The Thin Line Between 'Tolerance' and Respect for 'Individual Truth'

What is your truth? And, in what ways has society forced you to conform to submerging your individual truth for fear of social awkwardness that may arise from stepping on the toes of what may be generally perceived as being tolerant? Are we as a general society tolerant of the expression of our individual truths without being slighted or intimidated psychologically, socially, economically, and other ways feasible to the boundaries of our individual human rights? Does the fear of not being tolerant of others' individual truths expose the insecurities we feel about our own subjective individual truths?

These are questions I ask myself on a daily basis in trying to meander the pathways to finding the right balance between having a mind of my own, preserving my personal boundaries while respecting others, and blindly following other truths that hardly serve my mental well-being and sustenance.

So, in trying to put forward a reasonable argument for the sake of others, who may find themselves in a similar predicament, I begin with the standard dictionary definitions of 'Tolerance' and 'Truth' in order to create an equal playing field for all belief systems of all who read this article;

According to the Collins English Dictionary, 'Truth' is defined as 'Something that is believed to be true'; 'a proven or verified principle or statement;' fact'; 'a system of concepts purporting to represent some aspect of the world'; 'fidelity to a required standard or law'; 'faithful reproduction or portrayal'; 'an obvious fact; truism; platitude'; 'the state or quality of being faithful; allegiance', among others ( but for the sake of time and space, selected definitions outlined are used for present argument.)

The Collins English Dictionary defines 'Tolerance' as, 'the quality of allowing other people to say and do as they like, even if you do not agree or approve of it'; 'the ability to bear something painful or unpleasant'; 'the permitted variation in some measurement or other characteristic of an object or workpiece'

While these selected definitions encompass noun and word form definitions, please allow me to use all being presented to come to a reasonable conclusion of the subject at hand which these matters represent.

Richard Rorty famously said, “Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with saying.”; In Plato’s Cratylus, on the philosophy of language, Socrates says that aletheia (Greek, ‘truth’) is a compression of the phrase ‘a wandering that is divine’; Some people distinguish between scientific truth and moral “opinions,” and others do not, therefore is it correct to caution one another when we express our individual truths within any setting we find ourselves, regardless of how it makes the people around us feel about their own truths? If one man's truth encourages another man to comply, and in so doing abandon their individual convictions, has the one who flaunted theirs so convincingly done any wrong or committed an error? Where this may occur, is the individual (or set of individuals) that complain(s) of the outcome a sore loser(s), hence, in so doing socially categorized as being intolerant?

Those who are alarmed, or who despair, might take some comfort in the words of Søren Kierkegaard:

"Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion—and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority."

The answer may lie in our exploration of our personal truths before tying these in with the collective ideals enforced by our individual cultures, settings and dispositions; The qualities of respect, worth and inspiration are the truths that you begin to embody in the world. Armed with your personal truths you move with more ease in the world, as stated by an unnamed Huffpost contributor in 2011.

Ehud Olmert confirms that "promoting tolerance and human dignity is one of mankind's unfinished challenges" and Samuel Taylor Coleridge shares my view that "great intolerance is shown in support of tolerance".

Perhaps in finding the right balance to purport ways forward to a more rounded society where freedom to express our individual truths without guidelines imposed on how to, for fear of intimidating one another physically and in all other ways (and in so doing, in some ways, enforcing exactly that) we may consider the words of Roger Ross Williams saying, "I have learned that the hardest part of campaigning for tolerance and justice is encouraging people to look at their own selves, to examine their own identity and shortcomings."