Since politicians are such adept actors, don’t you think they should take more life lessons from theater? I’ve been thinking of that with a new Congress taking office, and with the predictions of impasse resulting from the divided Capitol.
So maybe we should tell the people in politics to go back and read their Shakespeare: Romeo & Juliet makes it clear that nothing good can come of hatred; Macbeth is chilling in its lesson that danger and darkness lie in deep ambition. And Julius Caesar? It’s pretty clear that tells us to be careful how you wield power – and, of course, who you choose as friends.
Good advice for contemporary politics in all that, right? Here’s more: One of the topics that scholars say fascinated Shakespeare – and motivated a lot of his characters – is tolerance, or its absence. He often dramatized human interactions based on differences in religion, gender, nationality and race. He saw both comedy and tragedy in our human intolerance.
There was a time, a few decades back, when a a lot of us imagined that all we needed was greater tolerance to overcome racism, not to mention discrimination based on sexual orientation, nationality or religious beliefs. But we came to understand that when we tolerate something, that means that we are enduring what we find awkward or inappropriate or painful. That’s hardly a healthy way of thinking about relations with another person or a group. At best, tolerance is a small step toward more appropriate and useful goals, like acceptance and respect.
Yet tolerance is at least better than hostility. And here’s a striking notion: If we have moved beyond mere tolerance as a goal in race relations, good for us – but we still ought to see it as a baseline of behavior in our political conflicts. Tolerance isn’t good enough in the face of racism or gender discrimination, but it would actually be an improvement from the rising enmity that now grips our political divide.
Research published two years ago by the Association of Psychological Science said there was a practical effect of tolerance – the researchers said it is “a cornerstone for reducing intergroup conflict in diverse societies.” So simply recommitting ourselves to tolerance might help our political system move beyond the paralysis that has gripped it, and the political chaos that has ensued.
Consider the intolerance that so many of us, left and right, display toward folks on the other side of the American political divide. We don’t want to live near the other type, join their clubs or attend their churches. We’d rather our kids not play with theirs. We consider those other people not just wrong on the issues, but morally inferior.
I’m guilty of this feeling, certainly, and as a political progressive, I know it leads some folks on the right to consider me self-righteous. Mind you, I’m not going to back away from what I think is a right judgment that some behavior is indeed immoral.
But calling out political calculations that are beyond the pale isn’t the same as imagining people whose perspectives we don’t share are beneath contempt. We all come to our views through our experiences, and except for a relatively few people whose ambitions cloud their judgment, it’s a rare American who intentionally descends into political behavior we might fairly call despicable. You know some of those sort, but most of our fellow citizens are deserving of, well, tolerance.
Practicing tolerance doesn’t mean yielding your views; it means recognizing and accepting those of others. It’s less stressful, by the way, and so more healthy. It’s more likely to yield a like response from the other side, too.
Part of the challenge is for all of us to note that not every issue is political, and to actively seek ways to reconnect our communities in areas that aren’t caught in the political divide.
Sometimes, then, rather than a hot partisan response to something that ticks us off, we might consider a moment of introspection, and then a show of tolerance. It could be good for us. Shakespeare, of course, offers such advice. He wrote: “Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot/That it do singe yourself.”
Rex Smith, the co-host of The Media Project on WAMC, is the former editor of the Times Union of Albany and The Record in Troy. His weekly digital report, The Upstate American, is published by Substack."
The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.