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| Sunday, 16 November 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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'Tolerance' is the best medicine Today is the "International Day of Tolerance". While Sri Lankans have been getting an overdose of rhetoric on "Cohabitation," "Reconciliation" and the like, what they have been witnessing in reality in recent times has been the opposite.
This little yarn comes from the information super highway. Our own Sri Lankans do even better when it comes to satire. "It's always entertaining to see how little hairy varmint critters interact," begins the story by "Dave" who narrates in catchy phrases the symbiosis of his two pets, Cherokee and Mac. "Our boy Cherokee is a rather grumpy old puss who does not suffer fools gladly. If Mac gets a little too excited trying to romp with him, Cherokee goes for blood and bone, letting Mac know in no uncertain terms that he is not going to allow for any undue familiarity. What keeps Mac coming back for more is that sometimes the cat is feeling a little mellow and playful, and they enjoy a nice romp.... Critters are like people...well, some people...Any man who is or has been married for more than two weeks can verify that observation." Fundamentals of life So we begin with absurdity which is an ideal way to remind ourselves of the fundamentals of life. A little absurdity on invading personal space and the ensuing compromise, which is just one dimension of the expression, "tolerance." Absurdity is perhaps the best way to examine this term which has been parodied and bandied about, often without its deeper implications ever reaching the inner conscience. Therefore, in this little space permitted to us in print, let us try to re-articulate the meaning of "tolerance". Today is the "International Day of Tolerance". An annual day dedicated to contemplating "tolerance" was declared after the member states of UNESCO signed the Declaration of Principles of Tolerance on November 16, 1995. In a nutshell, the meaning of tolerance described in its Article 1 goes: "Respect, acceptance and appreciation of the rich diversity of our world's cultures, our forms of expressions and ways of being human... Tolerance is harmony in difference...contributes to replacing the culture of war by a culture of peace...It's not concession, condescension or indulgence.." The meaning of tolerance Look in the Oxford dictionary, and the meaning of tolerance reads: "The willingness to accept or tolerate, especially opinions or behaviour that you may not agree with, or people who are not like you." Would not the nuances of "tolerate" make tolerance a sufferance, a resigned endurance, and in some instances, a long-suffering toleration? Opposition not voiced, or cold war, cannot carry the right connotations of tolerance, as UNESCO's definition signifies a sharing of personal and national space, and the mateship of humaneness and dialogue. Negatively flavoured tolerance could soon turn into a banner to fight fanaticism, specially on today's political battle sites. As the Dhammapada-Paddita Vagga says, "Few are those amongst humans who go beyond. The rest of the humans only run about on the bank." Bala Tampoe President Ceylon Mercantile Union (CMU), shared similar notions of tolerance, for he shot back at our question of what tolerance means to him with, "Even answering this question means I have to tolerate the press." Tolerance was to him a philosophical concept of putting up with somebody or things one did not like, "like tolerating one's mother-in-law." "We don't tolerate outright dishonesty or violence," opinioned Tampoe. "One tolerates only what one does not oppose. If you can't tolerate people, you can't live long. Then you have to withdraw from society and live like a hermit," said he wisely, implying the importance of tolerance in the process of socialisation and building up societies. A scribe, who simply identified himself as "ravan", noted that when one practised tolerance, it implied that he was superior to the rest. "There is a paternalistic and patronising attitude in tolerance," he said. "People ask me, which side are you on? And I say, I am on the right side, and I don't know which one is that!" There is also the saying that tolerance is the most socially acceptable form of egotism, for it permits us to assume superiority without personal boasting. Ravan summarised his feelings as, "Treating equal people equally is an injustice. People are equal in different ways and have different needs." In a world full of all kinds of irrationalities, only non-violent communications stood a chance of creating a platform where one could talk freely and with respect to the other. "Tolerance is something comparatively very difficult to cultivate and then practise," said Kumar de Silva, media personality. "But once achieved - there is a tremendous sense of calm within oneself. Learning to live in harmony with one's surroundings (and that encompasses every possible kind of situation) is tolerance." But he was quick to add, "The way I interpret and practise 'tolerance' is the 'live and let live' philosophy, YET (equally importantly), not being taken for a sucker." How to care for the intolerable? The answer came from Colombo's hospitality industry. Hemalalinda Ranawake of "Koluu" restaurant said, "My business is a daily tolerance. Even when my guests say that my dishes are nothing compared to what other restaurants offer, I continue to pamper and please them. Rarely have I disagreed with a guest." Business meant putting up with differences on a daily basis, observed Hemalalinda. "Diplomacy is our secret and I can unhesitatingly say that any time I have here is a good time!" Nilukshi Rupasinghe, Public Relations Manageress, Hotel Galadari, cemented this "unconditional caring for one's guest" concept when she added, "Whether a guest is right or wrong, we treat him as right. Cultivating this philosophy has helped me all the time, inside the hotel and outside, even at home. It helps you to understand people more." "I am a little more tolerant now than when I first came here," Nilukshi offered herself as an example. "A little humour too can help you a lot. Each of us has some weirdness. Some people test your tolerance even at home." Jerome de Silva, dramatist, expressed the humour in his philosophy of tolerance when he said, "Being neither married or having any intention of ever being so, I can stretch my limits of tolerance with no fear of having to accommodate a nagging wife or a virago of mother-in-law. Being intolerable myself, I let other people have small doses of me at a time. I think that if you are intolerable yourself, no one gets much of a chance to annoy you." The trick of tolerance seems to be in the right communication between the contenders, which can turn tolerance into compassion for "the different". A tale I read speaks of a man who, after days-long calculated fury, pushes his wife's paramour down a roaring cauldron. At that moment when he stares horror-struck at the screaming, mangled and burning human blob, hanging from the brim of furnace, he discovers deep within him that clear difference between the self-interest induced in tolerance and the inherent compassion which lies buried in all humans for the suffering fellow human masses. "Tolerance is a key human quality, without a doubt," said Tony O'Brien, Director, British Council. "In a world thirsty for better communication and understanding between countries between communities and between cultures, why it is that so often tolerance is in such short supply?"When he lived in Hong Kong in the early 1990s, a fellow Brit wrote to him strongly complaining about some of his staff. O'Brien wrote back acknowledging their propensity to make mistakes but expressing their willingness to learn and improve. "To my surprise, I got a wonderful letter," said O'Brien. A letter which said, "..I wish to thank you most sincerely for your courtesy and tolerance in the face of my ill-judged and querulous letters...Your measured and encouraging letter, with its absence of justifiable reproach, has helped me curb a serious tendency on my part towards gratuitous and uninformed criticism." "How many of us can say we have never slipped into gratuitous and uninformed criticism?" asks this British Council Director. "I have learned to be slow to criticise. I try to assume that someone has a good reason for doing what they do. My responsibility is to find out what that reason is, and seek to understand before venturing to criticise. I remember a wonderful piece of advice about managing staff - Catch them doing it right!" Anoli Perera, artist, who also agrees that "Tolerance is the patience and space one can give to ideas and opinions of others that might be very different to one's own," says that it is also the process of clearly disagreeing with and opposing problematic ideas, but recognizing that space can exist for their articulation. "I think even the authors of problematic ideas deserve protection in terms of expressing them, but not so if they lead society to violence and chaos." At that point, she says, it is no longer an idea, but an illegal act, and the law should take over. So you come to the point where you change the language of tolerance into acceptance. Acceptance is taken as more than allowing somebody to be different. It is embracing the difference, approving of it and responding favourably to it. In this light, all beliefs become equal. All values become equal and all lifestyles and truths becomes equal. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
If you kept getting a busy signal from the Sunday Observer phones
recently, it may have been because Jayanthi Liyanage was hogging the
lines, getting a sampling of what some public personalities had to say
about the elusive term, "Tolerance."
