^ Diversity and Tolerance

Something piqued my curiosity recently, from an articleabout the NIMBY state-of-mind: Not In My Backyard. Plenty of people willespouse a particular altruistic mindset, until faced with the reality of a drugrehab house in their neighborhood, or a wind farm within site of their backdecks.

I started wondering: how diverse is “diverse?”  If a neighborhood has black residents, willthey tolerate Latinos? If there are blacks and Latinos, will they tolerateMuslims? It seems there’s always a new group to find suspect, to hate. It’s anever-ending cycle of viciousness in my species, and I’m sick of it.

This pondering on diversity led me to wonder as well: howtolerant is tolerance? I suspect there are degrees to this, too. I realizethese are ideas and concepts that are too easy to banter around and much harderto implement, to live. I suspect, though, that when it comes to push and shove,are more of us NIMBY than we like to believe? I suspect that’s true. And sad.

Mankind has such potential. And so much of it remainssquandered.