Dear Nathan,

If respecting others is beyond your capacity, then do what you can - at least tolerate them, at least try, try to "live and let live". You cannot of course do anything about the intolerance of others, but you can work on eliminating yours.

Reason has its limits. Getting to agree with everyone is not required. Sometimes it is not possible and trying to achieve it is a waste of time. It's OK to disagree, but it's even better to agree to disagree.

Dear Yuyutsu,

I disagree that 'agree to disagree' is better than 'disagree'. I see nothing wrong in disagreeing. If one does not have the same opinion as another person one disagrees with the other person. There is nothing wrong with that at all. Disagreement can be courteous and caring. I love my wife deeply. Sometimes we disagree. That's natural since we are two different people who do not always see things in the same. Sometimes our disagreements have been a prelude to argument. The more we live together the less frequently disagreement ends up in argument.

The locution 'agree to disagree' means to me that we must work up a pretense of agreement to mask the fact that we disagree. If any relationship is so fragile that an open disagreement will shatter it, that relationship should be ended.

Dear David,

My understanding of "agree to disagree" is: "we acknowledge that we disagree about such-and-such and agree to neither continue discussing it (between us) nor fight over it".

Dear Yuyutsu,

If one shares a loving relationship with another person one can continue discussing a matter even though there is a disagreement. My wife was married before. One of the downers from her past husband was, "I don't want to talk about it." One can examine disagreement, go into the motives for disagreement and leave the matter when both sides agree there is nothing more to be said on the matter.

My understanding of 'agree to disagree' is that it's a cliché that people use without generally thinking about it.

IMHO agreement is neither better nor worse than disagreement.

Yuyutsu,

"If respecting others is beyond your capacity, then do what you can - at least tolerate them, at least try, try to "live and let live". You cannot of course do anything about the intolerance of others, but you can work on eliminating yours."

In a local community group I'm a member of, I have been placed in a lot of difficult situations, by a previous and former chairman, for over one and half years. I, in no way, have wanted to be rude or offensive during this period. A general principle I take in life, is to tolerate a person (in what I may even see as bad behaviour), simply because I (personally) don't move to lower level in terms of similar behaviour.

That being, if I can't (tolerate a person and their views), they will potentially not tolerate mine). I can't really claim my views are of any higher value than others.

Being denied the opportunity to address intolerance (in the above case verbally) and through reason, before September this year, I contacted a mediation service. Some group members are currently going through this process and this been very challenging. For example, I had a very strong letter, written about myself in a local newspaper (by the former chairman), and have had a lot of responses from others as a result.

I did not reply to the letter, to simply respect that the person does have a basic human right to write a letter, even though I may have disagreed with its content. By letting elements of intolerance exist (and respecting that) puts people in a situation of reconsidering basic elements of life and possibly working together through reason. A denial principle, is not always good re improvement. After all a group or an individual still exists, like in the situation I mentioned above.

Tolerance towards everything does not address the complexities of society.

Dear David,

I appreciate the way you handle disagreements with your wife.

In any case, the situation discussed in this context is not of a close loving relationship, but of general strangers who probably have no interest in each other but happen to be neighbours and must somehow share this earth, hopefully peacefully.

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Dear Nathan,

<<Tolerance towards everything does not address the complexities of society>>

Tolerance does not imply that you refrain from defending yourself when it comes to being attacked by sticks and stones.

The topic here is the Australian constitution. It's about the relations between people who are forced to live together despite possibly not wanting to have anything with each other - rather than about people who voluntarily participate in a shared activity and want to share a "society".