The United States of America was founded on the basis of the tolerance of religion, being populated in some part by those refugees from Europe who were not prepared to conform to the rigid, formal expectations of worship and catechism of the denominations of the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England. While the puritans themselves displayed certain lack of tolerance in dealing with their peers, the founding fathers built into the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights elements that establish tolerance as one of the major tenets of life in this country. The concepts of "innocent until found guilty", "giving the benefit of doubt", and the acceptance of evidence to establish guilt "beyond reasonable doubt", provide gray areas in application of law that have a profound effect on our way of life.
As contrasted with some other religions, the major religion of the United States preaches forgiveness, and provides the beatitude that when "struck on the cheek, turn the other cheek". Tolerance is a form of forgiveness where we attempt to put ourselves into the perpetrator's shoes. If we strayed that far over the line of lawfulness, would we not want to be forgiven?
Tolerance, according to my MS Word supplied thesaurus has equivalencies in open-mindedness, impartiality, liberality, allowance, variation, magnanimity, and lenity. Tolerance is a part of our lives in many of our daily living experiences. While there are community standards for our activities, we apply tolerance in our dealings with others daily. Two communicating people are rarely so alike that there are not things that we tolerate so that we can live together -- within certain limits. We tolerate that our friends and associates do not have the same accent or dialect as ourselves, that their eating habits -- both in the manner of eating and the things we eat -- are different, and that our beliefs differ. If we could only base friendship on the commonalty of some metrics of our daily activities, then we might find ourselves with a very small number of friends and colleagues. Even in marriage there is tolerance for the time spent in the bathroom or on the telephone, for the different ways of doing things. Tolerance is the realization that simply because something is different, does not mean that it is wrong. The emerging philosophy that we need to learn to live in a diverse society will only come to fruition if we are tolerant. But have far does our tolerance have to stretch? Are there limits beyond which we can go no further? Do these limits change with time and with changes in our environment?
Another common example of our tolerance is the littering law. As we travel down our roads we see signs that say "NO LITTERING, Maximum fine $200". We rarely hear of anyone actually prosecuted for littering, except where the case is flagrant -- such as dumping household garbage, or allowing garbage to blow off the back of a pick-up truck. We tend to be a little bit better in environments where we are present on a regular basis, or where there are others to see us. This is generally the areas where we walk, perhaps from the parking lot to our office -- with one exception -- the disposal of cigarette buts! Obviously we are much more tolerant of these tiny pieces of flotsam than we are of other discarded articles. Is size a factor in our tolerance?
With respect to the law it is simpler to be tolerant towards those who are operating on the edges than it is to apply the law to those who are operating (legally) just outside law. Thus the tendency over years, unless there is to be an uprising and concerted effort to change the law, for the law to be continually eroded by practice. Look at the history of capital punishment over the years. We look with horror at the application of the death penalty in past centuries to what we now consider to be "minor" crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread, or adultery. The concept of "cruel and unusual punishment" and the metric of what constitutes unfair chastisement seems to change from generation to generation. When the law has swung to the severe side, tolerance provides the latitude to give the "benefit of the doubt" or to make "the punishment fit the crime". However when the pendulum has swung to the more lenient side, it takes a great deal more effort to move it back -- it literally takes an act of congress! The same is true of our less well defined guidelines. Our views on sexual promiscuity vary from a distinctly puritanical view to a perspective in which we believe that what goes on behind closed doors is of no one's concern except those behind closed doors, and so long as no one is profiting from closed door activities. Current suggestions of changing the generally accepted definition of marriage to allow unions between persons of the same sex is an example of swinging pendulum in extending the tolerance of lifestyles by giving it the beginnings of legal status by setting precedents that can ultimately frame a law. Similarly the extension of the concept of divorce, once defined solely with respect to marriage, to permit the divorce of under (legal) age children from parents, is a tolerant application of the current law.
At a certain level, the effort required to prosecute those who operate on the fringes of the law overwhelms the aggrieved person, and a tolerant view takes hold wherein what was technically illegal now becomes the acceptable action. Hotels have become inured to the theft of room articles such as towels and ashtrays, and rather than prosecuting the thieves now add a surcharge on the basic room rate in order to cover their losses. The doctrine that the "customer is always right" has led to liberal policies in many stores regarding the return of goods that the customer claims are inappropriate -- too small, too large, wrong color, or (even) damaged. To mollify the customer stores are tolerant of their own policies of requiring the presentation of a cash register receipt or other proof of purchase, and store chains will permit the return of the item even to stores in another country! Customers have taken advantage of these tolerances to return prom dresses after the single wearing, to return jewelry after that special event where the wearer wanted to impress the other attendees, or to replace a long ago purchased, and now defective small appliance. The latter scam requires the purchase of the same item, replacing the defective item in the box and returning it to the store for a full refund. Some stores reduce their losses by insisting that they will not refund the cash value but instead provide credit to the customer for their purchase of another item. Combined with losses due to shoplifting, the losses in a store finally get passed back to all customers in the form of higher prices. Apparently there is a true price for tolerance.
In studying professionalism and professional ethics it is important that we examine both sides of an issue to establish the extremes of concern, and possibly to choose a course of action that fits within these endpoints. Our ability to accept a path of action between the extremes is a measure of our tolerance, and discussions or debates on the issues permit us to tighten these limits until an acceptable solution is discovered. Today, however, our tolerance is becoming to be prescribed by law. We find ourselves required to be tolerant and respectful of the opinions of the minority, when on the other hand there is no necessity for those in the minority to be equally tolerant of the tenets of the majority.
I can find no better way of concluding than a quotation from Sidney Greenberg:
We may gamble on outsmarting the law; we may even gamble on the leniency of man and the mercy of God -- but no man ever won a gamble with his own conscience. Even should he think he has beaten his conscience into submission, his misdeeds still leave their mark upon him. Anyone who gambles against this fact has already lost his gamble.[From the Jewish Exponent, quoted in Reader's Digest, March 1996, p. 31.]