think is fundamentally irresponsible. I didn’t have any intention to break up our friendship over this issue, but my friend felt differently. It was clear from what she said and wrote that she could tolerate limited disagreements over specific policies but could not tolerate my rejection of the underlying ideology: specifically, that I don’t believe transwomen are women, that I don’t believe gender identity should overwrite sex. She said explicitly that we could not continue to be friends if I did not engage in a process of “repair and accountability” for rejecting this core tenet. I had to say the words. I offered to talk but rejected her offer to re-educate me. In lieu of my successful re-education, she could not remain friends with me. She could not sanction my “dangerous” and “harmful” beliefs by continuing to associate with me in any way. I suspect she also didn’t want to be tarred with that association should more people uncover my heresies, heresies I’ve done little to hide.
These are two quite different orientations toward conflict. What I notice in her approach—and what I see reflected more broadly when I think about how tolerance and complicity are rubbing up against each other—is that there’s no space for legitimate disagreement or disagreeing in good faith. Disagreement, then, could be the result of ignorance of one party (resolved through ‘education’—re-education, really—to the correct view) or resistance, often in the form of bigotry. Disagreement could not be the result of a different evaluation of the same facts, nor a product of different values or a different conception of the same values espoused by the disagreeing parties. There’s also an expectation of ideological alignment among friends or associates that seems new to me, and an equation of criticism of ideas and practices with hatred of individuals or marginalized groups. I think we need to be able to criticize ideas and practices without that being interpreted automatically as hatred for the people who hold those ideas or participate in those practices.
That’s a very rough exploration of what I was first thinking about the interaction of tolerance and complicity. But there’s a flip side to the distortion of these two concepts. While tolerance has lost ground to concepts like diversity, equity, and inclusion, I think many progressive-identifying people still consider themselves to be tolerant people and consider a tolerance a value, if a rather tarnished or meager or insufficient one. What does it mean to be tolerant? Toward whom do we exercise tolerance, and why?
People on the Left tend to value tolerance across distance or cultures. Tolerance in proximity—within a political jurisdiction, within social networks—is what seems to be eroding. Tolerance has become something less like “We can live alongside one another despite our disagreements and will not strive to enforce our beliefs on others nor will we submit to beliefs we don’t share” and more like cultural relativism—”We coexist despite our disagreements as long as we don’t live alongside one another.” In other words, I think the basis for “why tolerate difference?” may have shifted from away the role tolerance serves in diverse, classically liberal societies to something more like “I don’t have the standpoint from which to judge the cultural beliefs and practices of Others.” Ironically, many people on the Left now seem to feel less entitled to criticize cultural beliefs and practices around the world at the same time they are ever-less accepting of small differences of belief and opinion within their own circles. I think changed ideas about tolerance also surface in the push to remove stigma from a variety of issues (e.g., sexual practices, lifestyle choices, and transgenderism—to the point of not being critical of turning kids into lifelong medical patients on the basis of identity claims: they’re living their truth, right?). I think a shift in the way the Left defines tolerance enables people to continue to see themselves as tolerant while enforcing ideological doctrines, shrinking the space for neutrality and dissent, and policing speech.
What supports tolerance? Belief in the possibility of legitimate disagreement, the possibility of disagreeing in good faith. The desire to seek the truth above serving an agenda or enforcing an ideology. The ability to judge people as individuals, rather than judging people by their associates or projected group characteristics. Faith in your own ability to seek knowledge and form opinions without undue influence. Acceptance that others have the right to their own beliefs, whether held publicly or kept private, as well as to agree, disagree, or remain neutral, passive, and apolitical. The existence of non-politicized spaces, activities, and relationships…
I really appreciate your thoughts.
I'm so disappointed and disgusted that what's essentially a marketing scheme ("recognition" as Billy Gates calls it) has influenced our ideas about what social justice looks like these days. When discussing how to make capitalism benefit the poor when profits are not an incentive, Gates says that "recognition" is a proxy that can offer market-based rewards for companies' "good behavior". We know what this looks like: companies chanting mantras, flying flags, and offering products that people can buy that also make them feel like good social justice warriors. It also encourages people to be lazy about their principles and discourages real engagement with the issues. Make your bathrooms "gender neutral" because it's good for the company's image which is good for profits, and you don't have to really examine the issue.
It seems like true tolerance has been replaced by good PR and compliance (with the company/cultural line, policy, or ideology). We've also seen what can happen if we're not compliant (public censure, loss of work, ostracization) and this makes us scared to engage. We fear we may lose our status or livelihood and so we refrain from lively discussion. It appears another type of tolerance has decreased -- frustration tolerance. Our ability to hold the discomfort of disagreement along with respect and maybe even love for our fellow human beings seems in short supply.
What you identify in the second-to-last paragraph holds tremendous gravity I think; that acknowledging standpoints, a phrasing of a certain kind of ignorance, has become an imperative to almost total forfeiture of one’s moral senses.
I remember nearly a decade ago, when I was a sophomoric, inelegant undergraduate student, when I first encountered this modern ethic. I was zealously interested in human evolution and the brain. I discovered mirror neurones reading a book about the brain, seeking some clear biological mechanism for human empathy. (Mirror neurones' existence is disputed, it seems.) Nonetheless, I think that we do feel the pain of others vicariously and keenly. That much is clear.
Yet the Feminist Society I talked to, at the time wholly consumed by illiberal ideologies, all insisted that no one who was a member of the dominant, oppressive class could ever understand the lived experience of the oppressed. It is theoretically and practically utterly impossible: empathy is chimerical. The ethic neutralises empathy, or perhaps privileges a certain docile empathy over any other. I think it's redefining it out of existence by totally subverting our normal understanding of empathy.
I suppose it's never to let people fall into the complacence that they have a firm footing, because inherently it's a battle against human nature.