THE MYTH OF NEW-AGE TOLERANCE

“We are a more tolerant society today”, or so claim self-styled social justice warriors. I see no evidence to support this claim.

Certainly we are more tolerant today of things we were intolerant of in years gone by, but for every once-intolerable thing we now embrace, we have become intolerant of the formerly tolerable.

Society once ridiculed and vilified cross-dressers and showed ambivalence towards hunters, the situation is now reversed.

We once held our service men and women in high esteem and crucified draft dodgers.  Now we vilify soldiers while applauding those who condemn the military at every opportunity. 

While society’s new ultra-tolerance may be a myth, there is one area of human endeavour in which we have truly ‘excelled’ - the pursuit of individuality.

The “Australian people” no longer share as much in common as they once did. We now see ourselves each as representatives of a microcosm of subculture that unites the few based on their uniqueness and separates them from all the other unique “fews”.

Each subculture is itself a diverse microcosm with often wildly divergent philosophies and in turn each of these gives rise to myriad intolerances.

The white meat vegetarian thinks it’s OK to eat chicken and fish, while the vegetarian proper does not recognise him, claiming that real vegetarians don’t eat meat period. Of course the vegan objects to both these lightweight murdering, animal enslaving hypocrites on the basis that to even milk a cow or harness an ox is evil.

‘People’ no longer pull together for the common good, because the definition of ‘good’ is no longer ‘common’ and everyone demands that their variation of the definition must be respected and embraced by everyone else.

  

This leads to conflicts about the level of equity enjoyed by each variation of ‘common’ and ‘good’. Is group A’s definition of ‘good’ being accorded the same gravitas and sincere respect  as the ‘good’ embraced by groups B, C, D, E, F and so on.

Thus, the new-age tolerance has given rise to an unfathomable level of group-individualism, with each demanding specific and formal recognition and unreserved acceptance, each lobbying tirelessly for rights specific to their wants and needs in order that they might be treated no differently to anyone else.

No, I don’t get it either. But take heart. I’m pretty sure we’re not alone.

If one wants to know from whence this drive for individually-tailored-uniformity emanates, he need look no further than the nearest major city. 

There, millions of people live without ever having to consider or participate in the provision of the staples of life and essential services that sustain them, affording them far more time to disapprove of things and pontificate to others.

This is far from the case in rural areas, where tolerance is a way of life born of having intimate knowledge of how every staple and service is provided, why, and more often than not by whom.

The knowledge gives rise to respect for the contributions and fundamental importance of various community members undertaking the tasks upon which we all depend. 

The water in rural centres doesn’t magically spurt from taps. It is put there by a variety of people from those who work for Council, to the folks who manage water catchments and so on, and I know many of them and their families by name.

Meat doesn’t just appear on foam trays for my convenience. It is farmed, slaughtered, prepared and packed by people I know. Likewise with much of the green produce I consume. 

My morning devotions to the God of Porcelain do not simply disappear ‘round the bend as if by magic either. They are dealt with by people I know by name, at a facility on the edge of town I have seen many times. I know the conditions they endure for my benefit and I am genuinely grateful.

There is little time for superiority in the country. We are far too dependent upon one-another for that sort of thing. City people are just as dependent – perhaps more – but they have the luxury of being judgmental because few know the people upon whom their very existence depends.

Many city folk like to think rural folk are inferior, judgmental and intolerant. They base this on the fact that rural folk are likely to stare at some stranger walking the streets of their town with blue hair, earlobes stretched by massive black ball-races and a bone through his nose.

We may stare, but curiosity and mystification should not be mistaken for intolerance. In fact my 30 years as a Sydney refugee has taught me that rural folk are without doubt the most tolerant Australians of all.

The word ‘tolerance’ is tossed around a great deal; mainly by people who have no idea what it means.

    

Tolerance: a fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward those whose opinions, beliefs, practices, racial or ethnic origins, etc., differ from one's own. 

  

Rural folk are very good at this. What they rail against is any effort to force them to endorse the things they are ambivalent towards and if there’s one thing city folk hate above all else, it is the failure to acknowledge the superiority of their views and lifestyles. 

In any given week, I will meet in the street, converse with or perhaps socialise with:

• Policepersons
• Nurses
• Doctors
• Dentists
• Wardsmen/women
• Prosthetics engineers
• Pathologists
• Teachers
• Toilet cleaners
• The folk who fix roads, sewers and power-lines
• Ambulance persons and volunteer emergency service workers
• Priests and ministers of religion
• Undertakers
• Dairy/beef/sheep/veg/fruit/grain farmers (both organic and normal)
• Butchers, bakers and even the odd candlestick maker
• Cobblers, tailors, seamstresses
• Vets and farriers
• Mechanics
• Editors and journalists
• IT specialists
• Shopkeepers
• Pest exterminators
• Forestry workers
• Fisheries inspectors
• Oyster farmers
• Park rangers
• Publicans and the list goes on...

All these people and many more, I rely on every day just to get by.

I know them all well. I know their families and they know me. We also know one-another’s little “idiosyncrasies” and while we might not share or understand them, they are largely irrelevant to us.

We are tolerant people because we rely on each-other and our daily dealings form a bond between us that transcends approval or disapproval of such things as sexual proclivities and cosmetic superficialities.

Homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism – all these things are rife in cities because they are based on the ignorance associated with opinion formed by visual and superficial perception alone, that blind us to the nature of the individual that lies beneath.

Rural folk judge each-other too, but the criteria upon which they judge almost always have a simple and quite singular objective; determining whether an individual is reliable, whether he or she can be depended upon.

Dependability is an essential aspect of community cohesion in the bush and rural folk develop and admire the trait above all else.

On the whole, rural folk don’t care how their city cousins choose to live their lives. Alas the same cannot be said in reverse.

Rural residents are looked down upon by city folk, who think them quaint at best, a bit primitive, poorly educated, naive beyond belief and in need of a firm parental hand.

Aspects of their way of life not approved of by city folk must be amended, abolished or superseded by new and better models of community developed in the city. 

It is much the same attitude that gave Australia its Indigenous assimilation policy, but city folk don’t see it that way. 

They see only that they threaten each-other in many ways and having identified the threats, they must save us from our inevitable selves. 

On the whole, however, rural folk aren’t complaining and those who do can often be identified as tree/sea changers who long for familiar city comforts transposed to a rural setting.

The city paranoia about firearms and disdain for hunting and fishing are perhaps the most glaring examples. The rate of firearms ownership in my location is at least 4 times that of most city postcodes, yet gun crime is so rare no one bothers to collate the data and the last recorded murder by firearm took place 100 years ago, during World War 1.

This miracle of self-control results in thousands of city folk moving to rural centres for the peace, quiet and security they embody, only to spend the next 20 years trying to turn them into carbon copies of the very social disasters they fled. 

And they do it all because they know how things should be done! 

It is very clear that city people do not know how to conduct themselves properly with firearms and find it all but impossible to resist an unlocked door, but rural people mastered the knack long ago. 

In fact the statistics are such that any rural community wanting to preserve the peace and safety it has enjoyed for many generations, could make a very good start, not by locking their doors and banning guns, but by banning city people.

Unfortunately that would be intolerant, not to mention selfish and as I’ve established, rural folk are neither. 

They are pleased to welcome newcomers with good ol’ country hospitality, they just wish newcomers would pause occasionally to take a breath and remember why so many gravitate to the country and not the other way ‘round.

So what is the corollary of all this?

New-age tolerance does not equate to a less hateful world. It has simply resulted in less hate being directed at the things that meet with our approval today.

And when it comes to tolerance - genuine tolerance - city folk are not the most virtuous exampled simply because they claim tolerance by virtue of enlightenment.  

Putting it into practice, unconsciously, every single day, not because it is demanded but because superficial difference really doesn't matter...that’s the measure of a tolerant society. 

Anyway, I’ll get outaya way now....

©gmallard2016 all rights reserved 

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