Discrimination starts with Intolerance

When you find yourself looking at someone else's behavior and saying, "Why are they doing that?" are you being tolerant or intolerant?

If you are simply noticing the event but do not consider it as either good or bad then you may be acting in a tolerant manner.  However, if you are thinking "I can't believe that someone would do that" or "No one should do that" then you are probably being intolerant.

Tolerance is recognizing that everyone has a right to be, believe, or act differently than you do and that your way of being, believing, or acting is no better or worse than theirs.  Intolerance starts when you believe that your way of being, believing, or acting is better than other people.

Intolerance is common, but it is wrong...  

I challenge you to find any situation where intolerance is an acceptable response.  Intolerance is never necessary and is often dangerous, both to you and other people.  Intolerance is often followed by hate and discrimination and you will not find an act of discrimination that does not start with intolerance.

You do have to accept who they are as human beings, whether they are green, blue, or have antlers on their head.  Not accepting someone because of a physical feature that they can not change is not intelligent, it is completely ignorant.

You don't have to accept what other people believe or how they act, but you must tolerate those beliefs or acts. Tolerance is the understanding that everyone is different and has a right to act differently as long as they:

• are not encroaching on anyone
• are doing everything that they commit to do

Living in a homogeneous environment with people that behave and think alike is a breeding ground for intolerance. Anyone in this kind of environment might be able to convince themselves that there is only a few ways to think or behave. Imagine how surprised this kind of individual is when they encounter people that think very differently and act very differently.

 

Tolerance and Productivity

The productivity of an group of people can only be high when there is a high degree of tolerance inside the group. Groups with intolerant individuals fail to achieve their potential and produce much less than other groups.  The intolerant members of the team inevitably give less than 100% because of their beliefs about other team members and either fail to work well or may even sabotage the work of people they dislike.

Intolerance creates distrust and will infiltrate an entire team and destroy productivity.

Tolerance allows people to work well together and find synergies that they never knew existed.  Tolerant
teams are much more flexible and can solve much bigger problems much faster than other teams.  When every member of a team does not feel judged it leaves them open to being much more creative and productive.

Tolerance is the foundation of productive relationships and team productivity

The key to becoming tolerant is to realize that we actually have very little in common with the people around us.  You may have much in common with your best friend, but you will discover that you have many differences as well.  In reality, you only have a fraction of your world in common with anyone else.  This means that learning  that people can believe very different things and by extension act differently than we do.

 We All Believe Very Different Things

Our belief system is like the concentric circles to the left, the inner part of the circle represents our strong beliefs, the outer part of the circle represents our weaker beliefs.  When we interact with another people our beliefs will collide.  You will find that you feel at ease with people with similar core beliefs and less at ease with those with different beliefs.  But if you look, the people with similar core beliefs will believe things that you do not believe in.

Tolerance is recognizing that other people make decisions just like you, they just reason from a different set of beliefs.  Remember, just because you believe something does not make it true, and it does not give you the right to try to change their beliefs.

When beliefs collide and people conflict there is an opportunity for learning and a possibility of destruction. Those that are tolerant will learn and grow from conflict and those that are intolerant will sink into a cycle of destruction.

The only way to have a happy and productive life is to have a high tolerance for people with different beliefs.

Positive Attitudes won't fix bad Relationships

There is not doubt that having a positive attitude is a prerequisite to being proactive.  As Steven Covey's first principle of effectiveness states "be proactive"; without proactivity nothing good will happen in your life. When you are proactive then you take responsibility for your life and choices, it is the precondition for good things to happen.

Proactive people are the only people that will see new opportunities and be able to take advantage of them.

We have all met people that are perpetually negative or cynical and feel that nothing good will ever happen.   For these people nothing ever works out and they have dozens of reasons why a new venture will not succeed.  It is true that not every venture succeeds, but these people will tell you that nothing will ever succeed.  These people cut themselves off from opportunities are best avoided.

Having a positive attitude is a necessary component of success but it is insufficient to guarantee it.

Having a positive attitude will do nothing to change a systemic problem.  A positive attitude will help you realize a bad situation and choose to change your situation, but a positive attitude will not change the situation, for example:

• Having a positive attitude will not cause anyone to stop perpetrating domestic abuse
• Having a positive attitude will not change a tyrant boss who is creating a poor work environment
• Having a positive attitude will not cause the economy to get better
• Having a positive attitude will not enable a child having problems at school to resolve them

It is amazing to think that people feel that if everyone had a positive attitude then the economy would get better right now.  Unfortunately, the current economic problems are the result of poor choices by people over the last 50 years.  This will not be solved by people changing the way they perceive the problem, it will only be changed by people trying to do something about it.  

When source of a problem is not caused by you having a negative attitude then the situation can't be fixed by you adopting a positive attitude.

Seeing everything in a positive light can put you in real danger.  We have read horror stories of young people in sunny destinations that meet with untimely demises.  Some of these events happen because the young person in question is too naive to understand that not everyone is decent -- positive thinking will not cause other people to behave well.

When you are faced with a situation caused by someone who does not behave ethically there is nothing that a positive attitude will do to change them.

When faced with a situation caused by an unethical person the only choice is to get away from them.

Of course those situations are relatively rare.  The more common situation that people get into bad relationships with either another person or an employer.  The solution in both cases is to adopt a positive attitude and end the relationship with either the person or your employer.

People stay in bad relationships either with another person or with their employer because "they have no choice".  While theoretically there may be a few individuals that really don't have a choice, the vast majority of people who use this phrase actually do have a choice, they simply choose not to exercise it.

When you are in a bad relationship that is caused by the fundamental differences of your belief system and theirs, there is nothing that a positive attitude will do to resolve the differences.  If anything, adopting a positive attitude as a solution is more likely to have you prolong a relationship that has become bad if not toxic.

The common theme in all these examples is that a positive attitude will not fix the conditions of the situation that you are in, especially if the situation is caused by external forces (i.e. partner or work).  However, having a positive attitude is essential for you to take responsibility and put as much distance between yourself and the bad situation.

A positive attitude is the only thing that will allow you to pick yourself up and walk away from a bad or toxic situation.

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The sooner that you leave a bad relationship, the less damage you will take, the less defensive you will be in the future, and the sooner you can start healing.

Just because you Believe it, doesn't make it True

What is the difference between a belief and the truth?  Unfortunately a belief held with high confidence becomes a truth in your world, even if it is not true.

We all form models of how reality works and after observing the same phenomena many times we believe that it is true.  For example, we use "scientific fact" for any observation that has been verified by many people for which there is no known counter example.  e.g. we believe that if you drop a rock it will fall because of gravity.

Are scientific facts always true?

We now know that Newtonian physics is valid until we start dealing with very fast objects and then we need to use Einsteinian physics.  So with respect to relativity, Newtonian physics is surprisingly no longer true, in fact, Newtonian physics is a degenerate case of Einsteinian physics.

So even in science, truth depends on your context.

Until the 14th century the truth was that the world was flat.  We now say that people once believed that the world was flat.  If you grow up in a homogeneous religious community then you are likely to believe that everyone sees that religion as the truth.  As you grow up, and leave the context of your community then you learn that there are other religions out there.  What was true for you in your community will turn out to be a belief for people outside your community.

Your experience may lead you to conclude that something is true, but it will only be true for a specific context.  Once presented with new contexts you can discover that your truth is really just a belief.  Life has a way of letting us know that our model for reality is never quite complete.


Just because you Believe it, doesn't make it True

What is true for one person is simply a belief for someone else.  Here are some examples of where people have definitive beliefs, e.g. some believe:

• that it is impolite to interrupt
• that premarital sex is unacceptable
• that one religion is more correct than others
• that government should be smaller
• that everyone is trying to get ahead
• that wearing revealing clothing is acceptable

And for every person that believes one of the above statements, you can find people that believe the opposite.  The diversity of life leads us to have many different beliefs; we have evidence for some of our beliefs, others we take on faith, and for some things we are certain are true.

However, we all discover things in our life that we thought were true only to discover that they were only true in a local context.  A big part of maturing is learning that our world and understanding can always get larger.  We learn that a solution in one context does not make for a solution in a different context.

We Actually have very Little in Common with Others

In reality, when any two people meet the intersection of their beliefs is actually quite small.  Even for people that seem to have a number of beliefs in common, if you look closely, you will see a larger number of beliefs that are not in common.  This includes people that have been married for a long time -- even identical twins will not share the same beliefs and will generally end up picking different careers.

When two or more people need to collaborate over an extended period of time in any project will be exposed to each other's beliefs.  The ability of each individual to accept the beliefs of the other person will define what kind of collaboration is possible.

The most fertile collaborations happen when each person in a team accepts the beliefs of the other people. Accepting beliefs means not being frustrated that some else believes something different.  Just because you accept that different beliefs exist is not an endorsement of those beliefs.

Problems start when you reject another person's belief.  Once you reject another's belief you will start a process full of disagreement, defense, and destruction.  Learn about the cycle of destruction in the Communications Catalyst.

People may refuse to listen to different beliefs when they are not secure in their own beliefs or when they are afraid of what it would mean if the other belief was true.  Sometimes we are simply embarrassed to have had a belief for many years only to discover that it might not be true.

Amazingly, we all have beliefs that are not true.  We have an innate ability to ignore observations that contradict our beliefs and we can carry these blind spots for our entire life.  For example, it is common to say "Why did X do that?"; what you are really saying is "I would never do that, why did they do that?".  This is a clear case of observing someone with a different belief, yet we will ignore it and continue to support our own belief.

We need to collaborate with others on a daily basis.  We encounter the fact that no one else really believes exactly what we believe, not our spouses, not our peers, not our siblings.  In fact, there is so much evidence that two people with the same professed beliefs in religion and politics will agree on some things but have very different beliefs in implementation or degree.

Learning to tolerate others is the mark of a mature person.  Intolerance does nothing but break relationships and bring destruction.  Tolerance is not simply keeping quiet externally while cringing internally when other people talk about their beliefs. Tolerance is accepting that it is normal other people think differently than we do without wanting to change what they believe.

Conflict and Learning

Two people with exactly the same beliefs can learn nothing from each other.  Learning depends on people having different beliefs. Conflict arises because people discover that they have different beliefs. Conflict that is allowed to result in rejection will end up in the cycle of violence stated above, i.e. disagree, defend, and destroy.

When two people discover that they have different beliefs it is important to start by acknowledging that: 1) there is some subject on which they have different beliefs, and 2) acknowledge anything that the other person has said that you DO believe.  This principle is covered in depth in How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Remember, just because you believe something does not make it true.

Once each person has acknowledged anything that the other has said you will have a common ground for moving forward.  The next step is to acknowledge that your beliefs are different and that neither person will win by simply being assertive or using power.

Both parties need to search for 3rd party independent sources that bear on the subject of conflict.  If there is clear evidence that the world resolves this different in a clear way, then that should be the basis of resolving the difference.  If no 3rd party information exists then both parties should engage in finding alternatives that might be able to resolve their difference.  In most cases this will resolve the difference.

If you are really in a situation where one person's belief is wrong then the only way to resolve the issue will be to find a 3rd party source.  Otherwise the conflict will degenerate into a power struggle.  Even when radically different beliefs are present, tolerance will enable you to find ways to collaborate.

Conclusion

• We encounter conflict every day because we confuse beliefs and the truth.  
• Acknowledging that we do not have the inside track on truth is key to resolving differences with others.  
• You can accept a different belief without endorsing it.  
• It is important to acknowledge things that you can agree on, it shows respect to the other party.  
• Look to 3rd party mediators to ensure that the conflict does not become personal.  
• The only way to have productive relationships with others is through tolerance of other people.

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• Positive attitudes won't fix bad relationships
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