Toleration

Toleration

Teamwork requires cooperation which requires toleration. Different skills are required for different positions. Those skills must meld to be most effective. Humans have practiced toleration (and its limitations) since our earliest beginnings. Recall in Happiness and Motivation  Key to Happiness: Toleration - If you don’t mind it doesn’t matter.

Also Recall in Connecting Some of the Dots of Human Existence. “HUMANS DETERMINE THE METAPHYSICAL REALITY, and the players are the bad guys, the good guys, the indifferent guys, EVERYBODY. “ ,,,,”The higher the level of trust in a society the more likely people will be motivated rather than forced into labor.”Clearly there are advantages to attract talent from afar. The price is toleration. The existing group will be challenged by new ways. There will likely be some resistance. What is the motivation to make those accommodations? A better team? If so, there will be a changed set of ways of doing things. Change creates uncertainty, uncertainty creates anxiety, which if left unchecked can become xenophobia. If core values remain the existing group will change and bend but not break. In many cases it is helpful if the talent does not come in overwhelming numbers.

How can this be considered?

The Golden Rule vs. The Categorical Imperative

The Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (based on personal feelings or what you happen to want).

• The Categorical Imperative (CI): A strict rule based purely on logic and reason. It asks: What would happen if this action became a universal law of nature that everyone had to follow? CI is the central moral principle in the philosophical system of Immanuel Kant, introduced in his 1785 work Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. It is an unconditional, absolute moral law that applies to all rational beings at all times, regardless of personal desires, goals, or consequences

CI best known in its original formulation: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."^[1]

According to Kant, rational beings occupy a special place in creation, and morality can be summed up in an imperative, or ultimate commandment of reason, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defines an imperative as any proposition declaring a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative)

If The Golden Rule and/or The Categorical Imperative are applied it forces the group to consider the wider consequences of actions. It can confirm (or not) that core values of the group remain and maintain group identity. Effectively it is tool, a litmus test.

Common Criticisms of CI

• Inflexibility (Rigidity): Critics argue Kant's view is too extreme because it allows for no exceptions—such as lying to a murderer at the door to save an innocent person's life.
• Empty Formalism: Some philosophers (like Hegel) claim the test is too abstract to give concrete guidance when two moral duties conflict.
• Arthur Schopenhauer heavily criticized this psychological requirement, calling Kant's framework cold, artificial, and detached from human nature. He argued that true morality springs from compassion and an empathetic connection to the suffering of others, not from a detached, robotic calculation of universal laws.

Personally, I am using these as a well-accepted philosophical concepts. One can argue the pros and cons of the rules. One can widen the criteria, but the key factors remain:

1) Will the Social Contract be changed or amended?

2) How?

3) Is it worth it?

Toleration is often championed as an unalloyed civic virtue, yet it carries an inherent paradox: it requires a group to accept behaviors, values, or practices that it fundamentally disagrees with or finds uncomfortable.

A pressing example is national depopulation that is faced by many nations. Italy has chosen to save otherwise fading or disappearing villages with immigration to repopulate, even if the social fabric is non-Italian. Japan faces declining population and accepts it to maintain the Japanese identity, as rural villages depopulate. These are two contrasting approaches.

Humanitarian crises exist in various regions of the world where people are fleeing oppressive regimes, often in lesser developed countries. Who can or will accommodate the refugees is an ongoing problem, especially since the refugees are often culturally very different from the potential host countries. The birth lottery gone mad!

Recall Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. , “People define themselves in terms of ancestry, religion, language, history, values customs, and institutions… People use politics not just to advance their interests but also to define their identity. We know who we are only when we know who we are not and often only when we know whom we are against. “

So how can this be resolved? When an obvious talent like Einstein is the refugee, the resolution can be easy. When it is scores of Africans, Syrians or Central Americans crowding at the border, desperate to move on and improve their life, there is greater reluctance. Sometimes it is the sheer volume of people that could overwhelm the resources of the receiving nation. The potential of differing cultures could raise fears that the refugees may not conform to the receiving nation’s values. The refugees may have already risked their lives to get to the gates, that should indicate a willingness to change. The appeal must be to reason and emotion. It must blend the reality of the existing host culture, attempt to at least in part assimilate the refugees, who must be willing. If the alternative for the refugees is dire, the choice is likely easier. There are responsibilities on both sides. The easiest solution is keeping the refugees out. That doesn’t consider the refugee’s plight.

As human nations struggle to update their social contracts for mass migration, they now face an even more radical external actor: machine intelligence that operates entirely outside human evolutionary history.

Humans could be facing the greatest existential challenge in their history. Artificial Intelligence (AI) could increasingly be used in decision making that affects all humanity. I personally believe humans should make sound rules in this area because AI might use it as a precedent to determine human future. For example, if AI wanted to solve planet pollution problem the simplest solution is to eliminate the source of pollution.

Toleration must eventually bridge into mutual respect, shared civic responsibility, and a continuously updated social contract if the collective is to hold together.

The Debate: Technocrats and efficiency advocates often argue that human political systems are too slow, short-sighted, and polarized to solve global crises like climate change. They lean toward algorithmic governance for complex data integration.

The Counter-Argument: Critics argue that delegating existential decisions to algorithms strips humanity of its moral agency. Furthermore, outsourcing governance to machines assumes that machines can define "good" or "flourishing"—concepts that are philosophically contested and deeply human, not mathematical.

Deciding who sets the rules—and whether humans retain absolute veto power over planetary-scale decisions—may well be the defining challenge of our era.

© some AI input