Wow has this thread gone off track.
Better now.
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@carverofchoice @spamoni @R.Good
1 Are you genuinely tolerant of those with perceptions diametrically opposed to what youâve expressed here? Do you see them as âdifferentâ and âlegitimateâ rather than âcruderâ and âless enlightenedâ? Be honest.
2 You are pitted against an opponent in an arena where anything goes. (Um, life?) Your opponent aims to beat you âdownâ. You aim to beat him âupâ. You are outmatched. He is winning. He aims to âendâ you. Your only option if you wish to survive is to abandon your âupâ principles and âendâ him, which you do.
Do you feel bad about it?
Or do you ROAR with conquest?
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Wow, I just saw this post today in 2023. Sorry I missed it. (Although you didnât ask me.)
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Tolerate yes. Incorporate if it changes my mind.
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If I cannot stop him/her by wounding or maiming, end it. Hope I would just move on and not gloat or worry. (Actual situation may change my theories. )
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Alright, since this is the watercooler, I will elaborate on my perspective a little as long as we keep everything within the community guidelines and it stays in the watercooler. Just remember, you asked for me to share pieces of my philosophy 
TLDR; people, feel free to skip this response too. 
No offense taken. Iâm only answering because Peep asked.
Within reason, yes. It partially depends on what you mean when you say being âtolerantâ of something. I am not going to enable, condone, encourage or support utterly abusive and extremely harmful opinions that blatantly infringe on rights and common sense. This is different from someone having a different perspective or ideology from me. One book I highly recommend to help explain this is now one of my all-time favorite books ever:
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
I believe the author makes a good effort to remain unbiased in this presentation. I first checked it out from the library through Overdrive, but I liked it so much that I bought it on Audible, but then I was saving so many quotes and manually writing down so many quotes from it that I just bought it on Kindle as well so I could just easily highlight and save notes that way. It does a great job at breaking down ethics/morals in a way that helps me to see that even when people have an opposite opinion from mine, it doesnât mean their opinion is necessarily wrong or unethical from the point of view they are taking. It is hard to explain while keeping politics and religion stuff out of the forum, but I highly recommend that book either in print or audio if you want to understand a little better about why I can be âtolerantâ or understanding of others having different perspectives.
Granted, everyone, including myself, will always be plagued by cognitive biases such as Confirmation Bias, Availability Bias, Anchoring Bias, Hindsight Bias, Overconfidence Bias, Self-serving Bias, Fundamental Attribution Error, Bandwagon Effect, and many more. Often people arenât well informed on things and their opinions arenât necessarily malicious as much as they are lacking understanding or not well-thought-out and perhaps inherited. Sometimes it is a product of their experiences, including trauma and certain parts are over-emphasized and emotionally based.
I have had some long life experiences that taught me a very important lesson:
If I TRULY knew a personâs story, their real, whole story, I would love them too.
This has held true with some very shocking examples, including one of me coming to âloveâ the person I most âhatedâ in the entire world at the time about a decade ago. A person who almost everyone would agree was a âterribleâ person. I wonât get into too many details, but suffice it to say that this person would brag that they had dozens of restraining/protective orders against them across multiple states, had many convictions involving violence, etc. A person I completely despised at the time. And again, I wonât get too detailed into why I decided I needed to find a way to âloveâ this person (not romantically), but suffice it to say, that when I did, it changed my entire perspective on life and people. It might be one of the most enlightening experiences of my lifeâŚlearning to âloveâ the person I hated most [at the time].
Judging
Hereâs the problem with âJudgingâ a person as I see itâŚour every judgment is really a judgment of ourselves only. When I judge you, it really only my idea of you that I know, which is very limited and not even close to a complete knowledge of you, and that is what I judge. In this judging, I have to take a thing only partially and not not in its wholeness, which means I abstract this little thing, analyze and fit it into a category. I am seeing the world through a filter of my own creation which includes my own cognitive biases, fixed beliefs, and judgments. In this sense, when when I judge a person as good, evil, stupid, bright, or anything else, it is really only me that I am judging because in a sense I am looking in a mirror and seeing myself reflected back because all I REALLY see are my own categories thought reflecting. This is why what bothers me most in other people is what bothers me most about myself. Judgment is never really about the other person, it is always about me, the me stuck inside my head, the me which is viewing and labeling only my selective abstract of a thing instead of the wholeness.
Judging and criticism often say more about the person judging, criticizing and complaining than it does about the person or thing being judged and criticized. This itself is mostly an observation, and not something negative. It often indicates the emotional turmoil, frustration and pain a person wants communicated, and should not necessarily be received as an attack, though it often wrongly is. Instead, a receiver can remain mostly emotionally disengaged to avoid an escalated cycle, and instead get to the root of the communication. That is a whole other topic though.
You asked for honesty. The truth is, I am not perfect at it, as I am also human and can struggle with cognitive biases and emotions, and limited knowledge and experience, but I do TRY to remember all of the above and value everyone and remember that if I truly a knew a person in their wholeness, and knew their whole story, I would love them too. I may not agree with them, and I may still completely oppose their opinions in some cases, or abusive or harmful things, but to me there is a difference. I like to ask people questions and understand. I can respect difference in preference and coming to different conclusions and I try not to be closed-minded and rigidâŚbut I like to think that I do not condone or enable abuse.
There are some real-life personal examples of this I wonât get into. But suffice it to say, that because âanything goesâ you donât necessarily have to play by âtheir rulesâ and wants. You donât have to stay in that arena. You donât have to play their game. You donât have to engage with them, you donât have to make them a part of your plans or life. You just said anything goes. I would just leave and build my own life/game/rules away from that person. If he outmatches me in brute strength and weapon use, that doesnât mean he outclasses me in everything. I donât have to play his game in his way.
Having said that, I know thatâs not what youâre getting at. Since you said this:
Firstly, if you think that would be counter to my âprinciples,â then you misunderstand. I am not opposed to protecting myself and my family, etc within reason. Just because I would prefer not to have to take drastic action, and would first desire reasonable alternatives, does not mean that my principles dictate that I have to let someone abuse me.
I am also not totally sure if the last 2 questions are contradictions. I think it is possible to wish things couldâve been different while also feeling relief and emotionally triumphant that you succeeded at something you reasonably needed to do. Weâre humans, not robots after all. But it doesnât necessarily mean that I have to hate the person, shame their memory and make things worse either.
Iâve said this in here before, but it is my belief that most people ARENâT terrible people at the their core. EVERYONE is constantly in a life-long battle to work out their cognitive dissonance. Part of life is figuring out how to resolve conflicting values, prioritize and figure out how to meet underlying needs and desires --hopefully eventually in positive, healthy ways.
Iâve got plenty of my own problems and poor choices, past and present, and I wonât claim to be totally free from the perils of Cognitive Dissonance. I have spent a good couple of decades contemplating my life experiences and knowledge of psychology, philosophy, etc to decide who I want to be and how I will accomplish that in general, but Iâm still learning, gaining skills, and deciding to change things over time even nowâŚhopefully itâs always improving the more I learn, but Iâm certainly not static.
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Ok, I read it twice, once in email and once here, and aside from the fact that the email version said âmost people areâŚâ and the current version says âmost people ARENâTâŚâ 
Thereâs a novel by this guy about monstrous twins born to beautiful and wealthy parents. Theyâre raised by servants and kept out of sight as theyâre an embarrassment to the family.
As they grow, they discover that theyâre brilliant and happy when in physical contact and sad and moronic apart.
The physical contact is unrestrained, awkward and repellent. The servants are instructed to prevent it.
The twinsâ life goal is to come together.
The end.
The ROAR I mean to be pure, not of two minds at that moment, and not just momentarily. Fully realized and experienced, for however long it lasts.
TIME is essential to know anyone or anything. Instant oats are pre-pared and not by you.
Weâre awash in instant oats and malnourished. Therefore, as compadres, we struggle.
âActual situation[s] may change my theories.â
Indeed. 
Haha, yeah, typo. I noticed it when I reread it and laughed that it said the complete OPPOSITE of what I meant to say. Funny typos happen.
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Yeah, not being petty. It was interesting trying to reconcile it on first reading. Later came here.
Thought it might be a puckish joke.
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Apologies to you both for such an ungracious reply. The weird energy is frustration, I think. Not with either of you, but myself. My bad.
No need to apologize. Youâre amongst friends, or as close as someone friendly since we never met in person.
Besides, I missed the ungracious act.
Release your energy.
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Thanks, Steve.
My instinct was that this conversation couldnât be resurrected successfully. The context within which it arose is lost.
So, when you replied, I just hearted the post and thought âdone.â
When Carver replied, I was in a pickle. It was a long delayed response to a question directly posed him, but so what, itâs his privilege.
So I gave it a shot and failed.
Just deserts.
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I did not notice. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when possible.
I didnât remember seeing it earlier. Was probably in the middle of a late night of work and figured Iâd get back to it after a later reply, but then there werenât any for a while, so I just forgot about it. 
Nothing personal my froggy buddy, just busy life sometimes.
Iâm also okay with not needing to have the last word, so sometimes I let replies go unanswered when I donât feel I have something particularly constructive to add.
Contemplating on someone elseâs recent thoughts can be better than me just talking to hear myself speak.
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Cheers. This site is full of smart, fun, charitable people. Itâs been a pleasure to see it evolve this way.
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