The normalcy of strangeness

If you have read even just a few of my previous posts, you have probably realized already that I am a strong supporter of Aristotle's theory that "Virtue stands in the middle", whereby an excess of something which is generally considered as good could just as bad as a lack thereof. For instance, not having any food, one can die of starvation, but having too much can lead to indigestion or food wasting, which, admittedly is not as bad as dying, but is still a bad outcome anyway.

One poignant example of this effect is described in Karl Popper's "Paradox of Tolerance": the Austrian philosopher pointed out that, while tolerance is in general a welcome attitude in a society, if it is extended to the intolerant members of that society, they may end up taking over the institutions and doing away with the tolerance that allowed them to rise in the first place. In other words, tolerance can bring about its own demise. The flip side of this situation is also problematic: when diversity is not only accepted but somehow imposed, a society can end up in a situation of "forced tolerance" that alienates some of its members and results in less tolerance than before. In fact, the recent rise of the far right in many countries is nothing but a symptom of how much citizens feel pushed to accept positions that exceed their ability to adapt. Surprisingly, this is a case where there seems to be no middle point that can be considered virtuous, because the same level of tolerance that feels coerced by some people might seem insufficient for others.

Photo: Wellcome Collection

One aspect that is frequently ignored in the debates about tolerance is that it is composed of two different processes: it starts with an objection to a practice or belief that is perceived as sitting outside the social norm, followed by an acceptance (if the non-conforming practice seems harmless enough) or a rejection (if the practice in questions seems to pose a danger to society or undermine fundamental beliefs). The separation of these two steps is very important, because the first one is purely perceptive (including, in an extended sense, elements that can be "perceived" with the brain through our understanding), whereas the second is predictive, anticipating what effects that action could have on the society. Furthermore, given that tolerance is a social phenomenon, both the perception and the prediction have different thresholds for different people what makes it even harder to analyze.

In fact, if look back at the evolution of the zeitgeist in the last two decades, one could argue that the term "woke" was precisely anchored in this separation. Indeed the term was originally used to describe people who had realized (awaken to) the immense variety of the human nature and the richness that it could provide if properly embraced. Also because, even if a person is identifiably different from "us" in one aspect, the things that we have in common are probably many more. At the end of the day, we are all humans, we are born helpless, we are painstakingly brought up by our families and we live our lives the best we can until we die. And I think that these two steps are important: identifying the difference and learning to accept that this difference does not affect the essence of the others, that they are still a lot like ourselves.

The way I see the current situation, the problem arises from an effort to erase the process of objection. In a well-intentioned attempt to allow as many diverse groups to be tolerated, the mass media and the political class seem to have fallen into a spiral of social gaslighting where they insist that the differences that some people perceive, the lines between "they" and "the others", are only some figments of their imagination, that there are no such differences and that they should stop trying to decide based on these imagined categories. That is precisely the point where the term "woke" can be weaponized against the same liberals that used to carry the label with proud: when the ideal that "humanity is one" makes you blind to the fact that there are taller and shorter people, thinner and fatter, athletes and bookworms, people with a lot of tattoos and people without tattoos, criminals and good citizens, artists and scientists, heterosexual, homosexual, transsexual and everything in between, and instead you sweep everything under huge carpet of human, that is when "woke" becomes equivalent to blinded and foolish.

Our tolerance has progressed a lot in the last decades and these days there are many things that are not unusual anymore like having small visible tattoos, for women to smoke or to vote, for gay or lesbian couples kissing on the street. But regardless of how well-intentioned we are, there is still some unavoidable amount of strangeness in the perception of other types of people: persons with extensive facial tattoos, dressed like animals (outside theme parks or costume parties), drag queens or even something as simple as walking on certain sorts of prosthetic legs, are statistically rare even today. And let us remember that it is only natural to reject anything that is unknown or inexplicable: at the end of the day, in the ancestral lands where we evolved, being overly confident could very easily cost us our lives.

The door to our hearts does not reside in denying the strangeness, but in identifying it and realizing that it is acceptable. Only after we are repeatedly exposed to an unusual phenomenon do we learn (if that is the case) that it is not dangerous to us. And once an eccentricity has been deemed as acceptable, it might, in due time, become so commonplace that it is not perceived as an oddity anymore; the strangeness becomes normal. Until we reach that point, it is unavoidable in our nature to perceive the difference, and it is also the only path to achieve the tolerance. Let us not try to erase the difference but to embrace it. Have a nice weekend.