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In an age of tolerance, why is there so much hostility?
We like to think we live in an enlightened age, where each of us has the freedom to form our own opinions. Why then, instead of existing peacefully alongside one another, do we vehemently condemn any who dare to hold a different opinion as wrong? On any number of issues we so often feel that we alone have all the right answers. But is there anything wrong with that?
The modern myth of open-mindedness
The very same attitude that makes us first to cry, ‘That’s neither fair nor true, because it’s just a social construct!’ is itself a social construction, a product of specific cultural conditioning. Relativism cancels itself out. Still, we often assume present norms are innately right because we’re entrenched; we haven’t known any other reality. It’s an easy trap to fall into, but the spell breaks when we realise the norm itself is always shifting.