Tollerare gli intolleranti - cap. 8 fair play

Tollerando gli intolleranti il mondo sarà un posto migliore. E’ questo il messaggio lanciato da Steven Landsburg nel suo saggio “The Symmetry Principle”.

Ma andiamo con ordine, chi sono gli intolleranti da tollerare? Quelli che rispettano il “principio di simmetria”.

Esempio, Giovanni odia gli omosessuali, non vuole né toccarli né vederli e nel suo locale non sono ammessi, chi prova ad entrare viene cacciato in malo modo.

Domanda: Giovanni è un intollerante? Direi. Solo che rispetta il principio di simmetria: non pretende di avere il diritto di introdursi nei locali gay dove non è gradito.

Altro esempio: Renzo è un tennista che non tollera di giocare con i tennisti neri. Ha un rifiuto che gli viene da dentro. Se nel corso di un torneo si accorge della presenza di tennisti di colore piuttosto dà forfait e se ne torna a casa.

Domanda: Renzo è un intollerante? Direi! Ma rispetta il principio di simmetria: non impone ai tennisti di colore di partecipare a tornei in cui ci sono anche dei bianchi, qualora non lo desiderino.

Giovanni e Renzo, due intolleranti da tollerare in quanto rispettosi del principio di simmetria.

Tollerando gli intolleranti che rispettano il “principio di simmetria” in fondo tolleriamo chi ha gusti diversi, e quindi, indirettamente, anche la nostra diversità.

In molti casi chi non tollera l’intolleranza fa addirittura peggio degli intolleranti poiché non rispetta nemmeno il principio di simmetria. Ecco un esempio preclaro:

… Mary owns a vacant apartment; Joe is looking for a place to live. If Joe disapproves of Mary’s race or religion or lifestyle, he is free to shop elsewhere. But if Mary disapproves of Joe’s race or religion or certain aspects of his lifestyle, the law requires her to swallow her misgivings and rent the apartment to Joe. Or: Bert wants to hire an office manager and Ernie wants to manage an office. The law allows Ernie to refuse any job for any reason. If he doesn’t like Albanians, he doesn’t have to work for one. Bert is held to a higher standard: If he lets it be known that no Albanians need apply, he’d better have a damned good lawyer. These asymmetries grate against the most fundamental requirement of fairness—that people should be treated equally, in the sense that their rights and responsibilities should not change because of irrelevant external circumstances. Mary and Joe—or Bert and Ernie—are looking to enter two sides of one business relationship. Why should they have asymmetric duties under the antidiscrimination laws? When the law is so glaringly asymmetric, one has to suspect that the legislature’s true agenda is not to combat discrimination on the basis of race, but to foster discrimination on the basis of social status… Why do we recoil from imposing the burdens of affirmative action on Joe and his fellow apartment hunters or Ernie and his fellow job seekers? I think it’s because we recognize that Joe and Ernie have a right to live according to their values, and that we cannot respect that right without allowing them to exercise it in ways we don’t like—even when they are motivated by intolerance or bigotry…

E’ un buon cristiano che ci raccomanda di non sorvolare sulle ingiustizie di chi viola il principio di simmetria:

… Pastor Martin Niemoller, after eight and a half years in a Nazi concentration camp, wrote these words: They came first for the Communists, but I did not speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, but I did not speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, but I did not speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by then there was nobody left to speak up…

Certo che l’idea di tollerare gli intolleranti è ben strana. Assomiglia un po’ all’idea della libertà d’espressione.

… The idea of tolerating intolerance sounds suspiciously paradoxical, but so do a lot of other good ideas—like freedom of speech for advocates of censorship. In fact, freedom of speech has a lot in common with tolerance: Neither of them means a thing unless it applies equally to those we applaud and those who offend us most viscerally…

Non è un caso se il motto “non tollerare gli intolleranti” appartiene a Popper, ovvero a chi chiedeva censure più pesanti nei confronti della TV.

Chi sono i nemici dell’idea “tolleriamo gli intolleranti”? Essenzialmente gli amici dell’idea dei “diritti civili”.

… “gay civil rights” is a euphemism for restricting the civil liberties of those who, for whatever reasons, would prefer not to do business with gays…

Vediamo un’altra plateale violazione del principio di simmetria, simile anche se non identica. E’ interessante perché nemmeno ci accorgiamo di certi soprusi. Riguarda le barriere architettoniche:

… Along the same lines, suppose you’re wheelchair-bound and therefore unable to reach the third story of your favorite shopping mall. Under the law, the mall owner can be required to install an elevator to accommodate you. But there can be no moral sense to such a law, because it requires the owner (a total stranger) to help you overcome your handicap, while allowing me (another total stranger) to ignore your plight completely… The mall owner and I are equally indifferent to your problems; why should he be singled out to bear the entire cost of solving those problems while I go on my merry way?… You might want to counter-argue that the mall’s appearance did make you worse off by creating a new attraction that your neighbors can enjoy and from which you are excluded. But that counter-argument is based on the position that you actively dislike having good things happen to other people unless you can share in them. That’s a pretty crabbed view of what constitutes an improvement in the world—and taken to its logical extreme, it would require that you be compensated every time anybody does anything that benefits anyone…

Per chiudere, facciamo un altro esempio, questa volta un po’ diverso, ma che mette sempre insieme intolleranza e principio di simmetria: il partito dei cibi senza glutine vince le elezioni e vara una legge in cui si pretende che almeno metà dello spazio commerciale dei supermercati ospiti cibo senza glutine. Per semplicità potremmo anche ipotizzare che metta fuori legge il cibo contenente glutine. Oppure: il partito del ramadan vince le elezioni e mette al bando carne di maiale e alcol.

Si tratta di “intolleranti da tollerare”?

Sì: rispettano il principio di simmetria. In altri termini, non impediscono ad altri partiti, magari altrettanto “intolleranti”, di partecipare alle elezioni democratiche.

Eppure, ciascuno di noi vede un problema in tutto questo, magari si prefigura esempi ancor più radicali e trema. Forse che il “principio di simmetria” non è così solido come si pensa? No, il problema non deriva dal principio per cui in presenza di “simmetria” bisogna “tollerare gli intolleranti” ma dal principio “democratico”, quello sì poco solido, che consente alla maggioranza (che non è mai maggioranza) di decidere per tutti. Ecco, allora vediamo di agire dove si annida la malattia e non altrove.

P.S. recentemente ci sono state due esternazioni di segno contrario:

- Luigi Manconi: http://www.internazionale.it/opinione/luigi-manconi/2015/03/31/liberta-espressione-erri-de-luca-cecile-kyenge-negazionismo

- Nassim Taleb: http://www.pagina99.it/2016/09/24/perche-il-politicamente-corretto-e-una-minaccia-alla-liberta/.

Incubo verde

Le tenere menti dei nostri bimbi vengono esposte tutti i giorni a una duplice minaccia, due "incubi verdi": il pedofilo al parchetto e la maestra fissata con l’ ambiente.

Poiché il secondo esemplare è più numeroso e scorrazza indisturbato ancora oggi (2012) libero di interferire nell' educazione dei più vulnerabili, ogni sana crociata contro le molestie all’ infanzia dovrebbe accordargli la precedenza.

The cult of environmentalism demands that children abandon all independent thought about the nature of rights and obligations, replacing it with mindless subservience to the value judgments of their teachers.

It wouldn’t be difficult for teachers to address environmental issues in a refreshingly different way—as invitations to critical thought. I believe, for example, that my child is old enough to think sensibly about the issue of whether to leave the water running while she brushes her teeth.

When she lets water run down the drain, she denies other people the use of that water. The value of that use, to a very good approximation, is measured by the price of the water. Cayley, now aged nine, is capable—with a little assistance in the form of leading questions—of estimating how much water escapes during a toothbrushing session, the value of that water, and whether that value is or is not high enough to justify the effort of turning the faucets off and on. That’s a good exercise in estimation and a good exercise in arithmetic. It’s also a great way for her to discover the true miracle of the marketplace: As long as Cayley cares about her own family’s water bill, she will automatically account for the interests of everyone else who might be interested in using that water.

But Cayley’s teachers have not wanted her to think clearly about such issues, perhaps out of fear that clear thought can become a habit, and habitual clear thinkers are
not good candidates for subservience. Instead, those teachers have pronounced from on high that because water is valuable to others, we should be exceptionally frugal with it. In an inquisitive child, this raises the question: With exactly which valuable resources are we obligated to be
exceptionally frugal? A child who is observant as well as inquisitive will quickly recognize that “all valuable resources” is not the teacher’s preferred answer. For example, teachers rarely argue that “because building supplies are valuable to others, we ought to build fewer schools”; even more rarely do they argue that “because skilled workers are valuable in industry, we ought to have
fewer teachers.”

Where is the pattern, then? What general rule compels us to conserve water but not to conserve on resources devoted to education? The blunt truth is that there is no
pattern, and the general rule is simply this: Only the teacher can tell you which resources should be conserved. The whole exercise is not about toothbrushing; it is about authority…

My daughter has been taught that all endangered species should be preserved, but she’s also been taught that the AIDS virus should be eradicated. When Cayley’s third grade teacher required her to write a report on the endangered species of her choice, I encouraged her to choose the AIDS virus. (I was unsuccessful.) The AIDS virus is probably only one of many species that are not yet as endangered as they ought to be…

… That’s why American junior high school kids can tell you exactly how fast the Amazon rain forest is shrinking, but have absolutely no framework for thinking about whether it’s shrinking too fast or not fast enough. It’s easy for a teacher to write a number on a blackboard (the rain forest is shrinking by such-and-such a number of square miles per year) and demand that students memorize that mere fact, unilluminated by any theory. It’s much harder to get students to think…