Tolerance - what is it? What is hidden behind this concept today, when it is so often used in modern rhetoric? Often, it is associated with the construction of multicultural societies and the related ethnopolitical problems. Without underestimating the significance of such issues, it should also be noted that this concept covers a wider range of meanings.
Biological tolerance - what is it?
Initially, this term was used precisely by biologists who used it, denoting the corresponding properties of living organisms. Translating the word “tolerate” from the Latin language, we get literally “patience” and “addiction”. That is, the so-called ability of the immune system to adapt to antigens. For some reason, an immune-tolerant organism does not produce antibodies to counteract antigens that enter its body.
And it should be noted that the development of tolerance in this area is far from always negative. More often, on the contrary, the body does not reproduce antibodies just because there is no need for them. For example, the development of the fetus in the mother's body will never cause rejection in her body. This is also tolerance, and in this case it is a vital vital necessity. Ecologists also use this concept. Tolerance - what is it for them? And in this case, the ability of organisms to perceive and survive in a very wide range of climate conditions is implied. Also a very important and useful characteristic of the body, is not it?
Social tolerance - what is it?
And in this sense, the concept is used in very different planes. It can be applied to people with disabilities, women, sexual minorities. In any case, to any social categories. At the same time, tolerance, the significance of which is most often associated with interethnic problems, has a brightly negative connotation. Modern far-right in other states and in Russian conditions have made great efforts to turn tolerance into an abusive concept, trying to make any argument in its defense a laughing stock. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that tolerance for representatives of a different social category, culture, race is the basis of the normal and long-term functioning of any human society.
And it does not at all imply some kind of automatic submission to inappropriate actions, for example, by national minorities. It often happens that migrants who were brought up in a completely different system of social relations and values try to transfer it to countries new to themselves. However, tolerance cannot be extended to acts that openly contradict local standards. They should not be subject to patience or humility at all. Such problems must be solved in no way by closing borders - globalization is still a progressive phenomenon that can hardly be stopped. Problems can be quite effectively resolved only by educating these peoples and pulling their socio-economic and cultural development to the level of advanced societies on the planet.