Permission to say 'No'

('culture'/'society' = prevailing media & popular values.)

We live in a culture that exalts ‘tolerance’ as a supreme virtue. This has increasingly worked itself out in the creation of an ‘anything goes’ society. The rights of individuals to express their preferences and to have those preferences acquiesced has become a foundational principle of our 21st century Western culture. This is given weight by the view that a person's preferences and the person themself are almost synonymous - thus to deny me my preferences is to forbid me to 'be myself'. Consequently if anyone fails to give me permission or to acquiesce with my preferences they are quickly branded as oppressive, narrow-minded and intolerant.

Now, of course, our society is not quite ‘anything goes’. It has its boundaries beyond which it does become intolerant. However, these boundary lines are essentially pragmatic rather than absolute (even if people like to think in terms of the latter). For example, our society thankfully does not (yet) accept Paedophilia – although Paedophiles could (and do) argue that their preferences are just part of who they are and all such boundaries are just cultural conventions. Indeed, such have been the huge shifts in ‘public morality’ over recent decades and the lack of any absolute moral foundations for deciding right and wrong – it will be no surprise if our society’s current antipathy to these preferences softens as well in due course.

This pragmatic approach to morality is based in part on a moral collusion – you accept my preferences and I’ll accept yours. No questions asked! But what about those who do ‘ask questions’ and who fear the precedents being created in our society. Who see that a pathway whereby people ‘self-define’ what is intrinsic to them, and then demand the acquiescence of others in those things (which are now classified as their ‘human rights’) must ultimately lead to moral and societal chaos. Chaos in which the clash of rights created will inevitably be resolved by those with power suppressing the consciences and rights of those who think differently.

Our society is offended by those who do not acquiesce with its collective preferences and as a result increasingly seeks to remove the right of individuals to say ‘No’. For our society ‘tolerance’ is to say ‘yes’ to everything (that it likes) – but it is a narrow self-serving ‘tolerance’ because the right to say ‘yes’ can only be meaningful if I also have the right to say ‘no’.