The Abolition Of Toleration – Early Version
Below is another excerpt from my forthcoming book, ‘The Communication Ideal’.
This is the introduction to a chapter called ‘The Abolition of Toleration’:
tolerance – noun. definition – a fair, objective and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one’ own
For the majority of our hours in the day we live within an environment of tolerance.
The man who is sitting opposite you, sneezing. The yappy dogs in your neighbor’s garden. The adverts between television programs. Mind you – they were ‘make the tea breaks’ in the good ole days.
We have options though. We can move carriages on a train to get away from Mr Snotty, move house to a different area to remove the inclination of air-rifling the dogs (bit extreme perhaps) and we can fast-forward the TV ads and pause the show to make the tea.
One could argue that, even still, we tolerate having to press fast-forward, in the same way as tolerating the house move or having to circumnavigate a busy commuter train.
We are a race that survives with toleration. It would seem there are things that we tolerate by choice and things we tolerate by need. Originally I would call this mandatory and optional toleration however the more you think about it, the more you could suggest that everything is optional.
You could imagine that tolerating a law is mandatory but of course we know they are breakable. You could imagine tolerating the fact that your hotel room has no opening windows but of course, there are other hotels (although not many in Utrecht with varying window-opening policies for some reason).
Arguably, toleration is a blessing. Is it that the ability to ‘put up with’ things is admirable? The song ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd sings that: ‘Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way’. Indeed.
I tolerate people who use the term ‘for free’ although it is grammatically incorrect. I tolerate people who would say the plural of pears is pear’s. The pear’s what? Each to their own I guess – or am I hanging on in quiet desperation as is common amongst people in my habitat?
It has been claimed that compromise makes stronger marriages and that understanding another person’s point of view could stop wars. Sometimes there may be binary choices. Put up with the terrible email system at work because the only other option is to not work there. That may not be what you want. So, you tolerate it. Good for you.
We read free newspapers everyday that contain extremely high quantities of advertising. The deal is this: ‘the paper is yours, without charge – and we will make the money from advertisers’. So, most of us tolerate the irrelevant adverts because the paper is free. I people-watch every day on the way to and from work, observing how people read these free papers. Try it – subtly of course – it is fascinating when you consider the amount advertisers are paying for our toleration.
But what level of irrelevancy would you tolerate?
Let’s try an experiment.
A free newspaper has 20 pages and 10 pages contain irrelevant adverts to you. 5 pages are relevant adverts and the other 5 pages are stuffed full of articles you like.
In summary, half of the paper is relevant to you. Remember, this is free so supposedly 50% relevance is worth a price tag of zero.
Let’s say of the 20 pages, 18 pages were irrelevant adverts and only 2 were full of things you liked.
Here’s a question:
Quickly now, without too much thought, are the 2 relevant pages more likely to be a) just articles or b) more adverts and fewer articles?
Answer?
If you said ‘a’ then that would be consistent with most other people. Congrats!
Is it really the case however, that ‘b’ has a less than equal chance of being the correct answer?
Do we, en masse, feel that adverts are more than likely to be irrelevant? If so, what does that mean in a world that is increasingly full of commercial communication? What does it mean for the advertising industry in general?
Maybe this means that we just need to apply our filters even more strongly. If we filter more, are we tolerating more? Well, yes, at the very least we are tolerating the need to filter.
What then is the outcome of people who do not want to filter? I suspect they vote with their attention, as in a shift of attention, onto something that is relevant personally to them. And rightly so.
We are in an age where commercial communication increasingly enters the realm of ultra personal devices. In this space, toleration is less accepted. In fact, toleration in your most personal space is something that breeds distrust. Trust is such an important part of personal communication ergo personal brand communication must have protocols that breed it.
Individuals may question, “What right do advertisers have in forcing us to put up with stuff that isn’t relevant to us?” Is achieving relevance not our collective task in commercial communication? If relevance is one of our primary tasks, I would say its successful implementation is inversely proportionate to toleration.
In other words, as the personality of devices increases, relevancy must increase also. User trust in commercial communication then builds as the need to filter reduces.
Thus, the net result of the above is hereby known as The Abolition of Toleration.
