Imagine you are walking on the street and a complete stranger hits you in the face. I suppose you would feel offended, it might hurt and you would be thinking why he behaved in such an agressive way. The fact is, this stranger wasn't tolerant, because he placed his fist in the same place where your face was.
Our rights
Human society needs some sort of organization to prevent anarchy. Democracy assures quite a lot of rights for every single person, never mind if you are a homeless or a president. There are written laws and unwritten codes. Those codes are not spoken of and they are taught from the very childhood; it includes saying thank you, letting a disabled lady to have a seat in a mass transport or being polite in general.
What if he doesn't agree with me?
We can choose numerous options and we have to make large number of decisions how are we going to live our lives. The more modern the world is, the more difficult these decisions are. Also, the possibility of making an error grows. Everybody makes mistakes, but we can distinguish smart people from dumb easily. Smart people learn from their mistakes.
You see, my head is unique in the world. It stores my personality, my point of view on the world, my opinions. It had its own chance to make such thoughts and so all of yours heads had a similar chance. If by chance some of you didn't agree with me in any way, I wouldn't dismiss it as a nonsense, I wouldn't say that I'm simply right and I definitely wouldn't claim that God says so and so it is true.
Change of opinion
Do you ask how to change somebody's mind then? The only correct way how to change opinion of others is through peaceful debate; putting forward thoughts, proofs or results of critical thinking. In other words, by the exchange of views. It should be self-evident and it is alarming how is this way being overlooked these days.
Violence is outdated
Even though we crossed into new millenia, we are still carrying old habits with us. Such as using violence and weapons to grab more power or to "persuade" somebody your way. That is ridiculous. Imagine that a man with a gun comes into your house, he would point the gun on your head and he would demanded you to say: "Fox Megan is the best top model out there".
Let's say you succumb and you say what he wants. The man than happily leaves, because he thinks he has changed your point of view on this matter. Which is hardly right, am I correct? The moment he left the house, you would call the police and get back to your original opinion that e.g. Cindy Crawford is way prettier.
Do you get it?
If you think this example is absurd, roughly the same thing is happening on a daily basis in Israel. Bunch of people came and claimed already taken land as their own. It was wrong to do so, it was wrong that original inhabitants answered by rockets and it was wrong the Israeli people used brutal force as well.
If you want somebody to see things your way, you must respect him first. Otherwise, you may join Sysifos at his endless work and it might even be more productive.
