9. Tolerance and Purity Solutions
Sometimes,
out of Looseness or Liberalism,
the “other” is allowed to co-exist in the host culture,
in a tolerable state of tension,
with various restrictions and limitations,
amid forces for accepting the “other”
and forces for rejecting them,
between living peaceably with them
or oppressing them,
between occasional acts of violence
and subsequent reconciliations.
Such tolerable states of tension can last
for years, decades, and even centuries.
This is a culture’s tolerance solution to the encounter with the “other”.
Sometimes,
out of Tightness or Conservatism,
the forces to reject the “other”
overwhelm the forces to accept them.
The “other” is experienced as too different, foreign, dangerous.
The potential or continued existence of the “other” in the host culture is seen as weakening, polluting, distorting, and threatening to destroy it.
The solution is to protect and preserve the culture by
confining, suppressing, exiling, or destroying the “other”.
This is a culture’s purity solution to the encounter with the “other”.
10. And, at times,
Tolerance solutions
are overwhelmed by Purity solutions,
resulting in catastrophe for the “other”.
