I think the only way to really get around it is by trying to be respectful to people who have different beliefs from your own, as long as that respect goes both ways of course.

Absolutely. This brings me to my favorite philosophical topic in recent times, The Paradox of Tolerance, described by Wikipedia as:

The seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.

Really, you've probably already heard this before, and I only bring this up because it seems like it's always relevant these days and because it was first described by Karl Popper, who was one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century.

[–] TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Absolutely, I'm familiar with the paradox of tolerance but I think it's always good to spread it around a bit more. How I conceive of it is that tolerance is not a principle but a social contract, and when one side breaks that social contract the other side is no longer beholden to it either.

[–] NielsBohron@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You and I may have had a very similar conversation back on that "other" site, lol. At least that's where I first heard about the "social contract" model as a way to explain why it's not a paradox at all.

[–] TheSaneWriter@lemmy.thesanewriter.com 3 points 1 year ago

Quite possibly, though I've forgotten where I originally learned it so it's possible we just both learned it from the same place. I'm just glad to see the knowledge becoming more common, it was really annoying during the era when people would be like "Doesn't choosing not to tolerate nazis make you just bad as them?" The answer's obviously no, for so many reasons, but people understanding the paradox of tolerance makes it less common to be asked that.