Tolerance: A Caprican Discourse – I

After finishing Battlestar Galactica (the re-imagined series) a few weeks ago, I decided to start watching Caprica. It’s been an inferior series, as shown by its recent cancellation, but it did have some promising themes. One of those themes I want to explore here at ClobberBlog: tolerance. Particularly religious tolerance.
Caprica is set on planet of the title colony fifty-eight years before the events of BSG. It chronicles the origins of the Cylon race and the events leading up to the First Cylon War, which preceded the start of BSG, and the planet of Caprica is seemingly a model of tolerance. It has group marriage and gay marriage as well as polytheism and atheism. One of the main female characters is a surgeon and another is a priestess, “a woman of the cloth;” there’s no pretense of patriarchy here. Young people spend their days in virtual reality games engaging in virtual reality drugs, sex and violence, and since none of it is “real,” what’s the harm?
Well, actually, there is one thing that Caprican society is not very tolerant of: monotheism. They are not exactly wrong to be wary of monotheism, given its known association with terrorism, but Caprican enmity towards monotheism runs deeper than that. Monotheists come under contempt because they have the audacity to declare that some forms of behavior—like the raucous group sex and violence going down in the VR clubs—are wrong. As sixteen year-old Zoë Graystone, creator of the Cylon race, declares, “There is a good, and there is an evil. And there is a God who knows the difference.” A Caprican character later rages that he wants to know “who brainwashed [Zoë] into believing in a moral dictator called ‘God.’” The Capricans are tolerant of everything except for a group that makes seemingly arbitrary moral calls on the rightness or wrongness of the choices of others, all in the name of their deity. The Capricans might say that they’re tolerant of everything except intolerance.
But now the Capricans are in a Catch-22. To be intolerant of intolerance is a self-defeating position, for in order to be consistent, they would have to be intolerant of themselves for making a moral judgment about the monotheists. Therefore, it is not a question of the tolerant polytheists v. the intolerant monotheists. It is a question of what each group is intolerant of, and why.
Or, it could be that “tolerant” and “intolerant” are poor descriptors for this conflict altogether.
To be continued . . .

Comments

Tolerance: A Caprican Discourse – I — 5 Comments

  1. I think the issue here may be the kind of thing that tolerance represents, it’s not a virtue that is a good in and of itself, but is derived and depends upon other virtues.
    Tolerance is good only when based upon other virtues, it can’t itself be the end goal. Otherwise we would have to be tolerant of honor killings, genital mutilation, holocausts, etc. But when tolerance is based upon other virtues, like love, then it is good because the underlying virtues are good. We tolerate certain bad behaviors among family members out of love, but love gives a grounding and a limit to how much tolerance is appropriate. On the level of society, tolerance would be based on granting liberty to people. Since liberty applies to all, it limits what behaviors can be tolerated, behaviors which take away freedoms of others cannot be tolerated.
    If you approach tolerance this way, there is no single thing called tolerance. It is merely a convenient way of categorizing similar sets of behaviors based on underlying virtues. Tolerance is based on love in a family situation and liberty in a social situation, but since the resultant behaviors are similar, it makes sense to call them tolerance.
    The problem comes when things like tolerance are set up to be virtues in and of themselves. Divorced from the underling virtue, tolerance can lead to all kinds of evil actions. I think you also see this with loyalty. It’s not good to be blindly loyal, otherwise one has to be loyal to all kinds of evil organizations and practices. But, when loyal actions are based on virtues such as honesty (a person is honest, therefore I will be loyal to them), that loyalty will have limits and be based on something good.
  2. There are various ways in which Caprica (like BSG) alludes to current events, but that’s one I hadn’t thought of.
    That may be because while “tolerant” isn’t a label I had thought of applying to Caprican society, “decadent” and “self-absorbed” are. And there is a difference. Despite considerable advances in technology and other areas, Caprican society has lost its sense of direction, making it ripe for the fall that will come.
    Parallels to our own culture is obvious. We tout tolerance as a virtue, but what often passes for tolerance is more like moral relativism. Some (not all) of those who shout “tolerance!” the loudest are the least tolerant when it comes to those who reject relativism — and that’s true even when the non-relativists aren’t attempting to impose their absolutes on others. We rightly condemn bigotry, but when bigotry is directed against those who hold blatantly religious values, we as a culture are often unwilling to condemn it.
    I’m not suggesting, at least not now, that we’re ripe for a fall. I’m just observing that there’s a double standard when it comes to what types of intolerance we’re willing to tolerate.
    Or, it could be that “tolerant” and “intolerant” are poor descriptors for this conflict altogether.
    To be continued . . .
    I’m intrigued and am looking forward to your next post.
  3. Just finished Caprica season 1 myself. Fascinating show. I think it is the equal of BSG, with its exploration of the nature of reality, of what it is to be human.
    I think, both in the show and IRL, the use of the word “toleration” is incorrect, as you suggested at the end of your post. Tolerance is, by its very nature, condescending and based on whim. I believe that what we should be talking about is “acceptance” and “respect.”
    While in the case of the show, I think you have a point, I am generally leery of the accusations of intolerant tolerance. At the risk of setting off fires by touching on a sensitive topic, I’d point to the homosexual marriage issue. Defenders of marriage restriction accuse who would defend freedom of marriage of being intolerant because the latter does not respect the right of the former to try to legally restrict the rights of the latter. But that is a false argument. Neither respect nor tolerance requires one to allow rights to be taken.
    In the context of Caprica, the mainstream polytheism does seem to be legitimately intolerant.
  4. David, Eric, Derek ~ You’ve all posted great thoughts, and I think I’ll even be quoting you when I get part 2 up, hopefully tomorrow.
  5. It is true, as Eric said, that Bill Maher makes bigoted statements against religion. But if what he says is bigoted, then those people who say that Obama is a socialist, despite the fact that all of his policies allow for capitalism, or who say Obama is Kenyan, despite his Hawaii birth certificate being analyzed by several press organizations, or who say Obama is Muslim (which, in their eyes, makes him automatically suspect, another layer of bigotry) even though Obama has never called himself a Muslim and has gone to Christian services for 20 years, or (to give an example from the other side) who say that Bush is an idiot even though his college scores were similar to Kerry’s, those people are also making bigoted statements. In fact, I’d say about 50% of political discourse can be summed up as “Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re so stupid as to believe that!” which is a bigoted statement. A person need not be stupid to have a different opinion than you. They may have different values or have been misinformed. So if we are going to criticize bigotry against religion, then perhaps we should criticize bigotry against political views as well.
    Now, this is not to suggest that a political view (or a religion) should never be criticized. Of course they should be. That’s how you tell which philosophy is most likely to be true and useful. But if you are going to criticize a political view or a religion, you must first show A. that you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that your description of what your opponent believes is accurate, and B. that those views are harmful. If you can’t do those two things, then your statements against your opponent are bigoted.
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