Ambivalence Is Tolerance

I find tolerance to be an interesting subject. My stories often involve two conflicting beliefs or two sides at war due to intolerance toward the other. It's a pretty easy way to create conflict by focusing on differences. But tolerance is not always as easy as intolerance.

Talking about intolerance is simple enough. Focus on differences and make it a point of strife. But you can't really make a story about tolerance, because the whole point of being tolerant is that it doesn't provoke strife.

And if people are truly tolerant of an issue, then they must be ambivalent. Nobody cares what color the sky is. Nobody cares if they see other people smile or laugh. Nobody cares if somebody is left-handed (at least not anymore). If you can find something that nobody cares about, you have true tolerance of it. Otherwise you have people pretending to be tolerant.

But to weave that into a story requires some amount of skill. You have to make the effort to have two dudes in a relationship or people with different religions or skin tones all treating each other as equals, but you also have to make the effort to have it be casual and not feel forced. In a sense, you basically have to show it, but have nobody talk about or in any way care about it.

Still, I find ambivalence to be the best teacher. Going out of your way to talk about an issue being positive sill makes things an issue. Stop caring. Stop fighting. And just treat it the way you treat oxygen in the air: a fact of life so utterly common that you don't even realize it is something anybody thinks about.