Imagine living in a country where we are free to eat any sort of ice cream that we desire — or, for that matter, no ice cream at all.
In this frosty land the government wouldn’t show a preference for eaters of any particular flavor. There would be no test before being granted a job or any other benefit. An employer couldn’t inquire “Do you eat chocolate ice cream?” at an interview, as your preference matters not a bit in your ability to work or receive.
Schools would not sell ice cream, but neither would they stand in the way of students bringing their own. One student likes vanilla? Go right ahead, the school would say. Eat up. Enjoy. Another likes chocolate? Have at it. Just don’t try to shove your butter brickle down the throats of your table-mates, or scream that they’ll burn in hell for their scoops of strawberry.
Would schools teach about the various kids of ice cream available in the larger world? Perhaps, in the right subject area. If responsible science agrees that one should eat a balanced diet and not just ice cream, or that one should avoid the varieties to which one is allergic, or that utterly no research has shown a correlation between ice cream consumption and pedophilia, then those ideas should be shared.
Privately, however, citizens could shout out their ice cream beliefs no matter how unscientific to the high heavens with no interference. You think chocolate ice cream is the very best? Set up a store and serve nothing but. If you feel so strongly, prohibit vanilla-eaters from crossing your threshold. Go right ahead, if you wish, and incorporate The Church of Chocolate Ice Cream; preach each Sunday about the evils of Neapolitan and refuse to marry any but the most ardent chocoholics.
From the sidelines I might think you a very great fool, but I would not interfere. I would not interfere because, given enough time and the vagaries of reproduction, chocolate ice cream might not always be the ice cream of choice and The Church of Chocolate Ice Cream might not always be the most powerful; meaning that churches and governments should be as far removed from one another as can possibly be managed and that each one should stay out of the other’s business.
Why is this so hard to understand?
And why is construction of a mosque within blocks of Ground Zero such a big issue?
Slowly, slowly, people embracing sexual practices other than man-woman monogamy are gaining acceptance and tolerance. But the progress is very slow, and the process is not likely to run its course in our lifetimes.
I’d like to point out that it’s not even a mosque&emdash;and that the imam involved is the complete opposite of a fundamentalist. In fact he’s risked his life by strongly aligning himself with other religions. See this article for a sample of his actual views.
Sorry, I used the wrong code for a —
*sigh* Now I want ice cream.
I don’t know.
Brilliant analogy, aag.
I wish I knew the answer.
Xo-Sadie
Maybe because no man is an island…and what others do inevitably ripples outward to affect the larger community…a community that places greater faith tried and true flavor of vanilla that has developed over millennia across various lands and cultures rather than the flavor of the moment (no matter its wholehearted embrace by the community’s elite). Continuing your analogy a little further, maybe because calls for tolerance of chocolate lovers’ preference eventually evolve into mandates of acceptance and affirmation of said preference often under threat of social and legal consequences.
It seems that with any analogy there is room for interpretation…
So yes, in an ideal world that could/should/would be the case where your choice of Ice cream flavors was left to you and to you alone and where you are freely allowed to gather in Great Ice-cream-atorums and eat of the sacred flavor, what ever flavor that might be. And again as long as you are not forcing it down the throats of those who don’t share you love of the Chocolate. And as long as your love of Chocolate doesn’t lead you to believe and to teach that those that don’t love chocolate as much as you and as fervently as you are evil and should be killed and that if you assist in that killing you will become a hero. Nor should those that don’t share your love of Chocolate, who might ridicule the Coco bean, cause you as a Chocolate lover to stage riots and burn down neighborhoods of those who do not love Chocolate or burn cars in the streets and call for the death of all those that do not share your love of Chocolate and reverence for the Coco bean.
I personally don’t have an issue with those who love Chocolate but when even lovers of Chocolate who find them selves on the wrong side of the rules of eating Chocolate no mater the offense find themselves buried up to their waist and having stones thrown at them till death I am bothered. I worry that Chocolate lovers of the world might develop sufficient numbers and cause governments to install a different set of rules for eating ice cream. So given the proclivities of those that eat Chocolate I fear and resist their efforts as Ice Cream eaters.
A a side note Governments that loose sight of the love of Ice cream also seem to loose sight of the value of human life. Stalin’s Government, Mao’s Government, Pol Pot’s Government, and most famously Hitler’s Government lost this taste for Ice cream and worked to have ice cream and its production destroyed.
While eating Ice cream or drinking Cool-aid is a highly personal thing it does seem to be essential to having some sense of humanity even if you choose not to partake.
…let the ass kicking begin
I think the bottom line is that many people are threatened by the idea that views other than their own can be valid, and that lifestyles other than their own are OK. The underlying fallacious argument is:
1 Only one of us can be right
2 I’m not prepared to be wrong
3 Therefore you are wrong
It’s all to do with insecurity about one’s own position, I think. If someone else’s views are valid then mine aren’t and so the world caves in. Except it doesn’t.
Or rather: if someone else’s life is valid then mine isn’t. That’s the crux of it. If someone believes that, then they can’t tolerate difference.